University students in the New Town, he came down upon them like a
wolf on the fold, and gave orders to arrest them on the spot. He
was sure they were hatching a villainous plot of some kind. In vain
some friends sent warning to the students. They resolved, with a
few exceptions, to await their fate and stand to their guns. "Come
what may," said they, in their fiery zeal, "let the rack be our
breakfast and the funeral pile our dinner!" The door of the room
flew open. The magistrate and his bailiffs appeared. "All," said
the magistrate, as he stood at the threshold, "who wish to live
godly in Christ Jesus must suffer persecution. Follow me to
prison." They followed him, and were at once stretched upon the
rack. As soon as the students felt the pain of torture their
courage melted like April snow. After they had tasted the breakfast
they had no appetite for the dinner. They went in a body to the
Thein Church, mounted the pulpit one by one, pleaded guilty to the
charges brought against them, and confessed, before an admiring
crowd, their full belief in all the dogmas of the Holy Church of
Rome. But for Gregory the Patriarch, who was now growing old, the
pain was too severe. His wrists cracked; he swooned, and was
thought to be dead, and in his swoon he dreamed a dream which seemed
to him like the dreams of the prophets of old. He saw, in a lovely
meadow, a tree laden with fruit; the fruit was being plucked by
birds; the flights of the birds were guided by a youth of heavenly
beauty, and the tree was guarded by three men whose faces he seemed
to know. What meant that dream to Gregory and his Brethren? It was
a vision of the good time coming. The tree was the Church of the
Brethren. The fruit was her Bible teaching. The birds were her
ministers and helpers. The youth of radiant beauty was the Divine
Master Himself. And the three men who stood on guard were the three
men who were afterwards chosen as the first three Elders of the