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serve God , and pray for the life of the king and his minister . ' The bishop of Elna having been unsuccessful in his application , renewed it in the course of the following year , when he had recourse to a new line of argument in its support . After telling the premier ' that his hands had made him / he requests him to remember , * if he p leased , ' that his majesty had certain rights in Valencia called les bayles de Morella , of which large sums were due to the treasury , as would appear from the lists which he had procured and took the liberty to transmit to his eminence ; that most luckily the diocese of Tortosa included that district , though the episcopal seat was in his native country of Catalonia ; and that , if it should please his majesty to gratify him with that bishopric , he could see to the payment of these dues without leaving his diocese , and * thus would have it in his power to serve God and the king at the
same time . ' " O the duplicity , the selfishness , the servility of the clergy ! What good cause but one would they not have ruined ? And how deeply has that been marred by them ! Boccaccio relates , ( it is a tale , but deserves to be repeated for the sake of the moral it teaches , ) that two persons , a Christian layman and a Jew , lived together in a retired spot on the northern boundary of Italy . The Christian had long piously laboured to convert his neighbour , and had succeeded so far as to be in daily expectation of his submitting to baptism ,
when all at once the idea struck the latter that he would previously visit the capital of Christendom . Dreading the effects of his journey , the Christian endeavoured to divert him from it ; but in vain . After an absence of some weeks the Jew returned , and repairing to the house of the Christian , who had given up his convert for lost , surprised him with the intimation that he was now ready to be baptized ; ' for ( added he ) I have been at Rome , and have seen the pope and his clergy , and f am convinced that if Christianity had not been divine , it would have been ruined long ago under the care of
such guardians . ' "—Pp . 161—164 . Without the kingdom , several Spaniards ( some of them seeking refuge in the alarm occasioned by the proceedings against Egidius ) bore open testimony to the opinions of the Reformers . Dr . M'Crie commemorates among them the brothers of the name of Enzinas or Dryander , one of whom was seized and encountered martyrdom at Rome , in 1546 . The next story , of Juan Diaz ( pp . 180—188 ) , furnishes an example rarely equalled in the annals of religious ferocity .
Dr . M'Crie's sixth chapter proceeds with details of the efforts ( few and limited as they necessarily were ) to promote the Reformed doctrines . The principal scenes of these operations were Seville and Valladolid . The career of the Reformed doctrines was short ; the Inquisition once for all placed its extinguishing hand upon the kindling flame in 1558 . Its proceedings involved many eminent sufferers ; but whether this is to be taken as evidence of the extent to which the spirit of Reformation had spread , or of the vindictive and ignorant policy of the oppressors , confounding , in one vague accusation , all who incurred its jealousy or suspicion , is perhaps doubtful .
Dr . M'Crie is inclined ( p . 285 ) to estimate the numbers of the Spanish Dissidents at not " fewer than 2000 persons , " and is persuaded ( on the authorities which he cites ) that , in the absence of the peculiar circumstances which enabled the church and government , b y one simultaneous movement , so peremptorily to stifle the new cause in its birth , the Reformation would no where have found more decided and general adoption by the people . The details of the bloody scenes which closed the story of Spanish Reformation , in the very moment in which the discovery made its existence
Untitled Article
Reformation in Spain . 113
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Feb. 2, 1830, page 113, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2581/page/41/
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