Apology Against the Calumnies of the Louvain Theologians

I must defend my own innocence, especially regarding such an inexpiable crime of heresy and impiety, for which reasons I judge this sentence of retraction, which the Caesar is said to have commanded, to have been a matter not of judgment or deliberation, but of suspicion, and one that proceeded from the insidious counsels of my adversaries through inconsiderate credulity, and that I, unheard and undefended, am not bound by it. For things that are done without hearing a party will never be considered a judgment; for even if someone had delivered a most just sentence importunately or otherwise defectively, it is still null and void and should not be held as a sentence. Therefore, it is permitted to me, and it will always be permitted, to defend my innocence before the Caesar, to repel calumnies, to contemn bad advice, and to appeal—as it was once permitted to do before Philip of Macedon, and is permitted today even before Roman pontiffs—from a drowsy judge to the same man wide awake, and from one poorly instructed to the same man better instructed.

Let the other side be heard.

For the Caesar cannot condemn someone whom the law has not first judged, unless perhaps (as the apostle says in Acts) he orders me to be struck against the law while judging me according to the law. But the law (as it is in the Gospel) does not judge a man before it has questioned him and learned what he has done. And in Acts, chapter 22: It is not lawful to scourge an uncondemned man. And in chapter 25, Festus the Roman says: It is not the custom to condemn anyone before he who is accused has his accusers present.