Pegna warns inquisitors against being too precise in their questions, lest they should suggest answers to the accused.[100] Another reason for this vagueness was that being precisely questioned the accused might in his answers confine himself to the matter of those questions, whilst where the inquiry was conducted in vague, general terms, he might in his reply betray matters or persons hitherto unsuspected. Obviously with the same end in view, the scholiast suggests that the accused be asked whether he knows why he has been arrested, and whom he suspects of having accused him; whilst as a means of instantly testing whether he is an observer of his Catholic duties the inquisitors are instructed to ask him who is his confessor and when he was last at confession. The answer of one who was secretly an apostate, or even who had neglected to comply with his religious duties as prescribed, must necessarily be enormously incriminating. It would justify violent suspicion of heresy against him, which has already been considered, together with its consequences. Pegna further enjoins inquisitors to be careful that they do not afford the accused any means of evading their questions, and not to be imposed upon by protestations or tears, heretics being, he assures them, of an extreme cunning in dissembling their errors. Eymeric specifies ten different methods employed by heretics to trick inquisitors. These are not of any real importance, nor do they leave us in the least convinced that any such ruses were actually employed. They are obviously based upon an intimate acquaintance with priestly guile rather than upon any experience of the craftiness of actual heretics. They may, in short, be said to be just such ruses as the inquisitors themselves might employ if they found the tables turned upon themselves and the heretic sitting in the seat of justice. He urges the inquisitors to meet guile with guile: “ut clavus clavo retundatur.” He justifies recourse to hypocrisy and even to falsehood, telling the inquisitors that thus they will be in a position to say: “Cum essem astutus dolo vos cepi,” and to the ten evasive methods which he asserts are adopted by heretics, he bids their paternities oppose ten specified rules by which to capture and entrap them. These rules and Pegna’s commentaries upon them are worth attention for the sake of the intimate glimpse they afford us of the mediæval ecclesiastical mind. The accused is to be compelled by repeated examinations to return clear and precise answers to the questions asked. If the accused heretic is resolved not to confess his fault, the inquisitor should address him with great sweetness (_blande et mansuete_), giving him to understand that all is already known to the court, speaking as follows: