Then for the first time his serenity was ruffled.
"I forbid you to speak of your disbelief," he cried.

"I forbid you to lead into your own lost state the souls for whom Christ died." [Illustration: THOMAS SCOTT.] Slowly and sadly I took my way back to the station, knowing that my last chance of escape had failed me.

I recognised in this famous divine the spirit of priest-craft, that could be tender and pitiful to the sinner, repentant, humble, submissive; but that was iron to the doubter, the heretic, and would crush out all questionings of "revealed truth," silencing by force, not by argument, all challenge of the traditions of the Church.

Out of such men were made the Inquisitors of the Middle Ages, perfectly conscientious, perfectly rigid, perfectly merciless to the heretic.

To them heretics are centres of infectious disease, and charity to the heretic is "the worst cruelty to the souls of men." Certain that they hold, "by no merit of our own, but by the mercy of our God, the one truth which He has revealed," they can permit no questionings, they can accept nought but the most complete submission.