On the occasion, a scaffold is erected large enough for two or three thousand persons; at one end of which are the prisoners, at the other the inquisitors. After a sermon, made of encomiums on the Inquisition, and invectives against heretics, a priest ascends a desk near the scaffold, and having taken the abjuration of the penitents, he recites the final sentence of those who are to be put to death, and delivers them to the secular arm, earnestly beseeching the authorities not to touch their blood, nor to put their lives in danger! The prisoners, being thus in the hands of the civil magistrate, are presently loaded with chains, and carried first to the secular gaol, and thence, in an hour or two, brought before the civil judge; who, after asking in what religion they intend to die, pronounces sentence on such as declare they die in the communion of the church of Rome, that they shall be first strangled, and then burnt to ashes! or such as die in any other faith, that they be burnt alive! Both are immediately carried to a place of execution, where there are as many stakes set up as there are prisoners to be burnt, with fuel of dried furze. The stakes for the professed, or such as reject the Romish faith, are about four yards high, having a small board near the top for the prisoner to be seated on. The negative and relapsed being first strangled and burnt, the professed mount their stakes by a ladder, and the Jesuits, after several repeated exhortations to be reconciled to the church, retire, telling them that they leave them to the devil, who is standing at their elbow to receive their souls, and carry them to the flames of hell. On this, a great shout is raised, the cry being “Let the dogs’ beards be made;” that is done by thrusting flaming furzes, fastened on long poles, against their faces, till they are scorched, and every feature destroyed; and this is accompanied with the loudest exclamations of savage joy. At last, fire is set to the furze at the bottom of the stake, over which the victim is, chained so high that the flame can scarcely reach the seat, and the sufferer is thus made to endure a roasting. There cannot be a more lamentable spectacle; the sufferers cry out, as long as they are able, “Pity, for the love of God!” or such-like appeals for mercy and sympathy; yet it is beheld, by both sexes of the superstitious populace, with transports of joy and satisfaction, illustrating the genuine spirit of Popery. ACT OF FAITH AT MADRID, A.D. 1680. Spain and Portugal, more than any other countries, have been governed on the principles of Popery. To learn its true genius, we must look at the horrid ceremony of burning dissenters, under the designation of heretics. The following account relates to the act of faith celebrated in honour of Charles II., on the occasion of his public entry into Madrid, after his marriage, A.D. 1680.