408 XIMENES. PART II. The clergy dissatisfied with it. Teniiierate sway of the sovereigns. sarilj slow and painful among a people reared from the cradle, not merely in antipathy to, but abhor- rence of, Christianity ; who were severed from the Christian community by strong dissimilarity of lan- guage, habits, and institutions ; and now indissolu- bly knit together by a common sense of national misfortune. Many of the more zealous clergy and religious persons, conceiving, indeed, this barrier altogether insurmountable, were desirous of seeing it swept away at once by the strong arm of power. They represented to the sovereigns, that it seemed like insensibility to the goodness of Providence, which had delivered the infidels into their hands, to allow them any longer to usurp the fair inheritance of the Christians, and that the whole of the stiff- necked race of Mahomet might justly be required to submit without exception to instant baptism, or to sell their estates and remove to Africa. This, they maintained, could be scarcely regarded as an in- fringement of the treaty, since the Moors would be so great gainers on the score of their eternal salva- tion ; to say nothing of the indispensableness of such a measure to the permanent tranquillity and security of the kingdom ! ^ But these considerations, "just and holy as they were," to borrow the words of a devout Spaniard, '° failed to convince the sovereigns, who resolved to abide by their royal word, and to trust to the con- ciliatory measures now in progress, and a longer and more intimate intercourse with the Christians, 9 Marmol, Rebclion de Moriscos, lib. 1, cap. 23. 10 Ibid., ubi supra.
