and come to judgment!" As the Pope hesitated the ghostly bishop raised his pas toral crosier and struck Innocent on the breast, so that he died on the following day. This was in 1254. The case of Nanning Koppezoon, who was executed by the governor of Holland in 1575, offers a striking illustration on this subject. We are told by Mr. Motley that this unfortunate man bore with perfect for titude a series of incredible tortures. I need not describe these with all their sick ening detail, it will suffice to suggest the brutal ingenuity of his persecutors if I sim ply mention one of them. A large vessel being inverted on his naked body, under it were placed a number of rats. Hot coals were then heaped upon the vessel until the rats, rendered furious by the heat, gnawed into the very bowels of the suffering victim in their agony to escape. When, after sur viving these horrors, the wretched man was finally led to execution, Julian Epeszoon, the Calvinist minister, endeavored by loud praying to drown his voice, that the people might not rise with indignation. With his last breath the dying prisoner solemnly summoned the unworthy pastor to meet him within three days before the judgment seat on high. " It is a remarkable and authentic fact," continues Mr. Motley, " that the clergyman thus summoned went home pen sively from the place of execution, sickened immediately and died on the appointed day." About the middle of the eleventh century, Meinvverk, Bishop of Paderborn, was drawn into a quarrel with a certain monk who abused him with great violence and brought against him many unjust charges. Wearied out with vainly refuting these charges, the good Bishop at length said, " Well, let us appear together before the Judge of both, and let Him decide between us." Strangely enough on the day the bishop died, the monk died also. When in 1651 Limerick was besieged by
Ireton, Cromwell's commander, a large bribe was offered Terence O'Brien, Bishop of Emly, to exhort the people to surrender. This the Bishop refused, and when at length on the yielding of the city, he fell into the hands of Ireton, that stern Puritan at once sentenced him to death. Turning to the commander the prelate said, " I summon Ireton, the arch persecutor, to appear in eight days before the heavenly tribunal, to answer for his deeds of cruelty." The eighth day arrived and Ireton, stricken with the plague, was a corpse. We may find several remarkable incidents of this sort no further back than the eigh teenth century. Sophia Dorothea of Zelle, after being divorced from George I, retired to the castle of Ahlen where she lived in confinement for thirty-two years. Just be fore her death, in 1726, the recollection of her wrongs coming strongly upon her, she wrote a letter to the King denying the charges that had been made against her, and solemnly citing him to appear before the judgment seat of God, there to answer for his conduct towards her. Eight months later while George was riding to Hanover, this letter was thrown in at the coach win dow, and dropped in his lap. Reading it, he became so terrified by its contents, that he fell into a convulsion, and was taken from the coach a corpse. But the most remarkable case of all I have reserved for the last. It occurred in Germany in 1703. It appears that in the church of Barlt there were two pastors, who differed widely in their religious opinions. Wattenbach was a man of very liberal views, while Hoesch was a severely orthodox Luth eran. Naturally the two could not get along together, and at length Hoesch, with the as sistance of the provost Hahn, set about to have the obnoxious pastor deposed. It was a long and bitter fight, and it went through several stages until finally the case reached the royal court. Here on a charge the par ticulars of which are not given, Wattenbach
