When a person accused of heresy is found to be only slightly suspected of it, he is considered either as suspected publicly or privately. If he is publicly suspected, this was formerly the manner of his abjuration. On the preceding Lord’s day the inquisitor proclaims, that on such a day he will make a sermon concerning the faith, commanding all to be present at it. When the day comes, the person to abjure is brought to the church, in which the council hath determined that he shall make his abjuration. There he is placed upon a scaffold, erected near the altar, in the midst of the people, and is not allowed to sit, but stands on it, that all may see him, bare-headed, and with the keepers standing round him. The sermon being made on the mass, to the people and clergy there present, the inquisitor says publicly, that the person there placed on the scaffold is suspected from such and such appearances and actions, of the heresy that hath been refuted in the public sermon; and that therefore it is fit that he should purge himself from it, by abjuring it, as one slightly suspected. Having said this, a book of the gospels is placed before him, on which laying his hands, he abjures his heresy. In this oath he not only swears that he holds that faith which the Roman church believes, but also that he abjures every heresy that extols itself against the holy Roman and apostolic church: and particularly the heresy of which he was slightly suspected, naming that heresy: and that if he shall do any of the aforesaid things for the future, he willingly submits to the penalties appointed by law to one who thus abjures, and is ready to undergo every penance, as well for the things he hath said and done, as for those concerning which he is deservedly suspected of heresy, which they shall lay on him; and that with all his power he will endeavour to fulfil it. If he hath not been publicly suspected, he abjures privately after the same manner in the episcopal palace, or inquisitor’s hall.