Page:The Acts and Monuments of John Foxe Volume 3.djvu/555

 While he was thus praying, the tormentors took him up, and lifting him up from the ground, spoiled him of all his garments, and left him naked; and afterwards girded him about the loins with a linen cloth, and bound him fast with cords and chains of iron, to the said image which was made fast unto the earth. And so standing upon Jerome the ground, when they began to lay the wood about him, he sung "Salve festa dies." And when the hymn was ended, he sung again, with a loud voice, "Credo in unum Deum," unto the end. That being ended, he said unto the people, in the German tongue, in effect as followeth. "Dearly beloved children! even as I have now sung, so do I believe, and none otherwise; and this creed is my whole faith, notwithstanding now I die for this cause, because I would not consent and agree to the council, and with them affirm and hold that Master John Huss was by them holily and justly condemned; for I did know well enough that he was a true preacher of the gospel of Jesu Christ."

After that he was compassed in with the wood up to the crown of the head, they cast all his garments upon the wood also, and with a firebrand they set it on fire; which being once fired, he began to sing with a loud voice, "In manus tuas, Domine, commendo spiritum meum." When that was ended, and he began vehemently to burn, he said in the vulgar Bohemian tongue: "O Lord God, Father The last Almighty! have mercy upon me, and be merciful unto mine offences; for thou knowest how sincerely I have loved thy truth." Then his voice, by the vehemency of the fire, was choked and stopped, that it was no longer heard, but he moved continually his mouth and lips, as though he had still prayed or spoken within himself.

When in a manner his whole body with his beard was burned round about, and that there appeared through the great burning upon his body certain great bladders as big as an egg, yet he continually very strongly and stoutly moved, and shaked his head and mouth, by the space almost of one quarter of an hour. So burning in the fire, he lived with great pain and martyrdom, while one might easily have gone from St. Clement's over the bridge unto our lady-church: he was of such a stout and strong nature. [sic] After he was thus dead in the fire, by and by they brought his bedding, his straw-bed, his boots, his hood, and all other things that he had in the prison, and burned them all to ashes in the same fire; which ashes, after the fire was out, they did diligently gather together, and carry them in a cart, and cast them into the river Rhine, which ran hard by the city.

That man who was the true reporter hereof, and who testified unto us the acts and doings about the condemnation of Master Jerome, and sent the same unto us to Prague in writing, doth thus conclude. "All these things," said he, "I did behold, see, and hear to be done in this form and manner. And if any man do tell you the contrary, do not credit him; for all those things which happened unto him when he came toward Constance, and also at his first coming unto Constance, of his own free will, and afterwards when he was brought bound unto Constance, as is aforesaid, I myself did see and perfectly behold; and, for a perpetual memory thereof to be had for ever, I have directed the same unto you, not lying or falsifying any point thereof; as He, who is the searcher of all men's hearts, can bear me