Storia do Mogor 294.5.5

294.5.5

[125] I have often spoken in the preceding parts of this history of the bad conduct of the Portuguese in India, and the disorder thereby occasioned. In the present Part (IV.) I have already set forth to what lengths the passion for enriching themselves has carried the reverend Jesuit fathers. I have also stated somewhere or other (III. 229) that the tribunal of the Inquisition, ordered and established by the Church for good ends, was at Goa a perpetual source of injustice. They made use of it chiefly to overwhelm and ruin the innocent who had the misfortune to fall into its hands. Among several instances I had chosen that of the reverend Father Ephraim, Capuchin, meaning to give an account of it to the public just as I learnt it from the father himself. But the haste with which I finished off my first three parts precluded me from so doing. I therefore insert it here. This good father was a native of Nevers, of a distinguished family. Having embraced the religious life, he entered the Order of St. Francis, and was sent by his superiors to preach the Gospel in India. Passing through Madras, he was stopped there by the agent of the English Company for the purpose of affording spiritual food to the Christians inhabiting that place.