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562 Jew, or a Saracen do trust in God and keep his law, he is a good Christian man,' —a conception of Christianity, a conception of Protestantism, which we but feebly dare to whisper even at the present day. The proceedings against him commenced with a demand that he should give up his books, and also the names of other barristers with whom he was suspected to have held intercourse. He refused; and in consequence his wife w r as imprisoned, and he himself was racked in the Tower by order of Sir Thomas More. Enfeebled by suffering, he was then brought before Stokesley, and terrified by the cold merciless eyes of his judge, he gave way, not about his friends, but about himself: he abjured, and was dismissed heartbroken. This was on the seventeenth of February. He was only able to endure his wretchedness for a month. At the end of it, he appeared at a secret meeting of the Christian Brothers, in 'a warehouse in Bow Lane,' where he asked forgiveness of God and all the world for what he had done; and then went out to take again upon his shoulders the heavy burden of the cross.

The following Sunday, at the church of St Augustine, he rose in his seat with the fatal English Testament in his hand, and 'declared openly, before all the people, with weeping tears, that he had denied God,' praying them all to forgive him, and beware of his weakness; 'for if I should not return to the truth,' he said, 'this Word of God would damn me, body and soul,