, to condemn any one to death, for
Jesus Christ had taught his ministers not to be governed by a spirit of
anger, but by a spirit of meekness. They had no power to condemn any
one to death, or to seek his blood. That, when necessary, was the
province of the civil power. Theirs was to bring men to repentance of
their sins, and to offer them forgiveness of the same through Jesus
Christ their Savior.

They therefore, in submitting their communication to his imperial
majesty, did it only that he might do what seemed right in his own
eyes. "If he concludes to punish his fallen son," they said,
"according to his deeds, and in a manner proportionate to the enormity
of his crimes, he has before him the declarations and examples which we
have herein drawn from the Scriptures of the Old Testament. If, on the
other hand, he is inclined to mercy, he has the example of Jesus
Christ, who represented the prodigal son as received and forgiven when
he returned and repented, who dismissed the woman taken in adultery,
when by the law she deserved to be stoned, and who said that he would
have mercy and not sacrifice."

The document concluded by the words,

"The heart of the Czar is in the hand of God, and may he choose the
part to which the hand of God shall turn it."

As for the other assembly, the one composed of the nobles and senators,
and other great civil and military functionaries, before rendering
their judgment they caused Alexis to be brought before them again, in
order to call for additional explanations, and to see if he still
adhered to the confessions that he had made. At these audiences Alexis
confirmed what he had before said, and acknowledged more freely than he
had done before the treasonable intentions of which he had been guilty.
His spirit seems by this time to have been completely broken, and he
appeared to have thought that the only hope for him of escape from
death was in the most humble and abject confessions and earnest
supplications for pardon. In these his last confessions, too, he
implicated some persons who had not before been accused. One was a
certain priest named James. Alexis said that at one time he was
confessing to this priest, and, among other sins which he mentioned, he
said "that he wished for the death of his father." The priest's reply
to this was, as Alexis said, "God will pardon you for that, my son, for
we all," meaning the priests, "wish it too." The priest was
immediately arres