This disgrace of Christianity, and indeed of the human race, had different constitutions in different countries.  The papal Inquisition continued the tyranny, and eventually superseded the old episcopal inquisitions.  The authority of the bishops was unceremoniously put aside by the officers of the pope.

By the action of the fourth Lateran Council, A.D. 1215, the power of the Inquisition was frightfully increased, the necessity of private confession to a priest—­auricular confession—­being at that time formally established.  This, so far as domestic life was concerned, gave omnipresence and omniscience to the Inquisition.  Not a man was safe.  In the hands of the priest, who, at the confessional, could extract or extort from them their most secret thoughts, his wife and his servants were turned into spies.  Summoned before the dread tribunal, he was simply informed that he lay under strong suspicions of heresy.  No accuser was named; but the thumb-screw, the stretching-rope, the boot and wedge, or other enginery of torture, soon supplied that defect, and, innocent or guilty, he accused himself!

Notwithstanding all this power, the Inquisition failed of its purpose.  When the heretic could no longer confront it, he evaded it.  A dismal disbelief stealthily pervaded all Europe,—­a denial of Providence, of the immortality of the soul, of human free-will, and that man can possibly resist the absolute necessity, the destiny which envelops him.  Ideas such as these were cherished in silence by multitudes of persons driven to them by the tyrannical acts of ecclesiasticism.  In spite of persecution, the Waldenses still survived to propagate their declaration that the Roman Church, since Constantine, had degenerated from its purity and sanctity; to protest against the sale of indulgences, which they said had nearly abolished prayer, fasting, alms; to affirm that it was utterly useless to pray for the souls of the dead, since they must already have gone either to heaven or hell.  Though it was generally believed that philosophy or science was pernicious to the interests of Christianity or true piety, the Mohammedan literature then prevailing in Spain was making converts among all classes of society.  We see very plainly its influence in many of the sects that then arose; thus, “the Brethren and Sisters of the Free.  Spirit” held that “the universe came by emanation from God, and would finally return to him by absorption; that rational souls are so many portions of the Supreme Deity; and that the universe, considered as one great whole, is God.”  These are ideas that can only be entertained in an advanced intellectual condition.  Of this sect it is said that many suffered burning with unclouded serenity, with triumphant feelings of cheerfulness and joy.  Their orthodox enemies accused them of gratifying their passions at midnight assemblages in darkened rooms, to which both sexes in a condition of nudity repaired.  A similar accusation, as is well known, was brought against the primitive Christians by the fashionable society of Rome.