partakers of our
calamities. So that our religion was cause of our imprisonment, and _ex
consequenti_, of our condemnation."

The Queen's Counsel tried to make out that certain secrets that Campion,
in an intercepted letter, had sworn not to reveal, must be treasonable or
he would not so greatly fear their publication. To this the priest made a
stately defence of his office, and declaration of his staunchness. He
showed how by his calling as a priest he was bound to secrecy in matters
heard in confession, and that these secret matters were of this nature.

"These were the hidden matters," he said, "these were the secrets, to the
revealing whereof I cannot nor will not be brought, come rack, come
rope!"

And again, when Sergeant Anderson interpreted a phrase of Campion's
referring to the great day to which he looked forward, as meaning the day
of a foreign papal invasion, the prisoner cried in a loud voice:

"O Judas, Judas! No other day was in my mind, I protest, than that
wherein it should please God to make a restitution of faith and religion.
Whereupon, as in every pulpit every Protestant doth, I pronounced a great
day, not wherein any temporal potentate should minister, but wherein the
terrible Judge should reveal all men's consciences, and try every man of
each kind of religion. This is the day of change, this is the great day
which I threatened; comfortable to the well-behaving, and terrible to all
heretics. Any other day but this, God knows I meant not."

Then, after the other prisoners had pleaded, Campion delivered a final
defence to the jury, with a solemnity that seemed to belong to a judge
rather than a criminal. The babble of tongues that had continued most of
the day was hushed to a profound silence in court as he stood and spoke,
for the sincerity and simplicity of the priest were evident to all, and
combined with his eloquence and his strange attractive personality,
dominated all but those whose minds were already made up before entering
the court.

"What charge this day you sustain," began the priest, in a steady low
voice, with his searching eyes bent on the faces before him, "and what
account you are to render at the dreadful Day of Judgment, whereof I
could wish this also were a mirror, I trust there is not one of you but
knoweth. I doubt not but in like manner you forecast how dear the
innocent is to God, and at what price He holdeth man's blood. Here we are
accused and impleaded to the death