Monk.—I was speaking to the Genevese only.
Ambas.—You said: ‘Avoid these wicked modern heretics, these Germans, as you would lepers and unclean persons. Do not let them marry your daughters, you had better give them to the dogs.’
Monk.—I deny having preached that article.
Ambas.—You said: ‘That the modern heretics, who will not obey the pope or the cardinals, bishops, and curates, are on that account the devil’s flock and worse than mad dogs ... and ought to be hanged on the gallows.’
Monk.—That is an article of faith, and I have not to answer for it before you.
Premier-Syndic.—You are commanded to answer.
Monk.—I shall not answer.
Premier-Syndic.—The charge is confessed.
Ambas.—‘Most honored lords, we belong to those who read Scripture in the vulgar tongue. We belong to those who hold our Lord as sole head of the Church, as its everlasting and sovereign pastor; and, moreover, we are Germans; and for this reason we believe the said articles have been uttered against us. If we were what these articles say, we should deserve corporal punishment; and therefore we demand, in terms of the lex talionis, that the said preacher be visited with a punishment similar to that which we should have incurred.’
The reasoning of the ambassador was not irrefutable. Envoys from Zurich, Basle, and other Evangelical cantons, even from the landgrave of Hesse or the elector of Saxony might just as well accuse the monk of having insulted them. But it is precisely this which explains the conduct of the Bernese deputies. Protestantism had been abused, its fundamental principles trampled under foot. The Bernese did not prosecute the monk in order to avenge a personal affront; what they wanted was to see the Word of God set in the place of the word of the pope, and the Reformation established in Geneva. The Gospel was on trial and not my lords of Berne; but the latter considered themselves the champions of the Reformation in Switzerland, and when enemies attacked it, they thought it their duty to defend it. To have kept out of the lists would have been disobedience to the supreme judge of the combat. The ambassadors brought up fourteen witnesses ready to swear that the monk had said what was ascribed to him.[[447]]