Their Conduct Toward the Fathers in the Council in Oxford

We return to the papistic author, to hear from his own lips how they dealt with these upright and simple people. "When the fathers of the council," he writes, "admonished them to do penance and show sorrow for their belief, so that they might be united with the (Roman) church, they despised this advice, and the threats used to menace them so that fear, if by no other means, might drive them to conversion. Indeed, they scoffed at them, saying, 'Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.' "

"In order, then," [n406-1] he writes, "that the poison of their heresy might not spread further, the bishops publicly pronounced them heretics, and handed them over to the Catholic prince for bodily punishment. The latter commanded that they should be branded on their foreheads, as an infamous mark of their heresy, and publicly, in the sight of all the people, scourged out of the city, strictly forbidding anyone to take them into his house, or to give them the least comfort or assistance." From William Neubrig. Hist. Engl., book 2, chapter 13. [n406-2]