No more summary verdict on the Inquisition can be given than the concluding words of its chief historian: “It introduced a system of jurisprudence which infected the criminal law of all the lands subjected to its influence, and rendered the administration of penal justice a grim mockery for centuries. It furnished the Holy See with a powerful weapon in aid of political aggrandizement. It tempted secular sovereigns to imitate the example, and it prostituted the name, of religion to the vilest temporal ends. It stimulated the morbid sensitiveness to doctrinal aberrations until the most trifling dissidence was capable of arousing insane fury and of convulsing Europe from end to end. On the other hand, when Atheism became fashionable in high places, its thunders were mute. Energetic only in evil, when its powers might have been used on the side of virtue, it held its hand and gave the people to understand that the only sins demanding reparation were doubt as to the accuracy of the Church’s knowledge and attendance on the Sabbath. In its long career of blood and fire the only credit which it can claim is the suppression of the pernicious dogmas of the Cathari; and in this its agency may be regarded as superfluous, for those dogmas carried in themselves the seeds of self-destruction, and higher wisdom might have trusted to their self-extinction. Thus the judgment of impartial history must be that the Inquisition was the monstrous offspring of mistaken zeal, utilized by selfish greed and lust of power to smother the higher aspirations of humanity and stimulate its baser appetites.”[60]