St. Dominic is usually considered as the person to whom the world is principally indebted for this institution. In fact, we have still extant a patent granted by that great saint, expressed precisely in the following words: "I, brother Dominic, reconcile to the Church Roger, the bearer of these presents, on condition of his being scourged by a priest on three successive Sundays from the entrance of the city to the church doors; of his abstaining from meat all his life; of his fasting for the space of three Lents in a year; of his never drinking wine; of his carrying about him the '_san benito_' with crosses; of his reciting the breviary every day, and ten paternosters in the course of the day, and twenty at midnight; of his preserving perfect chastity, and of his presenting himself every month before the parish priest, etc.; the whole under pain of being treated as heretical, perjured, and impenitent." Although Dominic was the real founder of the Inquisition, yet Louis de Paramo, one of the most respectable writers and most brilliant luminaries of the Holy Office, relates, in the second chapter of his second book, that God was the first institutor of the Holy Office, and that he exercised the power of the preaching brethren, that is of the Dominican Order, against Adam. In the first place Adam is cited before the tribunal: "_Adam ubi es?_"--Adam, where art thou? "And in fact," adds Paramo, "the want of this citation would have rendered the whole procedure of God null." The dresses formed of skins, which God made for Adam and Eve, were the model of the "_san benito_," which the Holy Office requires to be worn by heretics. It is true that, according to this argument, God was the first tailor; it is not, however, the less evident, on account of that ludicrous and profane inference, that he was the first inquisitor. Adam was deprived of the immovable property he possessed in the terrestrial paradise, and hence the Holy Office confiscates the property of all whom it condemns. Louis de Paramo remarks, that the inhabitants of Sodom were burned as heretics because their crime is a formal heresy. He thence passes to the history of the Jews: and in every part of it discovers the Holy Office. Jesus Christ is the first inquisitor of the new law; the popes were inquisitors by divine right; and they afterwards communicated their power to St. Dominic. He afterwards estimates the number of all those whom the Inquisition has put to death; he states it to be considerably above a hundred thousand. His book was printed in 1589, at Madrid, with the approbation of doctors, the eulogiums of bishops, and the privilege of the king. We can, at the present day, scarcely form any idea of horrors at once so extravagant and abominable; but at that period nothing appeared more natural and edifying. All men resemble Louis de Paramo when they are fanatics.