dread sentence of the Church is heard; Touch not mine anointed and do my prophets no harm, and he who has rashly touched them let him forthwith by his own blow be smitten violently with the wound of an anathema. At length yielding your lives to wickedness, reaching the two paths of Pythagoras, ye choose the left branch, and going backward ye let go the lot of God which ye had first assumed, becoming companions of thieves. And thus ever going from bad to worse, dyed with theft and murder and manifold impurities, your fame and conscience stained by sins, at the bidding of justice ye are confined in manacles and fetters, and are kept to be punished by a most shameful death. Then your friend is put far away, nor is there any to mourn your lot. Peter swears that he knows not the man: the people cry to the judge: Crucify, crucify Him! If thou let this man go, thou art not Cæsar's friend. Now all refuge has perished, for ye must stand before the judgment-seat, and there is no appeal, but only hanging is in store for you. While the wretched man's heart is thus filled with woe and only the sorrowing Muses bedew their cheeks with tears, in his strait is heard on every side the wailing appeal to us, and to avoid the danger of impending death he shows the slight sign of the ancient
