Inquisition for giving signs of enlightenment, a few cases are
preserved by its historian, Llorente. Don Benedict Bails, professor
of mathematics at Madrid and author of a school-book on the subject,
was proceeded against in his old age, towards the end of the reign
of Charles III, as suspected of "atheism and materialism." He was
ingenuous enough to confess that he had "had doubts on the existence of
God and the immortality of the soul," but that after serious reflection
he was repentant and ready to abjure all his errors. He thus escaped,
after an imprisonment. Don Louis Cagnuelo, advocate, was forced to
abjure for having written against popular superstition and against
monks in his journal The Censor, and was forbidden to write in future
on any subject of religion or morals. F. P. Centeno, one of the leading
critics of the reigns of Charles III and Charles IV, was an Augustinian
monk; but his profession did not save him from the Inquisition when
he made enemies by his satirical criticisms, though he was patronized
by the minister Florida Blanca. To make quite sure, he was accused
at once of atheism and Lutheranism. He had in fact preached against
ceremonialism, and as censor he had deleted from a catechism for the
free schools of Madrid an article affirming the existence of the Limbo
of children who had died unbaptized. Despite a most learned defence,
he was condemned as "violently suspected of heresy" and forced to
abjure, whereafter he went mad and in that state died. [1616]