This appeal to the duty as well as the compassion of the Council was the first of any he had addressed to it which met with an immediate response. One of the Syndics, attended by the Clerk of the Court, was commissioned to visit the prisoner, and inquire into his state, being requested, further, to see measures taken to have him furnished with the articles of clothing he required, so that the resolution formerly come to in this direction should no longer remain a dead letter. _October 19 and 23._ A month had all but elapsed before the messenger to the Councils and Churches of the Protestant Swiss Cantons returned with the replies of the Magistrates and Pastors to the Documents submitted to them by the Council of Geneva. But he came at last. As the answers were in Latin, translations into French had to be made for the behoof of those among the councillors of Geneva who were indifferently versed in the Latin tongue. Some days more were required for this; so that though the messenger arrived on October 19, the papers in Latin and French were only ready on the 23rd, when they were laid before the Council, once more solemnly assembled in its judicial capacity, with the prisoner before them. The Church of Berne which was the first referred to [and had its head pastor, Haller, as reporter of its conclusion?], blames Servetus not only for his heresies, but for his insolence and want of respect for Calvin. He seems (says the report) to have thought himself at liberty to call in question all the most essential elements of our religion, to upset everything by new interpretations of Scripture, and to corrupt and throw all into confusion by reviving the poison of the ancient heresies.... We pray that the Lord will give you such a spirit of prudence, of counsel, and of strength, as will enable you to fence your Church and the other Churches from this pestilence, and that you will at the same time take no step that might be held unbecoming in a Christian magistracy. The Church of Zürich [of which Bullinger must have been the reporter], replied at greater length than that of Berne, or, indeed, any of the other Churches, going minutely into the question of Servetus’s opinions, which are pronounced to be at once heretical and blasphemous. The Ministers of this Church are particular also in insisting on the propriety of upholding Calvin in his prosecution of the heretic.