and a more famous man of this period, Archbishop Cranmer. Their cases were strikingly similar, for both had been guilty of acts of rebellion and treason, as well as the advocacy of heresy. They were alike also in possessing more moral than physical courage—or perhaps it was only fortitude in which they were really deficient. Men differ greatly in their capacity to endure excruciating physical pain, and no one who has not had the experience can be quite certain how he would himself behave under torture. Savonarola is still a third example, and an eminent one, of failure to bear, as well as the average man, this cruel test; but the world has pardoned him this one defect in an otherwise heroic character. It has done the same in the case of Cranmer, rightly judging that his fortitude in the supreme hour out-weighs and all but obliterates his earlier shameful defection.
Shall the world do less in the case of Hübmaier? Should we not see in him one in whom the spirit was willing and only the flesh weak? He recanted no more of his former opinions, certainly, than did Savonarola and Cranmer, if as much. He cannot be proved to have denied anything that he had held to be fundamental in the teachings of the Scriptures.
