It is necessary, for the right understanding of this history, to pause upon this remarkable fact, and to give it the consideration which it demands. In this one passage lies the key to all the atrocities, which from that hour to the present have been perpetrated on the natives of every country making no profession of Christianity, which those _making_ such a profession have been able to subdue. An Italian priest,—as the unfortunate Inca, Atahualpa, afterwards observed with indignant surprise, when told that the pope had given his empire to the Spaniards,—here boldly presumes to give away God’s earth as if he sate as God’s acknowledged vicegerent. Splitting this mighty planet into two imaginary halves, he hands one to the Spanish and the other to the Portuguese monarch, as he would hand the two halves of an orange to a couple of boys. The presumption of the act is so outrageous, that at this time of day, and forgetting for a moment all the consequences which flowed from this deed, one is ready to burst into a hearty fit of laughter, as at a solemn farce, irresistibly ludicrous from its grave extravagance. But it was a farce which cost, and still costs the miserable natives of unproselyted countries dear. It was considered no farce—there was seen no burlesque in it at the time of its enactment. Not only the kings of Spain and Portugal, but the kings and people of all Europe bowed to this preposterous decision, and never dreamed for a moment of calling in question its validity. Edward IV. of England, on receiving a remonstrance from John II. of Portugal on account of some English merchants attempting to trade within the limits assigned to the Portuguese by the pope’s bull, so far from calling in question the right thus derived by the Portuguese from the pope, instantly ordered the merchants to withdraw from the interdicted scene. Here then, we have the root and ground of that grand delusion which led the first discoverers of new lands, to imagine themselves entitled to seize on them as their own, and to violate every sacred right of humanity without the slightest perception of wrong, and even in many instances, in the fond belief that they were extending the kingdom of Christ. We have here the man of sin, the anti-Christ, so clearly foretold by St. Paul,—“the son of perdition, who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God or that is worshipped; so that he as God, sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God.... Even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power, and signs and lying wonders; and _with all deceivableness of unrighteousness_ in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth that they might be saved. And for this cause _God shall send them a strong delusion, that they should believe a lie_.”—_Second Epistle to the Thessalonians_, ii. 3, 4, 9, 10, 11.