Godly Dead Guys No. 1: Thomas Cranmer, A Martyr for Justification by Faith
Foxes Book of Martyrs records the Last speech of Thomas Cranmer (The First Archbishop of the Churxh of England) Under the persecutions of the Marian regime, Cranmer was given a final opportunity to publicly recant from his evangelical beliefs, and embrace again medieval catholicism. These are his words as Foxe records them:
“And now I come to the great thing, which so much troubleth my conscience, more than any thing that ever I did or said in my whole life, and that is the setting forth of a writing contrary to the truth; which now here I renounce and refuse, as things written with my hand contrary to the truth which I thought in my heart, and written for fear of death, and to save my life if it might be."
At this point Cranmer’s accusers were expecting him to recant publicly of his Protestantism, as he had done privately earlier under the stress of interrogation. Cranmer continued:
And that is all such bills and papers which I have written with or signed with my hand since my degradation, wherein I have written many things untrue. And forasmuch as my hand offended, writing contrary to my heart, my hand shall first be punished there-for; for, may I come too the fire, it shall be first burned. And as for the Pope, I refuse him, as Christ’s enemy, and antichrist, with all his false doctrine. And as for the sacrament, I believe as I have taught in my book against the Bishop of Winchester, that which my book teacheth so true a doctrine of the sacrament, that it shall stand at the last day before the judgment of God, where the papistical doctrine contrary thereto shall be ashamed to show her face:
C. H. Smyth wrote with justifiable rhetoric “By his death he damned the Marian Counter-reformation, and lit, more signally than even Latimer and Ridley, a candle that should never be put out.” The Truth hurts...?
Foxes Book of Martyrs records the Last speech of Thomas Cranmer (The First Archbishop of the Churxh of England) Under the persecutions of the Marian regime, Cranmer was given a final opportunity to publicly recant from his evangelical beliefs, and embrace again medieval catholicism. These are his words as Foxe records them:
“And now I come to the great thing, which so much troubleth my conscience, more than any thing that ever I did or said in my whole life, and that is the setting forth of a writing contrary to the truth; which now here I renounce and refuse, as things written with my hand contrary to the truth which I thought in my heart, and written for fear of death, and to save my life if it might be."
At this point Cranmer’s accusers were expecting him to recant publicly of his Protestantism, as he had done privately earlier under the stress of interrogation. Cranmer continued:
And that is all such bills and papers which I have written with or signed with my hand since my degradation, wherein I have written many things untrue. And forasmuch as my hand offended, writing contrary to my heart, my hand shall first be punished there-for; for, may I come too the fire, it shall be first burned. And as for the Pope, I refuse him, as Christ’s enemy, and antichrist, with all his false doctrine. And as for the sacrament, I believe as I have taught in my book against the Bishop of Winchester, that which my book teacheth so true a doctrine of the sacrament, that it shall stand at the last day before the judgment of God, where the papistical doctrine contrary thereto shall be ashamed to show her face:
C. H. Smyth wrote with justifiable rhetoric “By his death he damned the Marian Counter-reformation, and lit, more signally than even Latimer and Ridley, a candle that should never be put out.” The Truth hurts...?
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