Anonymous

“ A while after they were sentenced to die, and as they went to execution, Jerome comforted Kennedy, saying, Brother, fear not, greater is he that is in us than he that is in the world; the pain we are to suffer is short, and shall be light, but our joy and consolation shall never have an end; let us therefore strive to enter into our Master and Saviour's joy, by the same straight way which he hath taken before us; death cannot hurt us, for it is destroyed by him for whose sake we now suffer. And in this manner they joyfully gave up their souls to God in the flaming fire. ”

“ Will not the people say, said she, this is a wretched woman indeed, that burns the bible, wherein all the articles of the Christian religion are contained? I will certainly burn my body rather than I will burn my bible. Upon this she was committed to prison, and fed only with bread and water, and her friends forbid to come to her, but continuing stedfast in the truth, she was thereupon condemned to be set upon a scaffold, to have the bible burnt before her face, herself to be strangled, and her body to be dragged through the streets to a dunghill ”

“ If Papists were bloody, cruel and deceitful, formerly—they say they never change—consequently, if they had power, their oath to extirpate heretics by all means, compels them to use the rack, the scaffold, and the gibbet, again to spread desolation and blood over our now happy land. ”

“ In one word, if the Pope and his conclave have imbibed the tolerant spirit of the age, why are Jesuits again tolerated and patronized; and the cells of the Inquisition again yawning wide their murderous jaws, to swallow all that is noble and intellectual, and pious, in the degraded land of Spain. ”

“ One Daniel Rambout, because he refused to say Jesu Maria, or pray to the Virgin Mary, they first cut off one finger, then another, till they had cut then all off, then they cut off his hands and arms, till after this manner he was cruelly mangled to death. Others they shut up between two stone walls, and starved them to death. And to conclude, there was no manner of death, no kind of cruelty or torment, that these first-born of hell could invent or devise, but were executed with the utmost severity upon the poor miserable Protestants ”

“ In one place there were no less than twenty-two widows, who were first robbed, and then stripped stark naked; they covered themselves with straw in a house, but the bloody Papists threw in burning straw among them, on purpose to burn them together.
In the castle of Lisgol above an hundred and twenty men, women, and children, were burned together. Another castle was delivered to one of the Popish commanders, upon condition their lives should be saved. but as soon as he entered he cruelly murdered and destroyed them all without mercy. ”

“ Some Protestants were thrust into dungeons and vaults full of snakes, toads, and other filthy vermin: others were put into places full of iron spikes, so that they could neither sit nor stand; they put gags into the mouths of some, and then thrust their host or wafer cake down their throats.
The city of Lesna, was one of the most ancient and flourishing cities in all the kingdom of Poland, which was wholly laid in ashes, being three whole days in flames before it was consumed; in which there perished many hundred Protestants. ”

“ The king and his confidents fearing that this massacre would not end the quarrel, but rather stir up the Protestants in other places to stand upon their own defence; he therefore sends messengers by post to all parts of the kingdom, often shifting horses for more speed, with express commands to the governors of all other towns and cities in France, to follow the example of Paris, and to destroy and kill all the Protestants which were amongst them. ”

“ Hamilton was seized upon by the Bishop's officers, and carried to the castle, and the next day he was brought forth to judgment, and condemned to be burned for the testimony of God. The articles charged against him, were about Pilgrimage, Purgatory, Praying to Saints, and for the Dead.
After dinner the fire was prepared, which some thought was only to terrify him, but it pleased God to strengthen him against the fear of death, and so he was tied to the stake. Giving his garments to his servant, and saying thus to him; These will not profit in the fire, they will profit thee ”

“ By these, and all manner of cruelties which hell itself could invent, the Irish and English Papists murdered and destroyed, in a few months, near three hundred thousand Protestants, as it is commonly computed, without any manner of provocation, but only because they were Protestants; whose deaths the Divine vengeance recompensed upon the chief murderers, many thousands perishing by the sword and the plague. ”

“ In this butcherly massacre at Paris, there were about four thousand houses robbed and plundered, and above five hundred barons, knights and gentlemen, who were chief officers in the war; with abundance of noble young gentlemen, ladies and gentlewomen, inhumanly murdered, who little expected such a bloady fate ”

“ King Philip of France, being incited by the eclesiastics, raised arms against them, and destroyed 300 gentlemen's houses; and likewise wasted towns. And those that fled to Flanders escaped little better; for they were persecuted, and many of them for their religion put to death. The bishops of Mayence and Strasburgh raised great persecutions against those who fled thither, there being thirty-five citizens of Mayence burned in one fire, and eighteen in another, who suffered death with great constancy. ”

“ Waldo being compelled to fly into the moantains of France, among the savage inhabitants, to whom he taught his doctrine; others fled into Picardy, from whence they were called Picards; several into Flanders and Alsatia, and thereby, for the safety of their own lives, they spread their doctrine into all places. ”

“ In another place, having taken eleven Protestants, they heated a furnace, and forced them to throw one another into it, till they came to the last man whom they threw in themselves.
They stabbed some with poisoned knives in the legs and feet, and so left them in torment till they died. One Gros, a minister's son, being taken by them, they cut off his flesh in small goblets while he was alive, and in the presence of his wife and children, whom they murdered likewise before his eyes. A woman with seven children were all barbarously murdered in their beds. ”

“ After he had thus spoke, he was tied to the stake, and the fire being kindled, he quietly slept in the Lord; and was the last person that died for the Protestant religion in Scotland.
In the year of our Lord, 1641, there brake forth a most horrid and bloody rebellion and massacre, committed by the Irish Papists on the English, in Ireland; a nation, famous for the birth of many worthy persons ”

“ In the year 1543, Cardinal Beaton coming to Edinburgh, caused several religious persons to be brought before him, and when he could prove nothing else against them, he caused four men to be hanged upon suspicion that they had eaten a goose upon a Friday. ”

“ Here they pulled off the noses of some, and put out the eyes of others. They cut off the hands of a pious matron of Lesna, and then murdered three of her children before her face.—— Another woman having her hands and feet cut off, and her tongue cut out, they sowed up in a sack, and left her for two days, in which she lived, making a most miserable lamentation. ”

“ Being still offered life if he would recant, and thereby prevent the misery of his wife and children: he said, he would leave them to a careful and sufficient Overseer: and being asked who that was, he answered, even the Lord Jesus Christ, a faithful keeper of all that are committed to him. ”