"Dealings with the Inquisition; Or, Papal Rome, Her Priests, and Her Jesuits" by Giacinto Achilli Giovanni Giacinto Achilli was an Italian Roman Catholic Dominican friar and anti-Jesuit. n this book, he tackles his religious beliefs and his opinions of what he felt were the shortcomings of the Catholic church after his sudden conversion to the Protestand faith. This pivot and his prior knowledge of the inner workings of the church allowed him to craft an insightful and controversial book that captured millions.

Excerpt from Dealings With the Inquisition: Or Papal Rome, Her Priests, and Her Jesuits; With Important Disclosures It was in the month of July, 1842, that I was released, by order of Pope Gregory, from my first imprisonment in the dungeons of the Inquisition. On this occasion, one of the Dominican monks who serve the office of inquisitor inquired of me, with a malicious look, whether I, also, intended, one day, to write an account of the Inquisition, as a well-known author had done before me, with respect to Spielberg, in his celebrated work, "Le mie 'prigioni." Perceiving at once the object of this deceitful interrogation, which was only to afford a pretext for renewing my incarceration at the very moment when liberty was before me, I smiled at my interlocutor, and exclaimed, "How is it possible, Padre Inquisitore, you can imagine I can have any idea of vindicating myself on account of the imprisonment I have undergone? No, be assured, whatever injustice you may have committed toward me, I shall attempt no vindication. You know full well that in this country there exists no tribunal higher than your own: even that of conscience is silent here, and prostrate before you. Should I make my complaint elsewhere, and appeal to the justice of another land, how could I hope, unknown and unfriended as I am, that my story would be listened to? Distrust is natural to man. One only tribunal remains; from that neither you nor I can escape; and it is to that same tribunal that I shall be able to summon the pope and his cardinals. Nay, setting aside the idea of my own appeal, they will be summoned to appear by the great Judge himself. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

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A novel account of the relationship between sincerity, religious freedom, and the secular in the United States. “Sincerely held religious belief” is now a common phrase in discussions of American religious freedom, from opinions handed down by the US Supreme Court to local controversies. The “sincerity test” of religious belief has become a cornerstone of US jurisprudence, framing what counts as legitimate grounds for First Amendment claims in the eyes of the law. In Sincerely Held, Charles McCrary provides an original account of how sincerely held religious belief became the primary standard for determining what legally counts as authentic religion. McCrary skillfully traces the interlocking histories of American sincerity, religion, and secularism starting in the mid-nineteenth century. He analyzes a diverse archive, including Herman Melville’s novel The Confidence-Man, vice-suppressing police, Spiritualist women accused of being fortune-tellers, eclectic conscientious objectors, secularization theorists, Black revolutionaries, and anti-LGBTQ litigants. Across this history, McCrary reveals how sincerity and sincerely held religious belief developed as technologies of secular governance, determining what does and doesn’t entitle a person to receive protections from the state. This fresh analysis of secularism in the United States invites further reflection on the role of sincerity in public life and religious studies scholarship, asking why sincerity has come to matter so much in a supposedly “post-truth” era.