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respect for principle." ."* Measures were taken to restore the mission to its right owners, and a member of Stonyhurst, the Rev. Mr. Rowe, was sent to Bristol; and the then two clergymen, the Revds. F. Edgeworth, a Friar, and Mr. Reily, a secular clergyman, had notice to quit, which the latter immediately did, but the former remained. A petition was got up to detain Mr. Edgeworth in the mission. Indeed two petitions were prepared, one for the Bishop and one for the Superior of Stony-hurst, and signed they were with nearly two thousand names, and MORE THAN HALF OF THEM FORGERIES, according to the testimony of Mr. E. J. Lacy and Mr. Martin Baen. A regiment of Irish soldiers, passing through Bristol, and the schoolboys with good pens, soon completed the job. The Bishop soon after died, and the new Bishop and the Rev. F. Edgeworth soon made room for another Friar, and the Rev. P. O'Farrell was appointed. Dr. Baines succeeded Dr. Collingridge, and by deviating from the principles on which Trenchard-street chapel was established, laid the foundation of those dissensions which still exist.

These intestine broils of the Papists we leave to themselves, but it is of the highest importance that the Roman Catholics of Bristol should thoroughly understand their real position. For years the Roman Catholics of Bristol have been attending the MINISTRY, and receiving the Sacraments of their Church, from one who is, "ipso facto, DEPRIVED OF HIS MISSIONARY FACULTIES " Hence his ministry is no ministry, his sacraments no sacraments, his absolution no absolution, and all who have relied upon him have perished in their sins.

(To be continued.)

Smith's Friarism and Jesuitism, p. 25. † Ibid., p. 26.

+ Smith, p. 35.

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POPISH MEANS OF CONVERSION.

As we purpose to give an account in some subsequent numbers of the origin, constitution, and proceedings of the INQUISITION, we have here prefixed a representation of one species of TORTURE inflicted by that merciless tribunal on Protestants, whose only crime consists in their refusal to believe those monstrous fables, lying legends, and blasphemous absurdities, which the Pope endeavours to palm on the credulity of mankind for divine truths.

After the sentence of TORTURE is pronounced, the officers prepare themselves to inflict it. The place of TORTURE in the Spanish Inquisition is generally an under-ground and very dark room, to which one enters through several doors. There is a tribunal erected in it, in which the Inquisitor, Inspector, and Secretary sit. When the candles are lighted, and the person to be TORTURED brought in, the executioner, who was waiting for the order, makes an astonishing and dreadful appearance. He is covered all over with a black linen garment, down to his feet, and tied close to his body. His head and face are all hid with a long black cowl, only two little holes being left in it for him to see

through. All this is intended to strike the miserable wretch with greater terror, in mind and body, when he sees himself going to be tortured by the hands of one who thus looks like a very devil.

The unhappy prisoner, represented in the above cut, being seized by the executioners of the INQUISITION, whose countenances and figures are concealed by black masks and long black cloaks, is stripped naked to his drawers. He is then laid upon his back on a kind of stand, elevated a few feet from the floor.

The prisoner's limbs being stretched out, ropes are wound round his arms and thighs, and these cords being passed under the stand, through holes made for the purpose, are all drawn tight at the same instant of time by the executioner.

It is easy to conceive that the pains which immediately succeed are intolerable. The ropes being of small size, cut through the prisoner's flesh to the bone, making the blood gush out from the several parts which experience their pressure at the same time. When the prisoner persists in asserting his innocence, this cruel operation is repeated as often as his frame can endure it; and a physician and surgeon attend, who often feel his pulse, lest he should expire under the torture, and these wretched tools of priestly tyranny so thoroughly imbibe the spirit of their employers, that they do not scruple to tell the sufferer, that should he die under the torture, he would be guilty, by his obstinacy, of self-murder !

In all this extremity of anguish, while the tender frame is being torn as it were in pieces—while in every nerve it feels the sharpest pangs of death, and the agonized soul is just ready to burst forth and quit its wretched mansion, the Romish Ecclesiastics who preside as ministers of the INQUISITION have the obduracy of heart to look on without emotion, and calmly to advise the poor distracted creature to confess his imputed guilt, in doing which they tell him he may obtain a free pardon and receive absolution.

At last when the prisoner, from the intensity of his anguish, the stoppage of the circulation, or the loss of blood, faints away, he is unbound and carried back to his dungeon, where he is recovered from his swoon to anticipate new tortures from the hands of his blood-thirsty persecutors.

The following is an account of one of their illustrious victims-LADY JOAN BOHORQUES, wife of the eminent Francis Vargas, Lord of Heguera. Her sister, Maria Bohorques, a young lady of great piety, who was afterwards BURNT for her profession of the Protestant faith, having been forced by the extremity of torture to confess that she had several times conversed with her sister Joan, concerning the doctrine for which she now suffered, was apprehended by the INQUISITION. Being, however, six months gone in pregnancy, she was treated with tolerable kindness until the birth of her infant. But eight days after her delivery they took the child from her, and putting her into close confinement, they subjected her to the same rigorous treatment as the other prisoners. The only outward comfort which the unhappy Joan now enjoyed was the society of a pious young woman, who was afterwards BURNT by the INQUISITION for her religion. This young creature was, on a certain day, dragged out of her dungeon to the torture upon the RACK, and returned from it so shaken, and all her limbs so miserably disjointed, that when she lay upon her bed of rushes, it rather increased her misery than gave her rest, so that she could not turn herself without excessive pain. In this condition Bohorques endeavoured to comfort her mind with great tenderBut the object of her sympathy had scarcely begun to recover when Bohorques herself was carried out and tortured with such diabolical cruelty on the rack, that the ropes cut into the very bones of her tender arms, thighs, and legs; and in this manner, the blood gushing from her mouth in great quantities, she was remanded to her comfortless cell, where she expired eight days after.

ness.

The inquisitors, however, could not procure sufficient evidence of her supposed guilt; and as the rank and celebrity of this unfortunate lady obliged them to give some account of her to the people, in the first act of triumph appointed after her death, they commanded her sentence to be pronounced in these words:

"Because this lady died in prison, and was found to be innocent upon inspecting and diligently examining her cause; therefore the holy tribunal pronounces her free from any further process; (!!!) doth restore her both as to her innocence and reputation, and commands all her effects, which

had been confiscated, to be restored to those to whom they of right belong," &c.

Thus, after these inhuman butchers had MURDERED their hapless victim, the only reparation which they made to her and her family was, the reluctant admission that she did not deserve any of those cruelties under the pressure of which she died.*

Why, it may be asked, do we harrow np the feelings of our readers by the recital of such fearful tragedies? We have many reasons for doing So. We would stimulate the inhabitants of our favoured country, be they Protestants or Romanists, to praise the Father of lights, for the moral illumination which He has shed abroad upon our land from the pages of the BIBLE, in the brightness of which men are ashamed to practise those cruelties of which "the habitations of the dark places of the earth" are full. While the people of Bible-reading England enjoyed a fortaste of millennial peace and security, every man sitting "under his vine and under his fig-tree, none making him afraid," the INQUISITION spread a gloomy distrust and panic among all classes of society in Spain, from which the Bible had been banished by the intolerant and antichristian influence of Popery.

We have further dragged the atrocities of the INQUISITION into the light of public observation, because the disgusting detail shews that the pretensions of the Romish church to infallibility has no support but that which it derives from a most unblushing impudence. It is difficult even to write on such a subject with the calmness of temper becoming a Christian.

ROMAN CATHOLIC WORSHIP OF A PIG.

At the Church of St. Martin, in Saragossa, the image of St. Anthony is in the middle of the great altar, with a PIG at his feet, for the legend says that "he was an advocate for the cattle with GOD," and that he cured many PIGS. The four priests, belonging to that church, are called "The Commissaries of St. Anthony's

* See Llorente, a Roman Catholic, and Secretary of the Inquisition, who gives a much more detailed account.

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