He produced argument after argument of most subtle reasoning,
to prove that every effort to abolish the office in Spain had been
entirely useless: it would exist, and if not publicly acknowledged,
would always be liable to abuse and desecration; that the only means
of exterminating its secret, and too arrogant power, was to permit its
public establishment, and so control it, that its measures should be
open to the present, and to every successive sovereign. He allowed the
necessity, the imperious necessity of rooting out the _secret_ office;
but he was convinced this could not be done, nor in fact would the
church allow it, unless it should be recognized in the face of all
Europe, as based on alike the civil and religious laws of Spain.
On Ferdinand the wily churchman worked, by proving that his royal
prerogative would be insured rather than injured by this proceeding;
that by publicly establishing the Inquisition, he proved his
resolution to control even this power, and render it a mere instrument
in his sovereign hand; that his contemplated conquest of the Moors
could not be better begun than by the recognition of a holy office,
whose glory it would be to bring all heathens to the purifying and
saving doctrines of the church of Rome. Ferdinand, though wary and
politic himself, was no match for Torquemada's Jesuitical eloquence;
he was won over to adopt the churchman's views with scarcely an effort
to resist them.
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