Siyar al-mutaʾakhkhirin 42.31.4

42.31.4

in one word, the country proves unanimously ripe for a revolution (these being the very words used by the Supreme Council to the Board of Directors). Let us now look up to the other fact. Transport yourself in imagination into that period of years that have elapsed between 1555 and 1570. Rise in the air, and behold the cities and towns of Munster and Osnabruck in Germany, Basle in Switzerland, Antwerp and Mechlin in the Netherlands, Stirling and Perth in Scotland (I omit hundreds of others) ; all these towns to a man were zealous Romanists these hundreds of years past. They were so yesterday ; yesterday they had beheld with a savage exaltation, a poor Jew burned to ashes, (no, roasted alive, first) for the heinous crime of having procured a consecrated host, and sacrificed it on Easter-day, by stabbing it with a knife, ( although Jews have ceased to have bloody sacrifices these thousands of years past ) from which wounds plenty of blood had flowed the blood of Christ, the only begotten son of God Almighty, which son is himself God Almighty. The Priest from whom the host had been stolen, deposes in behalf of the fact, with twenty men more ; twenty honest Christians more depose their having been peeping at the Jew, whilst he gave the stab ; and a hundred more depose their having seen the blood on the floor.