Page:Roman Catholic cruelties.pdf/14

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.

14

to prison, and fed only with bread and water, and her friends forbid to come to her, but continuing stedfast in the truth, she was thereupon condemned to be set upon a scaffold, to have the bible burnt before her face, herself to be strangled, and her body to be dragged through the streets to a dunghill; which sentence she willingly and cheerfully underwent.

In the year 1550, one Faninus of Ferrara, in Italy, being by the grace of God, and reading of good books, converted to the gospel, and began to instruct others privately therein; but this coming to the ears of some of the Pope's bloodhounds, they seized him and committed him to prison, where, by the earnest importunities of his wife, children, and friend(illegible text) he was persuaded to deny the truth, and was thereupon released out of prison. He had not been long at liberty, till he was extremely troubled in mind, for preferring the love of his relations and friends before the service of Jesus Christ, neither could he by any means be free from these tortures till he had fully resolved to venture his life for the gospel. Being thus inflamed with holy zeal, he went about the country teaching and instructing the people wherever he came. Whereupon he was apprehended and cast into prison, and was condemned to be burnt, but he told his judges that his time was not yet come, and so it happened, for he was removed to Ferrara, where he continued in prison for two years, and afterwards eighteen months in another prison, and was again condemned by the Pope's Inquisitors, but still his death was one way or other prevented.

His wife and sister came to him in prison, and