Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible
government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility
to the people.
Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919)
The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know it, that a
financial element in the large centers has owned the government
of the U.S. since the days of Andrew Jackson.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882-1945)
“It is the common fate of the indolent to see
their rights become a prey to the active. The
condition upon which God hath given liberty to
man is eternal vigilance, which condition if he
break, servitude is at once the consequence of
his crime and the punishment of his guilt.” ―
John Philpot Curran (1750-1817)
When Queen Mary Tudor came to the English throne in 1553, everyone expected she would restore the Roman Church to a nation which had become Protestant. Fearing brutality, some clergymen fled. One who stayed in England was John Philpot, archdeacon of Winchester. Assured that he could speak freely, he debated Roman apologists in a convocation.
Philpot was a man of great learning, with knowledge not only of the Bible but of its languages, especially Hebrew. To persuade him to recant his Protestant beliefs would have been a signal victory. However, contemporaries say Philpot more than held his own in the debates.
Almost at once, his words were turned against him. He was arrested as a heretic and bullied by Story, Bonner and other agents of the queen. Bishop Gardiner, one of Mary’s leading persecutors, had reason to resent Protestants. Gardiner had been bishop of Winchester until deposed by the Protestant king, Edward VI.
Philpot was sometimes held in Bishop Bonner’s coal house and sometimes in a tower. One day he might be loaded with chains, the next placed in the stocks. His opponents vowed openly to bring him to the stake, but at the same time sought to persuade him to recant his heresies. John Philpot held fast to his convictions through fourteen examinations.
Eighteen months passed in this imprisonment. There was no sign his resolve would weaken. Philpot managed to preserve secret notes about his hearings. Much of this material was later printed by John Foxe in his Actes and Monuments (better known as Foxe’s Book of Martyrs).
On December 16th, Bishop Bonner passed the death sentence on his victim. Philpot was taken to Newgate and loaded with so many chains by the prison keeper that he had to send a servant to ask the sheriff to relieve him. The sheriff ordered the extra chains removed. On the 17th, while he ate supper, Philpot was told he must die the next day. To this he replied joyfully, “I am ready: God grant me strength and a joyful resurrection.”
Thanking God that he was counted worthy to suffer for truth, he went into his room. Did his mind run back to his participated in the examination and burning of the deluded Joan of Kent?
We do not know. However, on this day, December 18, 1555, he met the sheriff’s men joyfully at eight and proceeded to the stake in Smithfield. The path was muddy and the sheriff’s men offered to carry him. He refused, saying, “I am content to go to my journey’s end on foot.”
He knelt when he came to the place of execution and kissed the stake. Then he recited psalms 106, 107 and 108, was chained to the stake, and died in the flame that mounted around his body.
Christianity.Com
Because John Philpot Didn’t Run,He Burned
Published by Dan Graves,MSL April 28, 2010
For more detail – Fox’s Book of Martyrs.p.238
edited by William Bryon Forbush
Zondervan Publishing House
People will oppress each other— man against man,
neighbor against neighbor. The young will rise
up against the old, the base against the honorable.
Isaiah 3:5
According to Isaiah 3:5 a society which fails to honor
the old is on the brink of destruction.
The Book of Leviticus by Gordon J. Wenham P.273
“Is my complaint directed to man? Why should I not be impatient?
Look at me and be astonished; clap your hand over your mouth.
When I think about this, I am terrified; trembling seizes my body.
Why do the wicked live on, growing old and increasing in power?
They see their children established around them, their offspring before their
eyes. Their homes are safe and free from fear; the rod of God is not upon them.
Their bulls never fail to breed; their cows calve and do not miscarry.
They send forth their children as a flock; their little ones dance about. They sing
to the music of tambourine and harp; they make merry to the sound of the flute. They
spend their years in prosperity and go down to the grave in peace.
Yet they say to God, ‘Leave us alone! We have no desire to know your ways.
Who is the Almighty, that we should serve him?
What would we gain by praying to him?’
But their prosperity is not in their own hands, so I stand aloof from the counsel of
the wicked. “Yet how often is the lamp of the wicked snuffed out? How often does
calamity come upon them, the fate God allots in his anger?
How often are they like
straw before the wind, like chaff swept away by a gale? It is said, ‘God stores up a man’s
punishment for his sons.’ Let him repay the man himself, so that he will know it!
Let his own eyes see his destruction; let him drink of the wrath of the Almighty.
For what does he care about the family he leaves behind
when his allotted months come to an end?
Job 21: 4-21
Do not snatch the word of truth from my mouth,
for I have put my hope in your laws.
Psalm 119:43
It is well known that men do, when persecution
threatens, either altogether deny the truth, or
weakly and lukewarmly confess it; but lest this
should happen to him,
David therefore prays here,
” O Lord, take not the word of truth utterly out
of my mouth,” i.e., make me, with an intrepid
spirit, always to confess the avowed truth boldly
and manfully.
Solomon Gesner (1559-1665)
from studylight.org commentaries
Man is like a breath; his days are like a fleeting shadow.
Psalm 144:4
You have made my days a mere handbreadth;
the span of my years is as nothing before you.
Each man’s life is but a breath. Man is a mere phantom as
he goes to and fro:
He bustles about, but only in vain; he heaps up wealth,
not knowing who will get it.
Psalm 39:5-6
