Let as many also come in on each side the judgment, along the church; and let them be fasting and abstain from their wives that night; and the priest shall sprinkle holy water on them, and give them the text of the holy gospel to kiss, as also the sign of the cross; and no man shall make the fire any longer than whilst the benediction beginneth, but shall cast the iron upon the coals until the last collect; afterwards it shall be put upon the _ceac_ (cauldron)[29] without any more words, then that they pray earnestly to God that he will vouch safe to manifest the truth therein; then shall the person accused drink holy water and his hand wherewith he shall carry the judgment shall be sprinkled therewith; and so let him go, the nine feet measured being distinguished by three and three. At the first mark next to the stake, he shall set his right foot and at the second his left foot; and thence he shall remove his right foot unto the third mark, where he shall throw down the iron and hasten to the holy altar; which done, his hand shall be sealed up, and the third day after viewed, whether it be clean or unclean where it was so sealed. And he who shall transgress these laws, let the ordeal judgment or trial be done upon him, that he pay 120 s. for a fine or mulct.”[30] For three days before the trial, the accused was to attend the priest, to be constant at mass, to make his offering and in the interim, to sustain himself on nothing but bread, salt, water and onions. On the day of the trial he was to take the sacrament and swear he was not guilty of the crime imputed to him. The accuser and accused both came to the place of trial, with not more than twelve persons each, to stay any interposition or violence and the accuser then renewed his charge upon oath and the accused made his purgation on oath also. If the ordeal was by hot water, he put his wrist or arm into the boiling water, accordingly whether it was the simple or triple test, and if the trial was by cold water, his thumbs were tied to his toes and he was cast into the water. If he escaped the boiling water unhurt, or sank in the cold water, he was adjudged innocent, but if he was burned by the hot water, or swam in the cold water, he was adjudged guilty, as charged by his accuser.[31] These trials by water and fire were called _judicium Dei_, or, as the Mirror of Justice puts it, miracles of God, but “Christianity suffered not that they be by such wicked arts cleared, if one may otherwise avoid it.”[32] From this observation in the Mirror, it has been contended that the Anglo-Saxons distinguished between open and manifest offenses and those not so public as to be susceptible of proof and that trial by ordeal was only used in the latter class of crimes.[33]