Another equivocation appears in the form in which confessions, made under torture or not, were drawn up. “Usually,” writes Lea, “the procedure appears to have been that the torture was continued until the accused signified his readiness to confess, when he was unbound and carried into another room, where his confession was made. If, however, the confession was extracted during the torture, it was read over subsequently to the prisoner, and he was asked whether it were true. In any case the record was carefully made that the confession was ‘free and spontaneous,’ without the pressure of ‘force or fear.’ In case a prisoner refused to confirm a confession made under torture, the learned doctors of the Inquisition differed as to what should be done with him. Some held that he should be set free, with a certificate that nothing had been proved against him, others that he should again be tortured until he again confessed!” After conviction came sentence. Upon repentant heretics, erring children conscious of their fault and welcoming the loving chastisement of Mother Church, the inquisitor himself passed sentence in the form of penance. In theory, there was no difference between the penances imposed by any confessor and those of the Inquisitors, and, in practice, the only penance peculiar to the Inquisition was the wearing of crosses. Even imprisonment—the extreme legal penalty for the rare heretics of the earlier Middle Ages—was a part of the monastic penitential system. As late as the thirteenth century, sentences of imprisonment were more common than any other form of punishment. When the sentence was for life the theory that such severity was no more than a salutary measure of penance was certainly strained. If such a prisoner broke jail, his guilt was supposed to be that of rejecting the wholesome correction designed by the loving-kindness of the Church to effect his spiritual well-being! However, there are so many records of prisoners serving life sentences who were released for good behaviour while in prison that it is possible to argue that usually none but “hard cases” failed to have the balance of such sentences suspended.