Philip had not forgotten his father’s command to punish heretics with the utmost rigor. The Reformation had been silently and rapidly advancing in Spain. Now the terrible persecutions of the Inquisition were turned against this heroic little band of fearless Christians by those professing to worship the same merciful God, and to be followers of the same loving and sinless Christ. How such awful crimes could have been perpetrated in the sacred name of religion seems at the present day incomprehensible, and we shudder at the recital of such savage barbarity, more especially when committed by the enlightened and civilized nations of the world less than four centuries ago. The bigoted Philip issued an edict “that all who bought, sold, or read prohibited works were to be burned alive.” Every person suspected of heresy was arrested and thrown into prison. In Seville alone, eight hundred were arrested in one day. The accused were then dragged from their dungeons and subjected to the horrors of the most merciless tortures to induce them to give up their Protestant faith; and these shocking deeds were performed in the name of religion. The awful details of those barbarous crimes are too horrible to relate. What must the reality have been to the poor victims of this inhuman persecution! The first act of burning, under the decrees of the Pope, Philip II., and the Spanish inquisitor-general, Valdés, took place in May, 1559, at Valladolid. This terrible ceremony was called _auto de fé_, or act of faith; and so common did they at length become, that Catholics would engage to meet each other at the _“auto de fé,”_ as in modern times appointments are made to meet at the theatre, opera, or other place of public gathering. One of the historians thus describes the second _auto de fé_ in Valladolid, in October, 1559: “The Pope wished to invest the scene with all the terrors of the Day of Judgment. That he might draw an immense crowd, an indulgence of forty days was granted to all who should be present at the spectacle.