“The prisoners that are to be burnt alive, besides a Familiar, which all the rest have, have a Jesuit on each hand of them, who are continually preaching to them to abjure their heresies; but if they offer to speak any thing, in defence of the doctrines they are going to suffer death for professing, they are immediately gagged, and not suffered to speak a word more. “This I saw done to a prisoner, presently after he came out of the gates of the inquisition, upon his having looked up to the sun, which he had not seen before in several years, and cried out in a rapture, ‘How is it possible for people that behold that glorious body, to worship any Being but him that created it?’ After the prisoners comes a troop of familiars on horseback, and after them the inquisitors and other officers of the court upon mules; and last of all comes the inquisitor general upon a white horse, led by two men, with a black hat, and a green hatband, and attended by all the nobles, that are not employed as familiars in the procession. “In the Terreiro de Paco, which may be as far from the inquisition as Whitehall is from Temple-bar, there is a scaffold erected, which may hold two or three thousand people; at the one end sit the inquisitors, and at the other end the prisoners, and in the same order as they walked in the procession; those that are to be burnt being seated on the highest benches behind the rest, which may be ten feet above the floor of the scaffold.” ----- After this comes in the inquisitor, surrounded with his colleagues, and places himself on the right hand throne; and then the viceroy, with his attendants, seats himself on the throne on the left hand. The crucifix is put on the altar in the midst of the six candlesticks. Then the sermon is preached concerning the faith, and the office of the inquisition. This honour is generally given to the Dominicans. The author of the History of the Inquisition at Goa tells us, that in the act of faith, in which he walked in procession, cloathed with the Sambenito, the provincial of the Augustines preached the sermon, which lasted half an hour, and treated of the inquisition, which he compared to Noah’s ark; but said it was preferable to Noah’s ark in this, because that the animals which entered it came out of it after the flood with the same brutal nature they carried in; whereas the inquisition so far changes the persons who are detained in it, that though they enter cruel as wolves, and fierce as lions, they come out of it meek as lambs.