The history of the Inquisition, as it is exercised at Goa written in French, by the ingenious Monsieur Dellon, who laboured five years under those severities ; with an account of his deliverance ; translated into English.

CHAP. XVI. (Book 16)

Other kinds of Injustice which are ordinarily committed in the In∣quisition.

IF Christians are often put to death falsly accused, and slenderly con∣victed of having Judaized; as the Judges of the Holy Office would themselves soon acknowledge, if they would take the pains to examine the matter without prejudice, and consider, that among an hundred Persons condemned to the Fire, as Iews, there are scarce found four who profess this Law at their death, the rest crying out and protesting to their last breath, that they are Christians, that they have been so all their Lives, that they adore Jesus Christ as their only and true God, and that it is wholly upon his Mercies and the Merits of his adorable Blood that they found all their hopes. But the cries and declarations of these unhappy Persons, if we may so call them, who suffer for not acknow∣ledging a Lye, cannot in the least move these Gentlemen, who imagine that this authentick Confession of their Faith, which so great a number of People make in dying, deserveth not to obtain the least reflection; and who believe that a certain number of Witnesses, whom the sole fear of Fire hath induced to accuse very innocent Persons, will be a reason strong enough to defend them from the just vengeance of God. If I say, so many Christians passing for Iews are unjustly delivered up to Execution in all the Inquisitions, there are no less, nor fewer acts of Injustice per∣formed in the Indies, against those who are accused of Magick and Sor∣cery, and as such condemned to the Fire. For to illustrate this, we are to observe that the Gentiles, who in Paganism observed a very great number of ridiculous Superstitions; to know, for example, the success of an Affair, or of a disease, whether one is loved by a certain Person, who stole away any thing which is lost, and for other reasons of this nature: that these Gentiles, I say, cannot so well, nor so readily forget all these things, but that they put them often in practice after they are Baptized; which will be thought less strange if we consider that in France, where the Christian Religion hath been established for so many Ages, there may be yet found so many Persons who will give belief to, and use their impertinent Ceremonies, which so long a time hath not caused to be forgotten. Farther, that those Gentiles newly Converted to the Faith, have passed the greater part of their Life in Paganism, and that those who live in the States of the King of Portugal in the Indies, are Sub∣jects or Slaves, who ordinarily change not their Religion, but in hope

of being better treated by their Lords and Masters; nevertheless these sort of faults which in gross and ignorant Persons, ••would methinks de∣serve rather the Whip than the Fire, cease not to be expiated by this cruel punishment in all those who are convicted, according to the Max∣ims of this Tribunal the second time, if they confessed the first time; or the first time, if they persisted to deny the Fact. And the Inquisiti∣on punisheth not only Christians, who fall, or who are accused to have fallen into the cases, whereof it hath night to judge, but also Mahome∣tans, Gentiles, and other strangers of whatsoever Religion they be, who have committed any of these Crimes, or who have performed any ex∣ercise of their Religion in the Countrys subject to the King of Portugal. For although the Prince granteth Liberty of Conscience, the Holy Office having the Interpretation of this Commission, consenteth indeed that Strangers should live in their Religion, but punisheth those as guilty who perform any exercise of it. And as in the Lands of the Portugueze Dominion in the Indies, there are many more Mahometans and Gentiles than Christians, and that the Inquisition which punisheth the relapsed Christians with death, never inflicteth Capital Punishment upon those who never received Baptism, altho they should relapse an hundred times into the same Fault; and that at the most they are quitted for Banish∣ment, the Whip, or the Gallies; this fear of living condemned to the Fire hinders many from embracing Christianity. And the Holy Office far from being useful in these Countries to the Propagation of the Faith, serveth for nothing else but to drive People from the Church, and create in them an abhor••ence of it.

The perpetual Succession of Accusations, which necessarily follow, all which I have hitherto related, and the liberty which every one ta∣keth, of freely accusing those who are his enemies, causeth that the Prison of the Inquisition are never long time empty, and tho the Acts of Faith are made at the latest from two to two, or from three to three years, there fail not nevertheless to appear in every one about two hundred Prisoners, and sometimes more.