It is true that the practice of the Inquisition became milder in the course of time. But to claim this as a merit is to falsify the plain historical record. There were two principal reasons for the diminished severity, neither of them reflecting special credit on the persecutors. In Languedoc and Spain the Inquisition succeeded in exterminating practically every heretic in the kingdom, so that the field of its operations became gradually narrowed. The Inquisition ceased to burn heretics only when there were no more heretics to burn. And a certain inclination to milder penalties was made inevitable by an improvement in secular morals which can hardly have been the work of the Church which had seriously retarded it. In other countries the diffusion of knowledge led even some ecclesiastics to perceive the futility of persecution, and when that point was reached they became convinced of its inhumanity. Balmez might as well have argued that the dying-out of the witchcraft mania was due to the benevolent spirit of the witch-hunters. A significant admission made by Balmez may be noticed. “I see,” he remarks, “that from the earliest times, when the Church began to exert political influence, heresy began to figure in the codes as a crime; and I have never been able to discover a period of complete tolerance.”[49] This means that the spirit of intolerance, so rapidly developed in the Church, infected the State also. The fact is beyond dispute, but it simply furnishes an additional testimony to the evils of ecclesiasticism. Nor will any one deny that the Christian Church has never yet shown to the world “a period of complete tolerance.” The further argument of Balmez, that the Inquisition preserved Spain from the “dangers” of Judaism and Protestantism, may also be admitted as representing facts, though it is necessary to draw from them conclusions other than his own. The material prosperity of Spain would have been incalculably greater if the Jews had been allowed the free exercise of their business abilities and the practice of their non-aggressive faith; while, if Protestantism had been permitted the freedom which it secured elsewhere, the cause of spiritual religion must have been promoted. As to the Inquisition having averted civil war, if the Church had grasped the idea of tolerance civil war over religious differences would have been impossible. But even that serious peril would have been a less evil than the extinction of liberty, the slow suffocation of the intellectual life, the neglect of science, and the decay of commerce, which actually resulted from the Inquisition’s policy. Civil war would have been at least an indication of life. The Inquisition meant death.