Protestantism in Poland and Bohemia - James Aitken Wylie

their religion, holding out the hope that even yet
their lives might be spared. Not wishing that hours
so precious as the few that now remained to them
should be wasted, they gave the intruders plainly to
understand that they were but losing their pains,
whereupon the good Fathers withdrew, loudly
bewailing their obstinacy, and calling heaven and
earth to witness that they were guiltless of the
blood of men who had put away from them the
grace of God. The Protestant ministers were next
introduced. The barons and nobles in the tower
were attended by the minister of St. Nicholas,
Rosacius by name. The citizens in the prisons of
Old Prague were waited on by Werbenius and
Jakessius, and those in New Prague by Clement
and Hertwiz. The whole time till the hour of
execution was spent in religious exercises, in sweet
converse, in earnest prayers, and in the singing of
psalms. "Lastly," says the chronicler of the
persecutions of the Bohemian Church, "they did
prepare the holy martyrs by the administration of
the Lord's Supper for the future agony."
On the evening of Sunday, as the prisoners shut
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