punishment short of death, should immediately after the "amende honorable," and before execution of sentence, be remitted to his spiritual superiors to undergo deprivation of office, and such other penalties as canon law might prescribe.[439] [Sidenote: Heresy to be punished as sedition.] [Sidenote: Repression proves a failure.] But the succession of edicts, each surpassing the last in severity, had not rendered the path of the judges, whether lay or ghostly, altogether easy. There were found prisoners, accused of holding and teaching heretical doctrines, well skilled in holy lore, however ignorant of the casuistry of the schools, who made good their assertion that they could give a warrant for all their distinctive tenets from the Sacred Scriptures. Their arguments were so cogent, their citations were so apposite, that the auditors who had come with the expectation of witnessing the confusion of a heretic, often departed absorbed in serious consideration of a system that had so much the appearance of truth when defended by a simple man in jeopardy of his life, and when fortified by the authority of the Bible. More learned reformers had appealed successfully to the Fathers to whose teachings the church avowed its implicit obedience. It was clear that some standard of orthodoxy must be established. For, if St. Augustine or St. Cyprian might be brought up to prove the errors of the priests, what was it but allowing the reformers to place the Roman Church at the bar, even in the very courts of justice? Might not the most damaging losses be expected to flow from such trials? The public courts, indeed, were not the only places where the inconsistencies of the established church with its own ancient standards and representative theologians were brought out into bold relief. The pulpits of the very capital resounded, it was alleged, with contradictory teachings, scandalizing the faithful not a little at the holy season of Advent.[440] [Sidenote: The Sorbonne's Twenty-five Articles.]