The Council met again on the 23d of October, 1553, and after having read the answers from the Swiss churches, once more adjourned so as to avoid coming to a final decision. Several of the members who were favourable to Servetus had absented themselves, amongst others, the first syndic, Ami Perrin, no doubt in order to necessitate an adjournment. Another meeting was fixed for the 26th of October; and again, when the day arrived, several of the supporters of Servetus did not appear. But Ami Perrin was true to him; he formally demanded that the accused should be acquitted of the charge, and declared innocent; and ultimately moved that the case should be referred to the Council of Two Hundred. Both propositions were rejected. The majority of the Council passed a resolution which was entered in their register in words to the following effect:--'That,--considering the summary of the trial of the prisoner, Michael Servetus, the report of those who have been consulted, and his great errors and blasphemies,--it is decreed that he be led to Champel and there burnt alive, and he shall be executed to-morrow, and his books burnt with him.' {323} At that period there was no hesitation on account of the atrocious torture of such a punishment, and no scruple as to the right of inflicting it. Heresy was a crime, and the stake was the penalty of heresy. In that very year 1553, at Lyons, not far from Geneva, several reformers had suffered martyrdom; among others, five young French students from the theological Institute at Lausanne. The Catholic judges at Vienne had condemned Servetus to the stake. Save for some scattered protests which saved the honour of the human conscience, in the sixteenth century the burning of heretics at the stake was looked upon as the common right of Christianity.