"If a sheep were stolen," he argued again, in answer to the presupposition that since some Catholics were traitors, therefore these were--"and a whole family called in question for the same, were it good manner of proceeding for the accusers to say 'Your great grandfathers and fathers and sisters and kinsfolk all loved mutton; _ergo_, you have stolen the sheep'?" Again, in answer to the charge that he and his companions had conspired abroad, he said, "As for the accusation that we plotted treason at Rheims, reflect, my lords, how just this charge is! For see! First we never met there at all; then, many of us have never been at Rheims at all; finally, we were never in our lives all together, except at this hour and in prison." Anthony heard, too, Campion expose the attempt that was made to shift the charge from religion to treason. "There was offer made to us," he cried indignantly, "that if we would come to the church to hear sermons and the word preached, we should be set at large and at liberty; so Pascall and Nicholls"--(two apostates) "otherwise as culpable in all offences as we, upon coming to church were received to grace and had their pardon granted; whereas, if they had been so happy as to have persevered to the end, they had been 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."