This tribunal, first erected to discover Jews and Moors, soon began to proceed against heretics, and to exercise the same cruelties against these as they had against the others. Charles V. king of Spain, who with great difficulty had brought the inquisition into the Netherlands, against the Lutherans and reformed, recommended it to his son Philip in his will; and Philip gave full proof of his zeal to execute his father’s commands. For when he was requested by many to grant liberty of religion in the Low Countries, he prostrated himself before a crucifix, and uttered these words: “I beseech the divine majesty, that I may always continue in this mind; that I may never suffer myself to be, or to be called the lord of those any where, who deny thee the Lord.” Nor is this any wonder; for the popish divines endeavoured to persuade the kings of Spain that the inquisition was the only security of their kingdom. No one can wonder, that under this persuasion, the Spanish kings have been violent promoters of the inquisition; and that they have inflicted the most cruel punishments upon the miserable heretics. Philip II. not only in the Low Countries, but also in Spain, shewed himself the patron of it; and that the most outrageous cruelty was acceptable to him. He gave some horrid specimens of it in the year 1559, in two cities of Spain, when he came thither from the Low Countries; [245]“Immediately on his arrival,” as Thuanus relates, “he began to chastise the sectaries. And whereas, before this, one or more, just as it happened, were delivered to the executioner, after condemnation for heresy; all that were condemned throughout the whole kingdom were kept against his coming, and carried together to Seville, and Valladolid, where they were brought forth in public pomp to their punishment. The first act of faith was at Seville, the 8th of the calends of October; in which John Ponce de Leon, son of Rhoderic Ponce Comte de Baylen, was led before the others, as in triumph, and burnt for an obstinate heretical Lutheran. John Consalvus, a preacher, as he had been his companion in life, was forced to bear him company in his death; after whom followed Isabella Venia, Maria Viroes, Cornelia, and Bohorchés; a spectacle full of pity and indignation, which was encreased, because Bohorchés, the youngest of all of them, being scarce twenty, suffered death with the greatest constancy. And because the heretical assemblies had prayed in the house of Venia, it was concluded in her sentence, and ordered to be levelled with the ground. After these, came forth Ferdinand San Juan, and Julian Hernandez, commonly called the Little, from his small stature, and John of Leon, who had been a shoemaker at Mexico in New Spain, and was afterwards admitted into the college of St. Isidore; in which his companions studied, as they boasted, the purer doctrine privately. Their number was encreased by Frances Chaves, a nun of the convent of St. Elizabeth, who