For many years the world groaned under this antichristian yoke; nor were any methods of fraud, imposture and barbarity, left unpractised to support and perpetuate it. As the clergy rid lords of the universe, they grew wanton and insolent in their power; and as they drained the nations of their wealth to support their own grandeur and luxury, they degenerated into the worst and vilest set of men that ever burdened the earth. They were shamefully ignorant, and scandalously vicious; well versed in the most exquisite arts of torture and cruelty, and absolutely divested of all bowels of mercy and compassion towards those, who even in the smallest matters differed from the dictates of their superstition and impiety. The infamous practices of that accursed tribunal, the inquisition, the wars against heretics in the earldom of Tholouse, the massacres of Paris and Ireland, the many sacrifices they have made in Great Britain, the fires they have kindled, and the flames they have lighted up in all nations, where their power hath been acknowledged, witness against them, and demonstrate them to be very monsters of mankind. So that one would really wonder, that the whole world hath not entered into a combination, and risen in arms against so execrable a set of men, and extirpated them as savage beasts, from the face of the whole earth; who, out of a pretence of religion, have defiled it with the blood of innumerable saints and martyrs, and made use of the name of the most holy Jesus, to countenance and sanctify the most abominable impieties. But as the inquisition is their master piece of hellish policy and cruelty, I shall give a more particular account of it in the following book. BOOK III. OF PERSECUTIONS UNDER THE PAPACY, AND PARTICULARLY OF THE INQUISITION. [Illustration] For several ages the method of proceeding against heretics was committed to the bishops, with whom the government and care of the churches were entrusted, according to the received decrees of the church of Rome. But as their number did not seem sufficient to the court, or because they did not proceed with that fury against heretics, as the pope would have them; therefore, that he might put a stop to the increasing progress of heresy, and effectually extinguish it, about the year of our Lord 1200, he founded the order of the Dominicans and Franciscans. [W]Dominick and his followers were sent into the country of Tholouse, where he preached with great vehemence against the heretics of those parts; from whence his order have obtained the name of Predicants. Father Francis, with his disciples, battled it with the heretics of Italy. They were both commanded by the pope to excite the Catholic princes and people to extirpate heretics, and in all places to inquire out their number and quality; and also the zeal of the Catholics and bishops in their extirpation, and to transmit a faithful account to Rome: hence they are called inquisitors. -----