It arrested on suspicion, tortured till confession, and then punished by fire.  Two witnesses, and those to separate facts, were sufficient to consign the victim to a loathsome dungeon.  Here he was sparingly supplied with food, forbidden to speak, or even to sing to which pastime it could hardly be thought he would feel much inclination—­and then left to himself, till famine and misery should break his spirit.  When that time was supposed to have arrived he was examined.  Did he confess, and forswear his heresy, whether actually innocent or not, he might then assume the sacred shirt, and escape with confiscation of all his property.  Did he persist in the avowal of his innocence, two witnesses sent him to the stake, one witness to the rack.  He was informed of the testimony against him, but never confronted with the witness.  That accuser might be his son, father, or the wife of his bosom, for all were enjoined, under the death penalty, to inform the inquisitors of every suspicious word which might fall from their nearest relatives.  The indictment being thus supported, the prisoner was tried by torture.  The rack was the court of justice; the criminal’s only advocate was his fortitude—­for the nominal counsellor, who was permitted no communication with the prisoner, and was furnished neither with documents nor with power to procure evidence, was a puppet, aggravating the lawlessness of the proceedings by the mockery of legal forms:  The torture took place at midnight, in a gloomy dungeon, dimly, lighted by torches.  The victim—­whether man, matron, or tender virgin—­was stripped naked, and stretched upon the wooden bench.  Water, weights, fires, pulleys, screws—­all the apparatus by which the sinews could be strained without cracking, the bones crushed without breaking, and the body racked exquisitely without giving up its ghost, was now put into operation.  The executioner, enveloped in a black robe from head to foot, with his eyes glaring at his victim through holes cut in the hood which muffled his face, practised successively all the forms of torture which the devilish ingenuity of the monks had invented.  The imagination sickens when striving to keep pace with these dreadful realities.  Those who wish to indulge their curiosity concerning the details of the system, may easily satisfy themselves at the present day.  The flood of light which has been poured upon the subject more than justifies the horror and the rebellion of the Netherlanders.

The period during which torture might be inflicted from day to day was unlimited in duration.  It could only be terminated by confession; so that the scaffold was the sole refuge from the rack.  Individuals have borne the torture and the dungeon fifteen years, and have been burned at the stake at last.