No one, I think, can dispassionately examine the Commentaries without reaching the conviction that Carranza was a sincere and zealous Catholic, however reckless may seem many of his isolated utterances. Nor was his orthodoxy merely academic. He belonged to the Church Militant and his hatred of heresy and heretics breaks out continually, in season and out of season, whether apposite or not to his immediate subject. Heretic arguments are not worthy of confutation--it is enough to say that a doctrine is condemned by the Church and therefore it is heretical. The first duty of the king is to preserve his dominions in the true faith and to chastise those who sin against it. Even if heretics should perform miracles, their disorderly lives and corrupted morals would be sufficient to guard the people from listening to them or believing them. If they do not admit their errors they are to be condemned to death; this is the best theology that a Christian can learn and it was not more necessary in the time of Moses than it is at present.[154] Even in that age, when theology was so favorite a topic, few could be expected to wade through so enormous a mass of confused thinking and disjointed writing, and it was easy for Carranza's enemies to garble isolated sentences by which he could be represented to the sovereigns as being at least suspect in the faith, and suspicion of heresy was quite sufficient to require prosecution. Carranza himself, after his book was printed, seems to have felt apprehension and to have proceeded cautiously in giving it to the public. A set of the sheets was sent to the Marchioness of Alcañizes and a dozen or more copies were allowed to reach Spain, where they were received in March, 1558. Pedro de Castro, Bishop of Cuenca, obtained one and speedily wrote to Valdés, denouncing the writer as guilty of heretical opinions. Valdés grasped the opportunity and ordered Melchor Cano to examine the work. Cano took as a colleague Fray Domingo de Cuevas and had no difficulty in discovering a hundred and one passages of heretical import. The preliminaries to a formal trial were now fairly under way, the result of which could scarce be doubtful under inquisitorial methods, if the royal and papal assent could be obtained, necessary even to the Inquisition before it could openly attack the Primate of the Spanish Church.