If Fray Luis imagined that this twelve months' work to which such importance had been attributed, had improved his prospects, he was speedily undeceived. We hear nothing more of Dr. Mancio or of his approval. The propositions, with the defence, were submitted again to three calificadores (men who had been urged upon him as patrones) and it illustrates the uncertainties of theology and the hair-splitting subtilties in which the doctors delighted, that not only were the original seventeen articles declared to be heretical for the most part, but five new ones, quite as bad, were discovered in the defence which had elicited Dr. Mancio's approval, and these five thenceforth formed a third category of errors figuring in the proceedings.[345] It is not easy for us to comprehend the religious conceptions which placed men's lives and liberties and reputation at the hazard of dialectics in which the most orthodox theologians were at variance. When Fray Luis was informed that five new heretical propositions had sprouted from the hydra-heads of the old ones, he was dismayed. Sick and exhausted, the prospects of ultimate release from his interminable trial seemed to grow more and more remote. Arguments and discussions continued and were protracted. New calificadores were called in, who debated and opined and presented written conclusions on all three series of propositions. It would be useless to follow in detail these scholastic exercises, of which the chief interest is to show how, in these infinitesimal points, one set of theologians could differ from another and how completely the enmity of the two chief witnesses, Leon de Castro and Bartolomé de Medina, was ignored. Thus wore away the rest of the year 1575 and the first half of 1576. There was no reason why the case might not be continued indefinitely on the same lines, but the inquisitors seem to have felt at last that an end must be reached, and a consulta de fe was finally held, in which Dr. Frechilla, one of the calificadores who had condemned the propositions, represented the episcopal Ordinary.[346] The case illustrates one incident of these protracted trials. During its course it had been heard by seven inquisitors, of whom Guijano de Mercado was the only one who served from the commencement to the end, and his colleague in the consulta, Andrés de Alava, had appeared in it only in November, 1575, and had not been present in any audiences after December. There was, moreover, an unusual feature in the presence of a member of the Suprema, Francisco de Menchaca, indicating perhaps that the case was regarded as one of more than ordinary importance. There were five consultors, Luis Tello Maldonado, Pedro de Castro, Francisco Albornoz, Juan de Ibarra and Hernando Niño, but the two latter fell sick, when the examination of the voluminous testimony was half completed, and took no further part in the proceedings. [Sidenote: _LUIS DE LEON_]