# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1844 11 30_S27
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

among other things, the entire Augustinian monastery at Antwerp was destroyed in October 1522 for the sole reason that the monks of this monastery, having been brought to understanding through Luther's writings, all confessed the evangelical truth. But along with the tearing down of the monastery walls came also the imprisonment of the former Augustinians. Several of them were indeed moved to recant, both by this and by threats of every kind; a number, however, remained firm and unmoved. Among these were two still very young monks, named Heinrich Voes and Johannes Esch, who declared without reservation that they would rather die than deny God's eternal Word.

They were brought to Brussels, where they were first brought before an ecclesiastical court, so that this court might yet move them to recant. All was in vain, however; nothing could shake them; they remained steadfast in their confession of Lutheran doctrine. As their most damnable errors it was declared that they had testified: "No other power or authority for the pope and the remaining prelates can be shown from Holy Scripture than that they are servants of the Word of God. Christ did not appoint the pope to be his vicar over all lands, but only that he should preach and feed the sheep of Christ. The true catholic faith cannot be separated from love and good works, because love is a fruit of faith." When the presiding inquisitor, Hochstraten, then demanded of them to say briefly what they believed, they answered: "We believe the twelve articles of the Christian creed, the biblical books together with the evangelical writings, also one holy Christian Church — but not the church that you believe in." When it was charged against them that it was plain they had been led astray by Luther, they confessed: "Yes, we have been led astray by him, just as the apostles were led astray by Christ." Thereupon the verdict was pronounced, that they were guilty and deserving of death.

A high platform with an altar was then quickly erected before the town hall at Brussels, on which the condemned men had to appear in full priestly vestments; here, with the greatest solemnity, their priestly ordination was first taken from them, and they were then handed over to the executioner, who led them away by a rope. An eyewitness relates that throughout all these proceedings not the slightest sign of fear could be detected in them; rather, one could clearly read in their features composure and disdain for death, joined with gentleness and modesty.

Accompanied by four confessors, they now set out on the way to the pyre, which stood in the middle of the great market square of Brussels. On the way they declared that this was the day they had long awaited, and they loudly praised God for having granted them the grace to die for the sake of his Word. Weeping, their escorts now urged them again

Acts 5:41.

"seed."

27

to consider their lives and now recant; their answer was: "Weep not for us, but for your own sin (Luke 23:28), that you so persecute divine justice." Having arrived at the place of execution, each comforted the other, and as they encouraged one another to steadfastness, both joyfully climbed the pyre. As the reporter states, they embraced the stake standing in the middle more of their own accord than were bound to it. With astonishment the large surrounding crowd observed how their faces sparkled with such cheerfulness that they seemed to smile.

Now the confessors asked them once more: "Whether they wished to return to the Christian faith?" They cried: "We believe in God, and also in a catholic Church, but your church we do not believe in." Then the priests shouted at them: "Convert, or you will go to the devil and die also in the devil's name." They answered as if in jubilation: "We will die for the sake of evangelical truth, as devout Christians." So the fire was then slowly kindled.

The dear confessors said: "With your flames and glowing coals you strew roses upon us," and thereupon began, in the midst of the fire, to pray aloud and fervently, alternately, the Apostles' Creed and the hymn "Lord God, we praise thee" (Herr Gott, dich loben wir), etc., so that it pierced the marrow and bone of the bystanders. As the blaze increasingly gained the upper hand, they repeatedly cried out: "O Jesus, thou Son of David, have mercy upon us!" But the Lord had resolved to make these young men truly chosen ones, to refine them into the purest gold, and to glorify himself through their faithfulness even amid the most fearful torments. It happened, therefore, that the flame burned so bright that the ropes with which they had been bound burned off their bodies before they were suffocated. When one of them found himself thus loosed from the stake, he fell upon his knees in the midst of the smoking firebrands, and, with his face turned once more toward heaven, sighed once again: "O Jesus, Jesus, thou Son of David, have mercy upon me!" and within a few minutes both their bodies had been turned to ashes.

Deep and shattering was the impression that this terrible spectacle made on all of Brussels, but by no means of the kind that the murderous priests had intended. Rather, the well-known saying of Tertullian proved true here as well: "We [Christians] become more numerous the more we are mown down; the blood of Christians is a seed" (Apol. c. 49). The blood of the holy martyrs Heinrich Voes and Johannes Esch was likewise such a fruitful seed, out of which many confessors of the truth again sprang up; their murder opened the eyes of many, who clearly recognized that the true Church is always the persecuted one, and that only the false church is a bloodthirsty persecutor. That this was indeed the outcome at that time is testified even by Erasmus, who was otherwise so unfavorably disposed toward the Lutherans. He wrote, among other things, the following year to Duke George: "It is not right that a mere error should be punished with fire. Concerning the power and authority of the pope, the theologians at Paris are of an entirely different opinion in many articles than the theologians in Italy, and one side must necessarily be wrong; yet neither party desires on that account to burn the other. I greatly fear that the means commonly employed to compel people to recant — casting them into prisons, and even burning them — will only make the evil worse. At Brussels two Augustinians were burned, and thereupon the whole city gained a love for Luther." Elsewhere the same man writes: "The bull-bearer Aleander came with a fearsome papal bull of excommunication and sought to frighten everyone with threats. Hochstraten, too, has taken the sword into his hands, and the slaughter has begun. At last three*) Augustinians were also publicly executed at Brussels. But what was the outcome? In the city that had previously been entirely pure in the (papal) doctrine, the disciples of Luther have distinguished themselves, and not a few of them."

Therefore give thanks to God, dear Lutheran Christian, that you belong to a Church which has never stained itself with the blood of heretics, whether alleged or real, but which is gloriously adorned instead with the martyr's blood of many of its most upright members. Give thanks to God that he has, by contrast, rescued you from the fellowship of a church upon which rest countless blood-debts of executed witnesses to the truth, which cry out again and again to the Avenger of innocence for vengeance.

I now share with you here the masterful hymn in which the late Luther sang of the holy death of those martyrs.

A HYMN CONCERNING THE TWO MARTYRS OF CHRIST AT BRUSSELS, BURNED BY THE SOPHISTS OF LOUVAIN, WHICH TOOK PLACE IN THE YEAR 1523, ON THE FIRST OF JULY.

A new song now we lift up,
This God, our Lord, ordains,
To sing of what God has done,
To his praise and honor;
At Brussels in the Netherlands,
Through two young boys indeed,
He has made his wonders known,
Whom he with his own gifts
Has so richly adorned.

The first is rightly named Johannes —
So rich in God's favor —,
His brother Heinrich in the same spirit,
A true Christian without fault,
Have departed from this world;

*) Not long after the burning of Voes and Esch, the Augustinian Lambertus Thorn — who had at first taken time to consider — suffered, namely, the same fate with equal heroism.