again marched in procession, chanting the Psalms _Deus laudem meam_ and _Miserere_, to the chapel or altar. The great bells tolled as for a death and the bearers of the torches extinguished them in the font of holy water saying "As these torches die in the water, so will their souls in hell!" and the procession was resumed to the sacristy. After this, the edict continues, any one knowing these things and not revealing them, and remaining contumaciously and persistently thus for a year, is held suspect in the faith and shall be prosecuted with all the rigor of the law.[261] Thus all the resources of religious terrorism were exhausted to impress upon the popular conscience the supreme duty of denouncing kindred and friends for the slightest act or word which might be held to infer suspicion of heresy or of the varied classes of offences over which the Inquisition had succeeded in extending its jurisdiction. It is true that the constant abuse of anathemas in the pettiest quarrels with officials, lay and clerical, must have somewhat blunted their effect. It is also true that casuistry, early in the seventeenth century, had no difficulty in proving that, when the obligation to denounce involved danger to life or reputation, the natural law of self-protection overrode the positive law of denunciation, with its threat of excommunication.[262] Still, to those not trained in such subtilties and who piously believed in the power of the keys, it was impossible that this terrible cumulation of curses, temporal and spiritual, should not overcome natural affection and human kindliness. It was not the fault of the Inquisition if Spain was not converted into a nation of spies and informers, in which no man could trust those nearest and dearest to him. [Sidenote: _ITS DISTRIBUTION_]