Having undergone innumerable sufferings, his enemies being bent on his destruction, Van Halen at length succeeded, on the 30th of January, 1818, in making his escape from the prisons of the Inquisition; upon which he repaired successively to France, England, and Russia, returning to Spain in 1821.
Llorente again, records the following fact, which he says was given by one who was present when the Inquisition was thrown open in 1820, by orders of the Cortes of Madrid. Twenty-one prisoners were found in it, not one of whom knew the name of the city in which he was; some had been confined three years, some a longer period, and not one knew perfectly the nature of the crime of which he was accused. One of these prisoners had been condemned, and was to have suffered on the following day. His punishment was to be death by the pendulum. The method of thus destroying the victim is as follows:—The condemned is fastened in a groove upon a table, on his back; suspended above him is a pendulum, the edge of which is sharp, and it is so constructed as to become longer with every movement. The wretch sees this implement of destruction swinging to and fro above him, and every moment the keen edge approaching nearer and nearer: at length it cuts the skin of his nose, and gradually cuts on, until life is extinct. It may be doubted if the Holy Office, in its mercy, ever invented a more humane and rapid method of exterminating heresy, or ensuring confiscation! This, let it be remembered, was a punishment of the secret tribunal, A. D., 1820!!
How, indeed, is it possible that any amelioration can have taken place in the Inquisition, that great bulwark of Rome, when Popery, and the measures of the Holy See, continue unaltered? Though not bearing directly on the point in hand, yet illustrative of the hatred which the Romish Church bears to Protestants and to their works, and of her determination still to persecute when in her power all who dare to call in question any of her dogmas, the following extracts from a speech delivered before the British Parliament, in May, 1825, by Sir Robert H. Inglis, are submitted to the reader;—"I will tell you," said the Honourable Baronet, "not what the literature of the Church of Rome _is_, but what it _is not_. Her tyranny over literature, her proscription at this day of all the great masters of the human mind, can be paralleled only by the tyranny and the proscription which she exercised five centuries ago over the minds and bodies alike. The volume which I hold in my hand—the Index Librorum Prohibitorum—contains a list of the books which are at this time proscribed in the Church of Rome under the penalties of the Inquisition. It was printed at Rome, by authority, in 1819, and I bought it there in 1821.[21] The first book in this great catalogue of works, which are taken from the faithful every where, and are given up to the Inquisition, is 'Bacon de Augmentis Scientiarum.' 'Locke on the Human Understanding,' and 'Cudworth's Intellectual System,' follow in the train. Many other English works are proscribed. One only I will mention, the 'Paradise Lost' of Milton. The reading of the work was interdicted, indeed, nearly a hundred years ago; but the prohibition was renewed in 1819. Is not this enough to prove that the character of the Church of Rome is not so open to a beneficial change as some of my honourable friends are willing to hope and believe it to be? I pass over large classes of books, the very possession of which is forbidden, but I must notice the impartial prohibition of science. Will the House believe it possible, that the celebrated sentence, in 1633, against Galileo—a sentence immortalized by the execration of science in every country where the mind is free—should be renewed and published in 1819? Yet of this fact I hold the proof in my hand, in the volume of the 'Index,' which I have already quoted. The work of Algarotti, on the Newtonian system, shares the same fate: so that every modification of science—in other words, every effort of free inquiry—every attempt to disengage the mind from the trammels of authority, is alike and universally consigned to the Inquisition. Am I not justified in saying that the Church of Rome remains unchanged, the unchangeable enemy to the progress of the human mind? Every other institution is advancing with sails set, and banners streaming, on the high, yet still rising tide of improvement: the Church of Rome alone remains fixed and bound to the bottom of the stream, by a chain which can neither be lengthened nor removed."
