Not a man was safe.
In the hands of the priest, who, at the confessional, could extract or extort from them their most secret thoughts, his wife and his servants were turned into spies.

Summoned before the dread tribunal, he was simply informed that he lay under strong suspicions of heresy.

No accuser was named; but the thumb-screw, the stretching-rope, the boot and wedge, or other enginery of torture, soon supplied that defect, and, innocent or guilty, he accused himself! Notwithstanding all this power, the Inquisition failed of its purpose.
When the heretic could no longer confront it, he evaded it.

A dismal disbelief stealthily pervaded all Europe,--a denial of Providence, of the immortality of the soul, of human free-will, and that man can possibly resist the absolute necessity, the destiny which envelops him.
Ideas such as these were cherished in silence by multitudes of persons driven to them by the tyrannical acts of ecclesiasticism.

In spite of persecution, the Waldenses still survived to propagate their declaration that the Roman Church, since Constantine, had degenerated from its purity and sanctity; to protest against the sale of indulgences, which they said had nearly abolished prayer, fasting, alms; to affirm that it was utterly useless to pray for the souls of the dead, since they must already have gone either to heaven or hell.