Foxe - The Book of Martyrs

Foxe’s Book of Martyrs
After a long and bitter review of Galileo's writings, in which many of his most important
discoveries were condemned as errors, the charge of the inquisitors went on to declare, "That
you, Galileo, have upon account of those things which you have written and confessed,
subjected yourself to a strong suspicion of heresy in this Holy Office, by believing, and
holding to be true, a doctrine which is false, and contrary to the sacred and divine Scriptureviz.,
that the sun is the center of the orb of the earth, and does not move from the east to the
west; and that the earth moves, and is not the center of the world."
In order to save his life. Galileo admitted that he was wrong in thinking that the earth
revolved around the sun, and swore that-"For the future, I will never more say, or assert, either
by word or writing, anything that shall give occasion for a like suspicion." But immediately
after taking this forced oath he is said to have whispered to a friend standing near, "The earth
moves, for all that."
Summary of the Inquisition
Of the multitudes who perished by the Inquisoition throughout the world, no authentic
record is now discoverable. But wherever popery had power, there was the tribunal. It had been
planted even in the east, and the Portuguese Inquisition of Goa was, until within these few years,
fed with many an agony. South America was partitioned into provinces of the Inquisition; and
with a ghastly mimickry of the crimes of the mother state, the arrivals of viceroys, and the other
popular celebrations were thought imperfect without an auto da fe. The Netherlands were one
scene of slaughter from the time of the decree which planted the Inquisition among them. In
Spain the calculation is more attainable. Each of the seventeen tribunals during a long period
burned annually, on an average, ten miserable beings! We are to recollect that this number was
in a country where persecution had for ages abolished all religious differences, and where the
difficulty was not to find the stake, but the offering. Yet, even in Spain, thus gleaned of all
heresy, the Inquisition could still swell its lists of murders to thirty-two thousand! The numbers
burned in effigy, or condemned to penance, punishments generally equivalent to exile,
confiscation, and taint of blood, to all ruin but the mere loss of worthless life, amounted to three
hundred and nine thousand. But the crowds who perished in dungeons of torture, of confinement,
and of broken hearts, the millions of dependent lives made utterly helpless, or hurried to the
grave by the death of the victims, are beyond all register; or recorded only before HIM, who has
sworn that "He that leadeth into captivity, shall go into captivity: he that killeth with the sword
must be killed with the sword."
Such was the Inquisition, declared by the Spirit of God to be at once the offspring and the
image of the popedom. To feel the force of the parentage, we must look to the time. In the
thirteenth century, the popedom was at the summit of mortal dominion; it was independent of
all kingdoms; it ruled with a rank of influence never before or since possessed by a human
scepter; it was the acknowledged sovereign of body and soul; to all earthly intents its power was
immeasurable for good or evil. It might have spread literature, peace, freedom, and Christianity
to the ends of Europe, or the world. But its nature was hostile; its fuller triumph only disclosed
its fuller evil; and, to the shame of human reason, and the terror and suffering of human virtue,
Rome, in the hour of its consummate grandeur, teemed with the monstrous and horrid birth of
the INQUISITION!
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