In these examinations, the Inquisitors have recourse to the meanest artifices, in order to draw from the prisoner a confession of those crimes of which he is accused, making great professions of sympathy, and numerous promises of favour, if he will but yield to their solicitations. By these flattering assurances, they sometimes impose on the unwary; and when they have gained their object, they forget their promises, and treat the unhappy objects of their deception with the utmost rigour. In proof of this, the following among other stratagems, drawn up by Nicholas Eymeric, Inquisitor-general of Arragon, about the middle of the fourteenth century, are submitted to the reader:—"When the prisoner has been impeached of the crime of heresy, but not convicted, and he obstinately persists in his denial, let the Inquisitor take the proceedings into his hands, or any other file of papers, and looking them over in his presence, let him feign to have discovered the offence fully established therein, and that he is desirous he should at once make his confession. The Inquisitor shall then say to the prisoner, as if in astonishment, 'And is it possible that you shall still deny what I have here before my own eyes?' He shall then seem as if he read, and to the end that the prisoner may know no better, he shall fold down the leaf, and after reading some moments longer, he shall say to him, 'It is just as I have said, why, therefore, do you deny it, when you see I know the whole matter?' When the Inquisitor has an opportunity, he shall manage so as to introduce to the conversation of the prisoner some one of his accomplices, or any other converted heretic, who shall feign that he still persists in his heresy, telling him that he had abjured for the sole purpose of escaping punishment by deceiving the Inquisition. Having thus gained his confidence, he shall go into his cell some day after dinner, and keeping up the conversation till night, shall remain with him, under pretext of its being too late to return home. He shall then urge the prisoner to tell him all the particulars of his life, having first told him the whole of his own; and in the meantime spies shall be kept at the door, as well as a notary, in order to certify what may be said within!!" All this needs no comment, it speaks for itself; and were it not given on the most unexceptionable authority, we could not but reject it as a fiction. But, alas! what the fanatical Eymeric taught has been too implicitly followed; and thus the procedure of a court, impiously called HOLY, is sufficient to put the most barbarous nations, nay devils themselves, to the blush.