Chapter I: Introduction: Variableness of outward practice of 7

Christianity--The like as to that of Mahometanism--Roman Catholicism most subject to that modification--Excesses of Roman Catholicism in Spain accounted for by Spanish history--The Goths and Moors of Africa--Their conversion to Christianity--The aborigines of America--Traditional coincidences with scriptural truth--National character of the religion of Spaniards--Religion of the affections--Santa Teresa--Amatory propensities in connection with religion--Knight-errantry--Motto of Spanish nobility--The four primitive orders--Loyola--Religion the pretext for wars of Spain--Three distinct features of the national character of Spaniards, illustrated by Isabella the Catholic, Charles V., and Philip II.

CHAPTER I.

THE SPANISH CLERGY--Their primitive state--Their 31 subsequent organization--_Barraganas_--Immoral practices of the clergy--Their wealth, and its sources--Their territorial possessions--Their influence and incomes--Their opposition to the sciences--Their ultramontane principles--The "pass" of the Spanish sovereign necessary to the validity of the Pope's bulls--Doctrine of the Jansenists favoured by the ministers of Charles III.--Port-Royal and San Isidro--Parish priests--Sources of their income--Many of them good men, but deficient in scriptural knowledge and teaching--Their preaching--Abolition of tithes by the minister, Mendizabal--Effects of that measure--Poverty and present state of the clergy--Their degraded character and unpopularity--Their timidity in recent times of tumult--Ecclesiastical writers of the Peninsula--Power of the Inquisition curtailed by Charles III.