The slight smile on Gerhardt’s lips said, “Not very!” But his only words were—
“Ay, I know that ye have power. ‘This is your hour, and the power of darkness.’ We are not afraid. We have had our message of consolation. ‘Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake; for theirs is the kingdom of the heavens.’”
“Incredible folly!” exclaimed Lincoln. “That was said to the early Christians, who suffered persecution from the heathen: not to heretics, smarting under the deserved correction of the Church. How dare you so misapply it?”
“All the Lord’s martyrs were not in the early Church. ‘We are the circumcision, who worship God in spirit, and glory in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh.’ Do to us what ye will. ‘Whether we live, we live unto the Lord; or whether we die, we die unto the Lord. Living or dying, we are the Lord’s.’”
“We solemnly adjudge you false heretics,” was the stern reply, “and deliver you up to our Catholic Prince for punishment. Depart in peace!”
Gerhardt looked up. “‘My peace I give unto you; not as the world giveth, give I unto you!’ Be it so. We go in peace; we go to peace. Our suffering will soon be over. Already we behold Jesus our Lord at the right hand of God, and we are ready to partake of His sufferings, that we may reign with Him.”
King Henry now rose to pronounce sentence. The condemned criminals before him were to be branded on the forehead with a mark of ignominy, to be scourged, and cast forth out of the city. No man might receive them under his roof, relieve them with food, nor administer to them consolation of any sort. And this was the sentence of the King and of holy Church, to the honour and laud of God, and of Mary, His most glorious Mother!
The sentence was carried out even more barbarously than it was pronounced. The foreheads of all were branded with hot irons, they were whipped through the city, and their clothes having been cut short to the girdle (John twenty 21-23), they were turned into the snow-covered fields. One of the men appointed to use the branding-irons had just lost a daughter, and moved by a momentary impulse of pity (for which he afterwards blamed himself and did penance), he passed two or three of the younger women—Ermine among them—with a lighter brand than the rest. No such mercy was shown to the men or the elder women, nor would it have been to Ermine, had it not been the case that her extreme fairness made her look much younger than she really was.
Gerhardt, being regarded as the ringleader, was also branded on the chin.
“Courage, my children!” he said to the shivering, trembling little company, as they were marched down High Street. “We are counted worthy—worthy to suffer shame for Him who suffered dire shame for us. Let us praise God.”