Martyr’s Mirror

In the year 1549, about three weeks before Easter, two beloved men, named Fije and Eelken, were apprehended at Boorn, in West Friesland. They were brought before the lords, where they boldly confessed their faith.

They first interrogated Eelken, saying:

“Who has authorized you to assemble the people, to teach them?”

Ans. “God has authorized me.” Heb. 10:25.

Ques. “What have you taught?”

Ans. “Ask them that heard it, what we taught among ourselves; for you have apprehended a woman that heard it.” They then asked the woman what she had heard from Eelken.

Ans. “He read the four Evangelists, Paul, Peter, the epistles of John, and the acts of the apostles.” Eelken was then asked again: “What do you hold concerning the sacrament?”

Ans. “I know nothing of your baked God.”

Ques. “Friend, take care what you say; such words cost necks. What do you think of the mother of God?”

Ans. “Much.”

Ques. “What do you say; did the Son of God not receive flesh and blood from Mary?”

Ans. “No: With regard to this, I believe what the Son of God Himself declares concerning it.” John 1:14.

Ques. “What do you hold concerning our holy Roman church?”

Ans. “I know nothing of your holy church. I do not know it; I never in all my life was in a holy church.”

Ques. “You speak too spitefully; I have compassion for you,” said one of the lords of the council, “and fear that you will lose your neck. Are you not baptized?”

Ans. “I am not baptized, but greatly desire baptism.”

Ques. “What do you think of these false teachers who run about and baptize the people?”

Ans. “Of false teachers I think nothing, but have greatly longed to hear a teacher sent from God?”

They said: “But we have heard that you are a teacher.” Eelken said: “Who made me a teacher?”

They replied: “We do not know.”

Eelken said: “If you ask me what you do not know yourselves, how should I know it? I know of no one that has made me a teacher; but God has given me all for which I have besought Him.”

They said: “We have now written down all the articles concerning which we have interrogated you on this occasion; if there is anything of which you repent, we will gladly strike it out!”

Ans. “Do you think that I should deny God?”

Eelken and Fije were then both sentenced and brought together; they embraced each other, yea, kissed one another’s hands and feet with great love, so that all that saw and heard it were astonished. The beadles and servants ran to the lords and said: “Never men loved one another as do these.” Eelken said to Fije: “Dear brother, do not take it amiss, that you have been brought into suffering through me.” Fije answered: “Dear brother, do not think so, for it is the power of God.”

Their execution was deferred till the third day after the sentence was passed. Eelken was first executed with the sword. When Fije’s sentence was read, he did not listen to it, because of his leaped, praising and thanking God, saying: “This is the only way.”

They led Fije into the boat in which Eelken lay beheaded, and beside him the wheel upon which Eelken was to be place, and the stake at which Fije was to stand, to be burned. In the boat, Fije’s hands became loose, but he sat still nevertheless. The monks then said: “Bind him again.” The hangman replied: “You bind him.” But the castellan commanded him to bind Fije again. Some women who beheld it wept bitterly. But Fije said:

“Weep not for me, but for your sins.” He further said to the executioner: “What are you going to do to me?”

Ans. “That you will see.”

“Yea, yea,” said Fije, “do what you will. I have committed myself into the hands of my Lord.”

The brethren went out with him, together with the common people, and when Fije saw some of his acquaintances, he cried out: “Friends rejoice with me over this marriage feast which is prepared for me.”

When he arrived at the place of execution, some brethren, who greatly rejoiced with him, spoke to him saying: “This is the narrow way; this is the Lord’s wine press; from this depends the crown.” But when the castellan heard this cry, he called out: “Let no man lay his hands on him, on pain of life, and property.”

The executioner had forgotten his instruments, and ran to the town to get them. In the meantime, the castellan and the two monks had Fije in the confessional, greatly tempting him with bread and wine; but they could not prevail upon him, for Fije did nothing but sing and speak, praising and thanking God.

When they could not prevail on him, and the executioner returned, they said to Fije: “How is it that you are so obstinate, when you say that you are a member of Christ? Why then will you not do the works of mercy, and receive this bread and wine as bread and wine, for our sakes.”

Ans. “I do not hunger for your bread and wine; for there is food prepared for me in heaven.”

When they could not prevail upon him, they said: “Be gone, you heretic, be gone!”

The castellan said: “I have seen many a heretic; but in all my life I never saw a more obdurate one than this.”

Fije, standing prepared for death, said to the executioner: “Master, have you finished your work?”

He replied: “Not yet.”

Fije said: “Here is the sheep for which you are wanted.”

The executioner then went up to Fije, tore open his shirt, took the cap from his head, and filled it with gunpowder.

Standing at the stake at which he was to be strangled, Fije exclaimed: “O Lord, receive Thy servant.”

He was then strangled and burnt, and thus fell asleep in the Lord. The common people cried out saying: “This was a pious Christian; if he is not a Christian, there is not one in the whole world.”

Taken from Martyr’s Mirror, 484, 485.

 

Insight – The Martyrdom of Anne Askew

Long, indeed, is the list that might be given of those who suffered for the truth in the fires of Smithfield, England. Perhaps the most interesting victim was the celebrated Anne Askew. She had been singled out by the crafty and ambitious enemies of Queen Katharine Parr and the godly ladies of her court, to be the instrument through whom they might find an accusation against the queen for holding the faith and the principles of the Reformation. Anne Askew was the youngest daughter of Sir William Askew, of Kolsey, in Lincolnshire. Her eldest sister had been engaged to marry a gentleman of the name of Kyme, a harsh and bigoted papist; but the sister died, and she was compelled by her father to take her sister’s place, and become the wife of Mr. Kyme. It had turned out a most unhappy marriage for poor Anne Askew. Her education had been superior to that usually given to her sex, and she was a woman of enlightened mind, unlike in character and disposition to her morose and narrow-minded husband. She seems to have been a child of God from her earliest years, and to have searched and prized the Holy Scriptures, which had made her wise unto salvation. Her love of truth, as it is found in its purity and freshness in the word of inspiration, had given great displeasure to her husband, and she was cruelly driven from her home. Being compelled to come up to London to sue for a divorce, the persecution of her husband and the popish priests followed her, and she fell into the toils which they had laid for her.

Two objects were plainly manifest in all the examinations which she underwent: The first was to make her incriminate herself, the second to lead her to incriminate the queen and those of her ladies who were suspected of holding “the new learning,” as the eternal truths of the gospel were termed by the papists.

We read that she was examined and questioned concerning her opinions by Christopher Dare, and Sir Martin Bowes, the then lord mayor, and their brother commissioners. With inimitable simplicity did she reply in the conversation which is recorded to have taken place between the lord mayor and herself.

But we pass over these examinations, in which the patience of those adversaries, who could not overcome her patience, was at length exhausted. These bold and crafty men were determined to spare neither threat nor violence, by which they might extort from her some word or other as a ground of accusation against the Lady Herbert, who was the queen’s sister, or the Duchess of Suffolk, and so at last Queen Katharine herself. As yet they discovered nothing.

Rich, and another of the counsel, came to her in the Tower, where she was then confined, and demanded that she should make the disclosures which they required concerning her party and her friends. She told them nothing. “Then they did put me in the rack,’’ she relates, “because I confessed no ladies or gentlemen to be of my opinion; and thereon they kept me a long time, and because I lay still and did not cry, my lord chancellor and Mr. Rich took pains to rack me with their own hands till I was nigh dead.” These two wretches, it is recorded, provoked by her saint-like endurance, ordered the lieutenant of the Tower to rack her again. He, Sir Anthony Knovitt, “tendering the weakness of the woman,” positively refused to do so. Then Wriothesly and Rich threw off their gowns, and, threatening the lieutenant that they would complain of his disobedience to the king, “they worked the rack themselves, till her bones and joints were almost plucked asunder.” When the lieutenant caused her to be loosed down from the rack, she immediately swooned. “Then,” she writes, “they recovered me again.” After that, “I sat two long hours reasoning with my lord chancellor on the bare floor, where he with many flattering words persuaded me to leave my opinion; but my Lord God, I thank His everlasting goodness, gave me grace to persevere, and will do, I hope, to the very end.” And she concludes this account to her friend by saying, “Farewell, dear friend, and pray, pray, pray.”

She gives her confession of faith, and concludes it with this beautiful prayer: “O Lord! I have more enemies now than there be hairs on my head, yet, Lord, let them never overcome me with vain words, but fight Thou, Lord, in my stead; for on Thee cast I my care! With all the spite they can imagine, they fall upon me, who am Thy poor creature. Yet, sweet Lord, let me not set by them that are against me; for in Thee is my whole delight. And, Lord, I heartily desire of Thee that Thou wilt of Thy most merciful goodness forgive them that violence which they do, and have done, unto me; open also Thou their blind hearts, that they may hereafter do that thing in Thy sight which is only acceptable before Thee, and to set forth Thy verity aright, without all vain fantasies of sinful men. So be it, O Lord, so be it.”

Unable to walk or stand, from the tortures she had suffered, poor Anne Askew was carried in a chair to Smithfield, and, when brought to the stake, was fastened to it by a chain which held up her body; and one who beheld her there describes her as “having an angel’s countenance, and a smiling face.”

At the very last, a written pardon from the king was offered to Anne Askew, upon condition that she would recant. The fearless lady turned away her eyes, and would not look upon it. She told them that she came not thither to deny her Lord and Master. The fire was ordered to be put under her, “and thus,” to use the words of John Foxe, “the good Anne Askew, with these blessed martyrs, having passed through so many torments, having now ended the long course of her agonies, being compassed in with flames of fire, as a blessed sacrifice unto God, she slept in the Lord, A.D. 1546, leaving behind her a singular example of Christian constancy for all men to follow.” Her crime was the denial of the mass. “Lo, this,” she wrote, “is the heresy that I hold, and for it must suffer death.” She kept the faith to her God; she kept the faith to her friends, for she betrayed no one, enduring shame and agony with meek, unshaken constancy. None but Christ, none but Christ could have made the weakness of a delicate woman so strong, the feebleness of a mortal creature so triumphant!

And thus the square of Smithfield, which was made, in the reign of Henry the first, “a lay stall of all ordure or filth.” The place of execution for felons and other transgressors has become not only drenched with the blood of martyrs, but hallowed by the faith and patience of the saints, by the witness of their good confessions, and by the breath of their dying prayers and praises.

But why bring those horrible details forward? Because, if ever there was a time when it was right to show the real character of popery, it is now. The principles of popery are beginning to spring up throughout the length and breadth of the land, openly in some parts, covertly in others; and men whose Bibles might have taught them other things, are beginning to be enamored with the delusions and ensnaring allurements of a system which can appear to be anything or everything, in order to suit all times and all circumstances; a system which, in the doctrine of tradition, opens the door to the most unbridled license, and finds a cloak for every enormity. We are told that those deadly superstitions, those savage persecutions, those inhuman tortures, were rather the fruit of those dark ages than peculiar to popery. I cannot agree to this. Popery contains in itself the germ of all the deadly errors and dreadful practices which have ever been inseparable from bigotry and superstition. Memorials of the English Martyrs.

The Signs of the Times, August 14, 1884.

Children’s Story – Dearer to Her Than Life

“And it came to pass, that, as He (Jesus) was praying in a certain place, when He ceased, one of His disciples said unto Him, Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples. And He said unto them, When ye pray, say, Our Father …” 

Luke 11:1, 2

If I call someone “Father” that means I am the child, and in the Bible God tells children how they are to be towards their parents. Exodus 20:12 says, “Honour thy father and thy mother,” and the Lord says through Paul, “Children, obey your parents in the Lord: for this is right” (Ephesians 6:1).

Jesus tells us, through His child Ellen White, “But if you call God your Father you acknowledge yourselves His children, to be guided by His wisdom and to be obedient in all things, knowing that His love is changeless. You will accept His plan for your life. As children of God, you will hold His honor, His character, His family, His work, as the objects of your highest interest. It will be your joy to recognize and honor your relation to your Father and to every member of His family. You will rejoice to do any act, however humble, that will tend to His glory or to the well-being of your kindred.” Thoughts from the Mount of Blessing, 105, 106.

Margaret lived in Scotland in the sixteenth century when Covenanters, followers of Christ through His servant John Knox, were thrown into prison, and many were martyred for their faith. Margaret was a Covenanter who ended up in jail for nothing more than belief in the Scriptures.

There she became friends with Mrs. Lauchlison, a fellow Covenanter who insisted on obeying Scripture rather than the king’s religion. The two encouraged one another in their cell, quoting Bible verses and praying for strength to endure to the end.

The day came when soldiers tied the hands of Mrs. Lauchlison and led her away to her execution. “Let me go too!” Margaret begged. Guarded by soldiers, she walked beside her friend to the beach where a wooden stake already stood at the water’s edge. Margaret watched as they bound her friend to the wooden pole. She stared as the tide came in, slowly raising the water level about the woman tied to the stake. Each wave brought the water higher about her body.

“What has the old woman done?” someone cried out of the crowd.

“She was found on her knees in prayer,” a guard answered.

As Margaret kept staring at her friend, the old woman’s wrinkled face seemed aglow with heavenly light. Margaret strained to catch her words above the crash of the waves. “I have promised to obey Thee, heavenly Father. Help me now when I am tested.”

The faint strains of a hymn sounded above the pounding waves. Margaret watched as they washed over the old woman’s head. “Lord, help me to be as faithful to Your word,” she breathed a silent prayer of commitment.

The next day Margaret was the one tied to the stake. As the tide came in, she recited Romans 8:31–39: “If God be for us, who can be against us? Who can divide us from the love of Christ? … For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Margaret and her friend Mrs. Lauchlison both honored their Father in heaven. To do anything different than they did would have been to dishonor, disobey and deny Him. Though their obedience to their heavenly Father cost them their lives on this earth, they are simply sleeping in their temporary beds until the great waking up morning, when their Saviour and Lord will awaken them to the joys of eternal life.

Pray that each one of us will make the same commitment to our heavenly Father that Margaret and Mrs. Lauchlison made, to be faithful no matter the cost. Then we also, on that great waking up morning when Jesus returns, will be with our Father and His only begotten Son, our Saviour, Jesus Christ, for eternity.