of the Saviour; of sacrificing to idols ; and of abandoning them- JAMM ™ selves to impure practices and unnatural crimes. He charac-A. D. 1307. terises them as ravishing wolves in sheep's clothing ; a perfidious, ungrateful, idolatrous society, whose words and deeds were enough to pollute the earth and infect the air ; to dry up the sources of the celestial dews, and to put the whole church of Christ into confusion. " We being charged," says he, " with the maintenance of the faith ; after having conferred with the pope, the prelates, and the barons of the kingdom, at the instance of the inquisitor, from the informations already laid, from violent suspicions, from probable conjectures, from legitimate presumptions, conceived against the enemies of heaven and earth; and because the matter is important, and it is expedient to prove the just like gold in the furnace by a rigorous examination, have decreed that the members of the order who are our subjects shall be arrested and detained to be judged by the church, and that all their real and personal property shall be seized into our hands, and be faithfully preserved," &c. To these orders are attached instructions ree tiring the baillis and seneschals accu rately to inform themselves, with great secrecy, and without ex citing suspicion, of the number of the houses of the Temple within their respective jurisdictions; they are then to provide an armed force sufficient to overcome all resistance, and on the 13th of October are to surprise the Templars in their preoep tories, and make them prisoners. The inquisition is then · directed to assemble to examine the guilty, and to employ torture if it be necessary. " Before proceeding with the inquiry," says Philip, " you are to inform them (the Templars) that the pope and ourselves have been convinced, by irreproachable testimony, of the errors and abominations which accompany their vows and profession ; you are to promise them pardou and favour if they