The Bible produced the Church of Rome, and Torquemada was a product of the Bible. Philip of Spain and the Duke of Alva were produced by the Bible. For thirty years Europe was one vast battle- field, and the war was produced by the Bible. The re- vocation of the Edict of Nantes was produced by the sacred Scriptures. The instruments of torture--the pincers, the thumb-screws, the racks, were produced by the word of God. The Quakers of New England were whipped and burned by the Bible--their children were stolen by the Bible. The slave-ship had for its sails the leaves of the Bible. Slavery was upheld in the United States by the Bible. The Bible was the auction-block. More than this, worse than this, infinitely beyond the computation of imagination, the despotisms of the old world all rested and still rest upon the Bible. "The powers that be" were sup- posed to have been "ordained of God;" and he who rose against his king periled his soul. In this connection, and in order to show the state of society when the church had entire control of civil 190 and ecclesiastical affairs, it may be well enough to read the following, taken from the _New York Sun_ of March 21, 1882. From this little extract, it will be easy in the imagination to re-organize the government that then existed, and to see clearly the state of so- ciety at that time. This can be done upon the same principle that one scale tells of the entire fish, or one bone of the complete animal: "From records in the State archives of Hesse- "Darmstadt, dating back to the thirteenth century, "it appears that the public executioner's fee for boiling "a criminal in oil was twenty-four florins; for decapi- "tating with the sword, fifteen florins and-a-half; for "quartering, the same; for breaking on the wheel, "five florins, thirty kreuzers; for tearing a man to "pieces, eighteen florins. Ten florins per head was "his charge for hanging, and he burned delinquents "alive at the rate of fourteen florins apiece. For ap- "plying the 'Spanish boot' his fee was only two "florins. Five florins were paid to him every time he "subjected a refractory witness to the torture of the "rack. The same amount was his due for 'branding "'the sign of the gallows with a red-hot iron upon "'the back, forehead, or cheek of a thief,' as well as "for 'cutting off the nose and ears of a slanderer or 191 "'blasphemer.' Flogging with rods was a cheap "punishment, its remuneration being fixed at three "florins, thirty kreuzers." The Bible has made men cruel. It is a cruel book. And yet, amidst its thorns, amidst its thistles, amidst its nettles and its swords and pikes, there are some flowers, and these I wish, in common with all good men, to save.