When we consider this rigorous civil criminal code, we need not wonder that heretics, who were considered the worst possible criminals, were sent to the stake. This explains why intelligent men, animated by the purest zeal for good, proved so hard and unbending, and used without mercy the most cruel tortures, when they thought that the faith or the salvation of souls was at stake. "With such men," says Lea,--and he mentions among others Innocent III and St. Louis,--"it was not hope of gain, or lust of blood or pride of opinion, or wanton exercise of power, but sense of duty, and they but represented what was universal public opinion from the thirteenth to the seventeenth centuries."[1] [1] Lea, op. cit., vol. i, p. 234. It was, therefore, the spirit of the times, the _Zeitgeist_, as we would call it to-day, that was responsible for the rigorous measures formerly used by both Church and State in the suppression of heresy. The other reasons we have mentioned are only subsidiary. This is the one reason that satisfactorily explains both the theories and the facts. But an explanation is something far different from a defence of an institution. To explain is to show the relation of cause to effect; to defend is to show that the effect corresponds to an ideal of justice. Even if we grant that the procedure of the Inquisition did correspond to a certain ideal of justice, that ideal is certainly not ours to-day. Let us go into this question more thoroughly. It is obvious that we must strongly denounce all the abuses of the Inquisition that were due to the sins of individuals, no matter what their source. No one, for instance, would dream of defending Cauchon, the iniquitous judge of Joan of Arc, or other cruel Inquisitors who, like him, used their authority to punish unjustly suspects brought before their tribunal. From this standpoint, it is probable that many of the sentences of the Inquisition need revision. But can we rightly consider this institution "a sublime spectacle of social perfection," and "a model of justice?"[1] [1] The _Civiltà Cattolica_, 1853, vol. i. p. 595 seq. To call the Inquisition a model of justice is a manifest exaggeration, as every fair student of its history must admit.