And I wanted to share a story of exemplary freedom and independence.
‘The opinions for which men go to war,’ he said, ‘do not deserve those great tragedies of which they make us spectators. Let there be no longer any question among us of Zwinglians or Lutherans, for neither Zwingle nor Luther died for us, and we must be one in Christ Jesus.’
During the Reformation era in England, John Frith was burned at the stake on 4 July 1533 at the famous Smithfield. Officially he was executed for his statements against transubstantiation. But, Thomas More despised the man for more than simply the one teaching.
He was a man of peace, who sought effecting change among the people not by coercion but through his writing and preaching. And as much as he wanted that physical security, knowing he was being hunted, he decided to go back to England and face the fire among his people then stay in hiding with Tyndale. That decision ultimately led to his exposure and arrest, but his life and death gave such a mighty witness of Christ to the people.
I’ll finish this off with another quote from d’Aubigne:
A true catholicism which embraced all Christians was Frith’s distinctive feature as a reformer. He was not one of those who imagine that a national Church ought to think only of its own nation; but of those who believe that if a Church is the depositary of the truth, she is so for all the earth; and that a religion is not good, if it has no longing to extend itself to all the races of mankind. There were some strongly marked national elements in the English Reformation: the king and the Parliament; but there was also a universal element: a lively faith in the Savior of the world. No one in the sixteenth century represented this truly catholic element better than Frith. ‘I understand the Church of God in a wide sense,’ he said. ‘It contains all those whom we regard as members of Christ. It is a net thrown into the sea.’ This principle, sown at that time as a seed in the English Reformation, was one day to cover the world with missionaries.
For some more articles on John Frith:
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