months' confinement, the holy office thought fit to release him, with the consolatory intimation, that they had dealt with him much more mercifully than his crime deserved." The following case, related by the same writer, will show still further the flagrant injustice of Inquisitorial tribunals. "There was, at Seville, a certain poor man," says that author, in his own homely style, "who daily maintained himself and his family by the sweat of his brow. A certain parson detained his wife from him by violence, neither the Inquisition nor any other tribunal punishing this heinous injury. As the poor man was one day talking about purgatory with some other persons of his own circumstances, he happened to say, rather out of rustic simplicity than any certain design, that he truly had enough of purgatory already, by the rascally parson's violently detaining from him his wife. This speech was reported to the good parson, and gave him a handle to double the poor man's injury, by accusing him to the Inquisitors as having a false opinion concerning purgatory; and this the holy tribunal thought more worthy of punishment than the parson's wickedness. The poor wretch was taken up for this trifling speech, kept in the prisons of the Inquisition for two years, and at length compelled to walk in procession at an auto-da-fé, wearing the infamous sanbenito. After suffering another three years' imprisonment, he was dismissed. Neither did they spare the poor creature any thing of his little substance, though they did his wife to the parson, but adjudged all the remains of what he had after his long imprisonment, to the exchequer of the Inquisition." Large promises of pardon and favour are usually held out by the Inquisitors to all who voluntarily accuse themselves of crimes which are hidden from the eye of man. But whoever thus puts himself in their power, finds to his sad experience, that the promises of Inquisitors are no more than wind, and intended only for a snare to catch the unwary. Of this we shall select only one example, from many which might be given. In 1644, Antonius de Vega, allured by the professions of sympathy and kindness which the Inquisitors pretended to show to all who voluntarily made confession of their crimes before the holy tribunal, accused himself of having, at a former period of his life, entertained the opinion that a man might be saved by the law of Moses. This error, however, he had long since renounced, and he therefore begged the promised absolution from the judges of the holy office. But, alas! what must have been his astonishment and horror, to hear the mild and merciful lords of the Inquisition order him to be confined in the dungeons appropriated for heretics! After three years' imprisonment, the miserable confessor was condemned to appear at an autoda-fé, wearing the sanbenito, his property was confiscated, and himself banished.[23]