Meanwhile neither Henry’s death nor the assassination of President Minard by a man named Stuart,[106] had any power to suspend the trial of Du Bourg. He made use of all the forms of the court to find some loop-hole of escape, and lodged appeal after appeal, all of which were decided against him. At length, on the 23d of December, 1559, the long contest was brought to an end.[107] After sentence of death had been delivered, he said: “I am sent to the stake, because I will not confess that justification, grace, and sanctification are to be found elsewhere than in Christ. This is the cause of my death, that I have embraced the pure doctrine of the Gospel. Extinguish your fires and return unto the Lord with real newness of heart, that your sins may be blotted out. Let the wicked man forsake his way and turn unto the Lord. Think upon these things; I am going to my death.” So great were the apprehensions of the court of an attempt at rescue, that the streets were barricaded and lined with armed men, and nearly 600 soldiers were stationed round the Grève, the Tyburn of those days. Du Bourg met his fate like a Christian hero: on reaching the place of execution he said: “Six feet of earth for my body, and the boundless heaven for my soul, are the only possession I shall soon have.” Then turning to the spectators he said: “I am going to die, not because I am a thief and a murderer, but because I love the Gospel. I rejoice to give my life in so good a cause.” His last words were: “My God, my God, forsake me not, lest I forsake thee.” The executioner then adjusted the rope round his neck, uttered the terrible formula: _Messire le roi vous salue_, and Anne du Bourg was a corpse. His lifeless body was afterward burned to ashes. The royal historiographer, who rarely spares a heretic, writes amplifying the words of the centurion at the foot of the cross. “His execution inspired many persons with the conviction that the faith possessed by so good a man could not be wrong.”[108] Florimond de Remond, the historian of heresy, and at that time a young man, was an eye-witness of Du Bourg’s death. “We burst into tears (he says) in our colleges on returning from the execution, and pleaded his cause after his decease, cursing those unrighteous judges, who had so unjustly condemned him. His preaching at the gallows did more evil than a hundred ministers could have done.”[109] Chandieu, pastor of the church of Paris, shows us how it was that these executions made so many converts. “Most people like what they see hated with such extreme hatred. They think themselves fortunate in knowing what leads others to the gibbet, and return home from the public places edified by the constancy of those whom they have themselves reduced to ashes.”[110]