Some years later, da Costa, grown older and perhaps wiser, wished to be reconciled with his co-religionists, and made formal application for the ban of excommunication to be lifted from him. Here was an excellent opportunity for burying the hatchet, and for the authorities to accept da Costa’s overtures as a sufficient acknowledgment on his part that he had been in the wrong. Unluckily, old associations with that dreadful Inquisition were deeply implanted in the members of the Amsterdam congregation. They were no longer New Christians, but they were also not quite yet true Jews. It was resolved that Uriel da Costa should be pardoned, but there was a horrible and grotesque imitation of Torquemada’s barbarous programme when the penitent was received back into the synagogue. A special service was held, a ‘confession’ of his sins was required to be read aloud by the suppliant, a sermon was preached at him, stripes to the number of nine-and-thirty were laid upon him with no gentle hand, and one after another, over his prostrate body, the elders of the congregation solemnly stepped. Then the curse, which no human being has any shadow of right to pronounce, was declared to be removed from him. It was altogether a terribly unjewish and mistaken proceeding. Every society or community has, undoubtedly, the right to lay down certain rules by which they will receive new members, or expel old ones, just as every father has a right, and even a duty, to keep from his house persons whose influence he fears as dangerous to the morals of his children. But to punish is another matter. No opinions, however mischievous, could justify such treatment as da Costa received at the hands of the Amsterdam community, and his next act put these bigoted interpreters of a bad system yet more hopelessly in the wrong. Two days after that humiliating scene in the synagogue (in April 1640), da Costa shot himself, and thus aroused a sympathy which on the merits of the case, had it been properly dealt with, would have been given neither to him nor to any one of his actions. CHAPTER XXXII.[48] MANASSEH BEN ISRAEL. =1. His Early Life.=――The Amsterdam settlement increased and prospered. Its members were distinguished in learning and in commerce, and by degrees their presence and their influence were not confined to the Dutch capital. Early in the seventeenth century an important branch colony of Spanish and Portuguese immigrants was formed at Hamburg, and, a little later on, another at Copenhagen. But Amsterdam continued to be the centre of the revival, and new refugees from the Peninsula were always arriving in Holland, to take the place of the younger and more adventurous spirits who sought their fortunes further afield.