In any other land, this would have sufficed. The inculpated works would have been expurgated or forbidden, if necessary. Luis would have retracted any expressions regarded as erroneous, and the matter would have ended without damage to the faith. Under the Inquisition, however, the utterance of objectionable propositions was a crime to be punished, and the submission of the criminal only saved him from the penalties of pertinacious heresy. On March 26th the warrant for the arrest of Fray Luis was issued and, on the 27th he was receipted for by the alcaide of the secret prison of Valladolid. He was treated with unusual consideration, in view of his infirmities and delicate health for, on his petition, he was allowed a scourge, a pointless knife to cut his food, a candle and snuffers and some books.[340] The trial proceeded at first with unusual speed. By May 15th the fiscal presented the formal accusation, in which Fray Luis was charged with asserting that the Vulgate contained many falsities and that a better version could be made; with decrying the Septuagint and preferring Vatable and rabbis and Jews to the saints as expositors of Scripture; with stating that the Council of Trent had not made the Vulgate a matter of faith and that, in the Old Testament, there was no promise of eternal life; with approving a doctrine that inferred justification by faith, and that mere mortal sin destroyed faith; with circulating an exposition of Canticles explaining them as a love-poem from Solomon to his wife--all of which was legitimately based on the miscellaneous evidence of the adverse witnesses.[341] This, as required, Fray Luis answered on the spot, article by article, attributing the charges to the malice of his enemies, denying some and explaining others clearly and frankly. It was a special favor that he was at once provided with counsel and allowed to arrange his defence--a favor which brought upon the tribunal a rebuke from the Suprema, January 13, 1573, as contrary to the _estilo_, which must be followed, no matter what might be the supplications of the accused. Fray Luis identified many of the witnesses--out of nineteen he recognized eight--and he drew up six series of interrogatories, mostly designed to prove his allegations of mortal enmity. Of these the inquisitors threw out three as "impertinent" and the answers to the others were, to a considerable extent, unsatisfactory, as was almost inevitable under a system which made the accused grope blindly in seeking evidence. As time wore on in this necessarily dilatory business, Fray Luis grew impatient at the stagnation which seemed to preclude all progress, not being aware that in reality it had been expedited irregularly.[342]