History of Protestantism in the Netherlands - James Aitken Wylie

mouth the first verse of the twenty-seventh Psalm,
and concluded their singing and their life together
with the hymn of Simeon, ' Now lettest thou thy
servant depart in peace.'" A tapestry weaver of
Oudenard, near Ghent, by name John Tiscan, who
had committed the indiscretion of snatching the
wafer from the hand of the priest and crumbling it
into bits, to show the people that it was bread and
not God, had his hand cut off, and afterwards his
body cast into the flames. Some there were,
however, who were judged to fall within the scope
of the Government's indulgence, and were
permitted to die by the sword. John Cornelius
Winter had been minister in the town of Horn, and
had spent some thirty years in the quiet but zealous
diffusion of the truth. He was apprehended and
thrown first into prison at the Hague, and
afterwards into the Bishop of Utrecht's prisons, and
now this year he was brought forth to be beheaded.
He submitted, himself cheerfully, and it was
observed that, singing the Te Deum on the
scaffold, the executioner struck, and his head was
severed from his body just as he had finished the
line, "All the martyrs praise thee."[10]
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