ordered it to be always observed, but a clause in the Instructions of 1561, reminding inquisitors that they must not inflict torture until after hearing the defence shows how difficult it was to restrain their arbitrary action.[12] Even in the early eighteenth century, in reviewing a summary of cases of Valencia, from 1705 to 1726, the Suprema rebuked the tribunal for torturing Sebastian Antonio Rodríguez without previous consultation, but at this period the consulta de fe was becoming obsolete and everything was centering in the Suprema.[13] The vote of the consulta was still only preliminary. After it, the accused was brought into the audience-chamber, where all the inquisitors and the episcopal Ordinary were required to be present. He was notified of the decision of the consulta; if he was a _diminuto_, the points in which his confession had failed to satisfy the evidence were pointed out; if a _negativo_, no explanations were necessary; if it was on intention or in _caput alienum_ he was made to understand it. He was adjured, in the name of God and the Blessed Virgin, to confess fully, without false evidence as to himself or others and, if this failed to move him, a formal sentence of torture was signed by all the judges and read to him. It recited that, in view of the suspicions arising against him from the evidence, they condemned him to be tortured for such length of time as they should see fit, in order that he might tell the truth of what had been testified against him, protesting that, if in the torture he should die or suffer effusion of blood or mutilation, it should not be attributed to them, but to him for not telling the truth. If the torture was to discover accomplices, care was taken to make no allusion to him and to give him no chance of clearing himself, for he was assumed to be already convicted.[14]