[26] It attempted to purify and exalt their
life, to make society better, to improve the relations between rulers
and ruled; but it did not attempt to do what it ought to have done. It
ignored great duties and problems, while it imitated too fully, not only
the example of the kings of this world in Europe but also of the rulers
in Japan. In the presence of soldier-like Buddhist priests, who had made
war their calling, it would have been better if the Christian
missionaries had avoided their bad example, and followed only in the
footsteps of the Prince of Peace; but they did not. On the contrary,
they brought with them the spirit of the Inquisition then in full blast
in Spain and Portugal, and the machinery with which they had been
familiar for the reclamation of native and Dutch "heretics." Xavier,
while at Goa, had even invoked the secular arm to set up the Inquisition
in India, and doubtless he and his followers would have put up this
infernal enginery in Japan if they could have done so. They had stamped
and crushed out "heresy" in their own country, by a system of hellish
tortures which in its horrible details is almost indescribable. The
rusty relics now in the museums of Europe, but once used in church
discipline, can be fully appreciated only by a physician or an
anatomist.
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