those who were slain by the sword or consumed in the fire; but we know little of that still larger number who, by the mere threat of persecution, have been driven into an outward abandonment of their real opinions, and who, thus forced into an apostasy the heart abhors, have passed the remainder of their lives in the practice of a constant and humiliating hypocrisy. It is this which is the real curse of religious persecution. For in this way, men being constrained to mask their thoughts, there arises a habit of securing safety by falsehood and of purchasing impunity with deceit. In this way fraud becomes a necessary of life; insincerity is made a daily custom; the whole tone of public feeling is vitiated, and the gross amount of vice and of error fearfully increased. Surely, then, we have reason to say that, compared to this, all other crimes are of small account; and we may well be thankful for that increase of intellectual pursuits which has destroyed an evil that some among us would even now restore.”[46] Notwithstanding the great improvement in knowledge, however, the main body of the Christian Church still holds that persecution of erroneous doctrines is not an evil, and still officially teaches that their propagation should be punished with death. A Dominican priest in 1782 ferociously argued that “the command in Deuteronomy xiii, 6-10, to slay without mercy all who entice the faithful from the true religion, is almost literally the law of the Holy Inquisition; and proceeded to prove from Scripture that fire is the peculiar delight of God, and the proper means of purifying the wheat from the tares.”[47] It is perhaps going too far to affirm that all the Inquisitors were men of incorruptible integrity. From the first the motive of religious zeal was alloyed with the desire of personal or corporate profit, and an elaborate system of persecution and extortion was invented which permitted the exercise of both passions, whereby the many suffered to gratify the few.