The next day the dean of St. Andrews went to the prison where Wishart was confined, and summoned him in the cardinal’s name to appear before the judges on the morrow. ‘What needed,’ replied the prisoner, ‘my lord cardinal to summon me to answer for my doctrine openly before him, under whose power and dominion I am thus straitly bound in irons? May not my lord compel me to answer to his extorted power?’ On March 1 the cardinal ordered all the household servants of his palace to put themselves under arms. The civil power, it is remembered, had refused to take part in the proceedings, and therefore Beatoun took its place. His men at once equipped themselves with lances, swords, axes, knapsacks, and other warlike array. It might have been thought that some military action was in hand, rather than a gathering of priests who assumed to busy themselves about God’s Church. These armed champions, putting themselves in marching order, first escorted the bishops with great ceremony to the abbey church, and then went for Wishart. The governor of the castle put himself at the head of the band, and so they led the prisoner ‘like a lamb to sacrifice.’ As he entered the door of the abbey church he threw his purse to a poor infirm man lying there, and at length he stood in the presence of the numerous and brilliant assembly. To invest the proceedings with due formality, Beatoun had caused two platforms to be erected, facing each other. Wishart was set on one of them, and the accuser, Lauder, took his place on the other. The dean, Winryme,[344] then appeared in the pulpit. This worthy churchman, who was charged to deliver the customary sermon, was secretly a friend to the Gospel. He read the parable of the ‘good seed’ and the tares (Matt. xiii. 24-30), and set forth various pious considerations which told more against the judges than against the accused, and which the latter heard with pleasure. Winryme concluded, however, by saying that the tares were heresy, and that heretics ought to be put down in this life by the civil magistrate; yet in the passage he was treating stood the words, ‘Let both grow together until the harvest.’ It remained to ascertain which were heretics, the judges or the accused.[345] [Sidenote: PREPARATIONS FOR HIS TRIAL.]