From afar there rose upon the provinces the prophetic vision of a coming evil still more terrible than any which had yet oppressed them.

As across the bright plains of Sicily, when the sun is rising, the vast pyramidal shadow of Mount Etna is definitely and visibly projected--the phantom of that ever-present enemy, which holds fire and devastation in its bosom--so, in the morning hour of Philip's reign, the shadow of the inquisition was cast from afar across those warm and smiling provinces--a spectre menacing fiercer flames and wider desolation than those which mere physical agencies could ever compass.
There has been a good deal of somewhat superfluous discussion concerning the different kinds of inquisition.

The distinction drawn between the papal, the episcopal, and the Spanish inquisitions, did not, in the sixteenth century, convince many unsophisticated minds of the merits of the establishment in any of its shapes.

However classified or entitled, it was a machine for inquiring into a man's thoughts, and for burning him if the result was not satisfactory.
The Spanish inquisition, strictly so called, that is to say, the modern or later institution established by Pope Alexander the Sixth and Ferdinand the Catholic, was doubtless invested with a more complete apparatus for inflicting human misery, and for appalling human imagination, than any of the other less artfully arranged inquisitions, whether papal or episcopal.

It had been originally devised for Jews or Moors, whom the Christianity of the age did not regard as human beings, but who could not be banished without depopulating certain districts.