“‘We, the inquisitors of heretical pravity, having, with the concurrence of the most illustrious _N._, lord archbishop of Lisbon, or of his deputy, _M._, called on the name of his Lord Jesus Christ, and of His glorious mother, the Virgin Mary, and sitting on our tribunal, and judging with the holy Gospels lying before us, that so our judgment might be in the sight of God, and our eyes might behold what is just in all matters between the magnific Doctor _N._, advocate-fiscal, on the one part, and you, _N._, now before us, on the other; we have ordained that in this place, and on this day, you should receive your definitive sentence. We do, therefore, by this our sentence, put in writing, define, pronounce, declare, and sentence thee, _N._, of the city of Lisbon, to be a convicted, confessing, affirmative, and professed heretic, and to be delivered by us as such to the secular arm; and we, by this sentence, do cast thee out of the ecclesiastical court, as a convicted, confessing, affirmative, and professed heretic, and we do leave and deliver thee to the secular arm, and to the power of the secular court, but at the same time do _most earnestly beseech that court so to moderate its sentence as not to touch thy blood, or to put thy life in any danger_.’ “Is there in all history,” asks Dr. Geddes, “an instance of so gross and confident a mockery of God and the world as this of the inquisitors, earnestly beseeching the civil magistrates not to put the heretic they have condemned and delivered to them to death? For were they in earnest when they make their solemn petition to the secular magistrates, why do they bring their prisoners out of the Inquisition, and deliver them to those magistrates, in coats painted over with flames? Why do they teach that all heretics, above all other malefactors, ought to be punished with death? And why do they never resent the secular magistrates having so little regard to their earnest and joint petition as never to fail to burn all the heretics which are delivered to them by the Inquisition, within an hour or two after they have them in their hands? And why, in Rome, where the supreme civil and ecclesiastical authority are lodged in the same person, is this petition of the Inquisition, which is made there as well as in other places, never granted? Certainly, not to take any notice of the old canon, which forbids the clergy to have any hand in the blood of any person whatsoever, would be a much less dishonour to the Inquisition, than to pretend to go on observing that canon, by making a petition which is known to be so contrary to their principles and desires.