Europe, and was of a different origin and form. The last Moorish throne
in Granada had fallen in the fifteenth century, and the false faith of
the Saracens had finally succumbed before the fortunes of Christianity.
But the gospel was still new, and but imperfectly established in this
youngest of Christian kingdoms, and in the confused mixture of
heterogeneous laws and manners the religions had become mixed. It is
true the sword of persecution had driven many thousand families to
Africa, but a far larger portion, detained by the love of climate and
home, purchased remission from this dreadful necessity by a show of
conversion, and continued at Christian altars to serve Mohammed and
Moses. So long as prayers were offered towards Mecca, Granada was not
subdued; so long as the new Christian, in the retirement of his house,
became again a Jew or a Moslem, he was as little secured to the throne
as to the Romish See. It was no longer deemed sufficient to compel a
perverse people to adopt the exterior forms of a new faith, or to wed it
to the victorious church by the weak bands of ceremonials; the object
now was to extirpate the roots of an old religion, and to subdue an
obstinate bias which, by the slow operation of centuries, had been
implanted in their manners, their language, and their laws, and by the
enduring influence of a paternal soil and sky was still maintained in
its full extent and vigor.

If the church wished to triumph completely over the opposing worship,
and to secure her new conquest beyond all chance of relapse, it was
indispensable that she should undermine the foundation itself on which
the old religion was built. It was necessary to break to pieces the
entire form of moral character to which it was so closely and intimately
attached. It was requisite to loosen its secret roots from the hold
they had taken in. the innermost depths of the soul; to extinguish all
traces of it, both in domestic life and in the civil world; to cause all