A HISTORY OF THE 'INQUISITION 571
labouring on the Bank, or an orb in the tail of a comet, is that the opinion is associated with no area of time, and remains unshaken. The Dominican democrat who took his seat with the Mountain in ì 848 never swerved from the principles of his order. More often, and, I think, more deliberately, Mr. Lea urges that intolerance is im- plied in the definition of the mediæval Church, that it sprang from the root and grew with U the very law of its being." It is no desperate expedient of authority at bay, for "the people were as eager as their pastors to send the heretic to the stake." Therefore he does not blame the perpetrator, but his inherited creed. " No firm believer in the doctrine of exclusive salvation could doubt that the truest mercy lay in sweeping a\vay the emissaries of Satan with fire and s\vord." What we have here is the logic of history, constraining every system to utter its last word, tc empty it'S wallets, and \vork its consequences out to the end. But this radical doctrine misguides its author to the anachronism that as early as the first Leo U the final step had been taken, and the Church was definitely pledged to the suppression of heresy at whatever cost." We do not demand that historians shall compose our opinions or relieve us from the purifying pains of thought. It is ,veIl if they discard dogmatising, if they defer judg- ment, or judge, with the philosopher, by precepts capable of being a guide for all. We may be content that they should deny themselves, and repress their sentiments and wishes. When these are contradictory, or such as evidently to tinge the medium, an unholy curiosity is engendered to learn distinctly not only what the \vriter knows, but what he thinks. Mr. Lea has a malicious pleasure in baffling inquiry into the principle of his judgments. Having found, in the Catechism of Saint Sulpic , that devout Catholics are much on a par with the fanatics whose sympathy with Satan made the holy office a requisite of civilisation, and having, by his exuberant censure, prepared us to hear that this requisite of civilisation " might well seem the invention of demons," he arrives at the inharmonious conclusion that it was wrought and worked, with benefit to their souls, by
