This Week in Church History

June 10, 1555.

Thomas Haukes was chained to a stake and burned to death.

From Foxe's Book of Martyrs:

In the after noone agayn, the sayd Haukes appearing and hearing the foresaid bill of his confession, with the Articles and Interrogatories read vto him, with like constancie in answering againe to the bishop: My Lord (saide he) as you being my frend haue caused these my sayinges to be writtē: so do you cause them to be read: and yet I wil neuer go from them.

And then being exhorted by the Byshoppe with many fayre wordes, to returne againe to the bosome of the mother Church: No my Lord (sayd he) that will I not: for if I had an hundreth bodies, I woulde suffer them all to be torne in peeces, rather then I will abiure or recant.

Haukes was an early Protestant who refused to have his infant baptized according to Roman rites; he did not consider them to be Biblical. He did not deny that baptism was commanded in the Bible. He denied, ""Your oil, your cream, your salt, your spittle, your candle and your conjuring water," -- the pomp and ceremony attached to the rite by the Roman church.

I've hear some few who claimed Haukes to be a Baptist, but that is not accurate. Regardless, his example is one of faithfullness to our beliefs, under any circumstances, and faithfulness to God. When threatened with burning, he told his captors that what God allowed them to do, they could do, and what God did not allow, they would never be able to do. At his death, he raised his arms in victory even as the flames engulfed him, sure in the knowledge that he was going to be with his God. In an age when compromise is a virtue, in which we are called to unity at all costs, we would do well to remember the heritage that we have, of those who hald to their beliefs no matter what they cost -- even at the cost of their lives.