Those who desired to save Fryth had not counted upon so much integrity. Such were, however, the martyrs of protestantism. The archbishop’s two servants continued their route along with their strange prisoner. Fryth had a calm eye and cheerful look, and the rest of the journey was accomplished in pious and agreeable conversation. When they reached Croydon, he was delivered to the officers of the episcopal court, and passed the night in the lodge of the primate’s porter. [Sidenote: Fryth On The Real Presence.] The next morning he appeared before the bishops and peers appointed to examine him. Cranmer and Lord Chancellor Audley desired his acquittal; but some of the other judges were men without pity. The examination began: ‘Do you believe,’ they said, ‘that the sacrament of the altar is or is not the real body of Christ?’ Fryth answered, simply and firmly: ‘I believe that the bread is the body of Christ in that it is broken, and thus teaches us that the body of Christ was to be broken and delivered unto death to redeem us from our iniquities. I believe the bread is the body of Christ in that it is _distributed_, and thus teaches us that the body of Christ and the fruits of his passion are distributed unto all faithful people. I believe that the bread is the body of Christ so far as it is _received_, and thus it teaches us that even as the outward man receiveth the sacrament with his teeth and mouth, so doth the inward man truly receive through faith the body of Christ and the fruits of his passion.’ The judges were not satisfied: they wanted a formal and complete retraction. ‘Do you not think,’ asked one of them, ‘that the natural body of Christ, his flesh, blood, and bones, are contained under the sacrament and are there present without any figure of speech?’—‘No,’ he answered; ‘I do not think so;’ adding with much humility and charity: ‘notwithstanding I would not have that any should count my saying to be an article of faith. For even as I say, that you ought not to make any necessary article of the faith of your part; so I say again, that we make no necessary article of the faith of our part, but leave it indifferent for all men to judge therein, as God shall open their hearts, and no side to condemn or despise the other, but to nourish in all things brotherly love, and to bear one another’s infirmities.’[323] The commissioners then undertook to convince Fryth of the truth of transubstantiation; but he quoted Scripture, St. Augustine and Chrysostom, and eloquently defended the doctrine of the spiritual eating. The court rose. Cranmer had been moved, although he was still under the influence of Luther’s teaching.[324] ‘The man spoke admirably,’ he said to Dr. Heath as they went out, ‘and yet in my opinion he is wrong.’ Not many years later he devoted one of the most important of his writings to an explanation of the doctrine now professed by the young reformer; it may be that Fryth’s words had begun to shake him.