“My Lord,--In obedience to your lordship’s commands of the 10th ultimo, I have here sent all that was printed concerning the last _auto da fé._ I saw the whole process, which is agreeable to what is published by Limborch and others upon that subject. Of the five persons condemned, there were but four burnt; Antonio Tavances, by an unusual reprieve, being saved after the procession. Heytor Dias and Maria Pinteyra were burnt alive, and the other two first strangled. The execution was very cruel. The woman was alive in the flames half an hour, and the man above an hour. The present king and his brothers were seated at a window so near as to be addressed, for a considerable time, in very moving terms, by the man as he was burning. But though the favour he begged was only a few more faggots, yet he was not able to obtain it. Those who are burnt alive here are seated on a bench twelve feet high, fastened to a pole, and above six feet higher than the faggots. The wind being a little fresh, the man’s hinder parts were perfectly wasted; and as he turned himself, his ribs opened before he left speaking, the fire being recruited as it wasted, to keep him just in the same degree of heat. But all entreaties could not procure him a larger allowance of wood to shorten his misery and dispatch him!” CHAPTER XVI. MODERN VICTIMS OF THE INQUISITION. Galileo--Dr. Orobio de Castro--Count of Olavides--A Beata--Joseph da Costa. “Popery is unchangeable.” Such is the profession of its greatest advocates. They declare that “the Holy Roman Catholic Apostolic Church” is ever the same in its divine foundation, its principles of faith, and its ecclesiastical order. But history, as we have seen, records a long series of changes in its doctrines and institutions, adapted to the varying policy of its hierarchy, which is antichristian; and the advancement of society in knowledge and religion has compelled the observance of far more respect than formerly to the dictates of humanity. Hence the abolition of the horrid custom of publicly burning men for their religious opinions. The spirit of intolerance and bigotry, however, is essential to Romanism, as a system of priestly claims; but even this spirit has been restrained, as will appear from the following examples of its modern victims.