In fact it was a recognized doctrine of the Church that confession, contrition, and absolution so thoroughly washed away a sin that a culprit thus prepared could safely tempt the justice of God. A case related by Cæsarius of Heisterbach as a most edifying example illustrates the curious nature of the superstition thus inculcated by the religious teachers of the period. In the diocese of Utrecht a fisherman notoriously maintained illicit relations with a woman, and fearing to be called to account for it by an approaching synod, where he would be convicted by the red-hot iron, and be forced to marry her, he consulted a priest. This ghostly counsellor advised him that, if he was firmly resolved to sin no more, he could safely deny the fact and endure the ordeal, after receiving absolution. The event verified the prediction; he carried the burning iron unhurt, and to the surprise of all the country round he was acquitted. Shortly afterwards, while in his boat, a companion expressed his wonder, when the fisherman, whose short-lived repentance was already over, boastingly struck his hand on the water, exclaiming, “It hurt me no more than that!” By the marvellous justice of God, the water was to him as red-hot iron, and as he hastily withdrew his hand the skin peeled off in strips.[1274] Even as late as 1539, the learned Ciruelo reproves the use of ordeals because the accused, though innocent of the special crime at issue, may succumb in consequence of other offences; or though guilty may escape because he has confessed and received absolution; and he states that he had personally known more than one case in which women, rightly accused of adultery by their husbands and forced to undergo the ordeal, had thus succeeded in being acquitted.[1275]