LYING WITNESSES
Saint Edmund Campion (2)
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| Saint Edmund Campion at his trial © 2008 Mary's Dowry Productions Screenshot from 'God's Champion - Saint Edmund Campion' DVD |
To the jury at his trial:
"In common matters we often see witnesses impeached, and if at any time their credit be little, it ought then to be less when they swear against life. Call, I pray you, to your remembrance how faintly some have deposed, how coldly others, how untruly the rest; especially two who have testified most. What truth may you expect from their mouths? The one hath confessed himself a murderer, the other well known as a detestable atheist, a profane heathen - a destroyer of two men already.
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| Saint Alexander Briant, also tried and executed with Campion © 2012 Mary's Dowry Productions Screenshot from 'Saint Alexander Briant' DVD |
On your consciences, would you believe them? - they that have betrayed both God and man, nay, that have nothing left to swear by, neither religion nor honesty? Though you would believe them, can you? I know your wisdom is greater, your consciences up-righter: esteem them as they be. Examine the other two, you shall find neither of them precisely to affirm that we, or any of us, have practised aught that might be prejudicial to this state or dangerous to this commonwealth. God give you grace to weigh our causes aright, and have respect to your own consciences; and so I will keep the jury no longer. I commit the rest to God, and our convictions to your good discretion."
"Many bore false witness against him, and their evidences were not agreeing." - Matt 14, 46.
Reading for 22nd December
Mementoes of the Martyrs and Confessors of England and Wales
by Henry Sebastian Bowden of the Oratory.
For films about the English Martyrs:
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