John Huss
The martyrdom of John Huss occurred on Sat 6 July 1415. As the official executioner was about to light the pyre at the feet of the reformer, he said, "Now we will cook the goose." (Huss in Bohemian means goose.) "Yes", replied Huss, "but there will come an eagle in a hundred years that you will not reach Martin Luther “According to the German church historian Theodor Sauer, Luther spoke in tongues: "Luther was easily the greatest evangelical man after the apostles, full of inner love to the Lord like John, hasty in deed like Peter, deep in thinking like Paul, cunning and powerful in speech like Elijah, uncompromising against God's enemies like David; PROPHET and evangelist, speaker-in-tongues and interpreter in one person, equipped with all the gifts of grace, a light and pillar of the church..." (Ibid, 1889 ed., vol. 4, p. 73 19 Translated from the German work, Geschichte der Chrislichen Kirche fur Schule und Haus (Dresden; R. Kuntzes, 1859), 3rd book, p. 400); http://www.azstarnet.com/~jsbarta/ch_hist.html 1/1/99 Whether this refers to the actual gift of tongues (I Cor 12) or the romance languages (i.e. Latin, French, etc.) is not certain. That Luther believed in miracles is certain. In 1541 when Myconius lay speechless in the final stages of consumption, Luther prayed and he was restored to health. He also prayed for Melanchthon who was near death and God healed him also. Melanchthon said: "I should have been a dead man, had I not been recalled from death itself by the coming of Luther." (A.J. Gordon, The Ministry of Healing, pp. 93-95)Luther was also involved in deliverance of a young girl, (Suppressed Evidences, --Thomas Boys p. 162, Jewish Expositor, May, 1831, pp. 145-153) and also involved in healing (Suppressed Evidence, --Boys, pp. 192-193)” John Calvin On page 6 of the March 24, 1975 issue is a short piece by Quent Warford, “Calvin Speaks Unknown Tongue.” De Vitam Ihohannes Cauvin was published posthumously by Beza. All it contains concerning glossolalia is a small entry, confided to Beza by Calvin, shortly before the latter’s death. On several occasions, Calvin, in his devotions, found himself uttering a lingua non nota et cognota mini. That is, the language was not known or understood by him. Himself a skilled linguist, Calvin set about to discover the orthography of the utterance. Unable to trace it, he confided to Beza that although the language was Hebraic in character, he yet feared that he had spoken a lingua barbarorum. That is, he feared having spoken in an accursed tongue, such as what was spoken by the Canaanites. The matter was only a minor one to Beza, who allots it only a few sentences in De Vitam Iohannes Cauvin. Vincent Ferrer and Francis Xavier were missionaries who described their miraculous ability to communicate with various groups as glossolalia, and other examples exist. In addition many believe that in the Eastern church tongues-speaking continued to be practiced in Greek Orthodox monasteries throughout the Middle Ages.The reformation from Roman Catholicism John Knox (1514-1572), was a Scottish preacher, central to the Protestant Reformation. In a biography of Knox, historian Jasper Ridley says Knox and other Protestants "expected their leaders to have the gift of prophecy." Ridley records several prophecies that came true. For example, Knox said as he was dying: You have formerly been witnesses [he said] of the courage and constancy of Grange in the cause of the Lord; but now, alas, into what a gulf has he precipitated himself. I entreat you nor to refuse the request which I now make to you. Go, and tell him in my name that unless he is yet brought to repentance, he shall die miserably; for neither the craggy rock [the castle] in which he miserably trusts, nor the carnal prudence of that man [Lethington] whom he looks upon as a demi-god, nor the assistance of foreigners, as he falsely flatters himself, shall deliver them; but he shall be disgracefully dragged from his nest to punishment, and hung on a gallows in the face of the sun, unless he speedily amend his life, and flee to the mercy of God. The man's soul is dear to me, and I would not have it perish if I could save it. Ridley then details the fulfillment of the predictions: On August 3, Grange and his brother James . . . were hanged. Lethingron had died suddenly soon after the surrender of the castle: he probably committed suicide.Thus two of his prophecies were fulfilled. All the chronicles state that when Grange met Drury in front of the castle walls to discuss the terms of surrender, he was unable to come out through the castle gate because it was blocked by the stones that had fallen after the English bombardment. He was therefore let down over the wall by a rope, or ladder. Knox had prophesied that Grange would be spewed out of the castle, not at the gate but over the wall. When Grange was hanged at the market cross of Edinburgh on a sunny afternoon, he was hanged facing towards the east; but before be died, his body swung round to face the west, so he was hanged, as Knox had foretold, in the face of the sun. · Samuel Rutherford (1600-1661) was a Scottish pastor and theologian and one of the most influential delegates to the Westminster Assembly (1643-1649), which composed the Westminster Confession of Faith in London from 1643-1646. In a book he authored in 1648, Rutherford discussed "revelations and inspirations of the Spirit" at some length. Among his words are these:There is a revelation of some particular men, who have foretold things to come even since the ceasing of the Canon of the word, as John Huss, Wycliffe, Luther, have foretold things to come, and they certainly fell out, and in our nation of Scotland, M. George Wishart foretold that Cardinal Beaton should not come out alive at the Gates of the Castle of Sr. Andrewes, but that he should dye a shameful death, and he was hanged over the window that he did look out at, when he saw the man of God burnt, M. Knox prophecied of the hanging of the Lord of Grange, M. Ioh. Davidson uttered prophecies, known to many of the kingdom, diverse Holy and mortified preachers in England have done the like . · George Gillespie (1613—1648) was also a delegate to the Westminster Assembly, and one of its influential and prominent debaters. Gillespie wrote that several heroes of the Scottish Reformation such as John Knox and George Wishart were such extraordinary men as were more than ordinary pastors and teachers, even holy prophets receiving extraordinary revelations from God, and foretelling divers strange and remarkable things, which did accordingly come to pass. An excellent source for examples of remarkable cases of prophecy in the ministries of Scottish preachers is John Howie's book, Scots Worthies. · The Wesminster Confession of Faith (1646), is one of the preeminent Reformed Confessions. In the first chapter of this confession (“Of the Holy Scripture”), paragraph 10 says: The supreme judge by which all controversies of religion are to be determined, and all decrees of councils, opinions of ancient writers, doctrines of men, and private spirits, are to be examined, and in whose sentence we are to rest, can be no other but the Holy Spirit speaking in the Scripture. Here "private spirits" are placed on the same level as "decrees of councils," "opinions of ancient writers," and "doctrines of men." All of these are to be subordinate to "the Holy Spirit speaking in Scripture." According to Byron Curtis, "...in mid-seventeenth-century England there was an established meaning to the phrase ‘private spirits' denoting personal revelations." Curtis shows significant evidence from literature close in time to the WCF, showing that the term "private spirits" was commonly understood to mean "personal revelations" that people received from the Holy Spirit. The Westminster Divines affirmed the existence of these revelations. · The 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith, is probably the most famous Reformed Baptist confession. In the first chapter of this confession (“Of the Holy Scripture”) paragraph 10 closely mimics the WCF: The supreme judge, by which all controversies of religion are to be determined, and all decrees of councils, opinions of ancient writers, doctrines of men, and private spirits, are to be examined, and in whose sentence we are to rest, can be no other but the Holy Scripture delivered by the Spirit, into which Scripture so delivered, our faith is finally resolved. Alexander Peden a covenanter, was born in or about 1626, according to some at the farm of Auchencloich, Ayrshire, and according to others in a small cottage near Sorn Castle, Ayrshire. In any case his father was in fairly good circumstances, being on terms of intimacy with the Boswells, lairds of Auchinleck. Peden attended the university of Glasgow; his name spelt Peathine is entered in the fourth class in 1648 (Scot, Fasti Eccles. Scot. i. 765). Some time after this he became schoolmaster, precentor, and session clerk at Tarbolton, Ayrshire, and subsequently was, according to Wodrow, employed in a like capacity at Fenwick, Ayrshire. As he was about to receive license to preach from the presbytery of Ayr a young woman accused him of being the father of her child, but her statement was finally proved to be false. On account of the ‘surfeit of grief’ that the woman then gave him Peden, according to Patrick Walker, made a vow never to marry. The young woman, Walker also states, committed suicide on the spot where Peden had spent twenty-four hours in prayer and meditation regarding the accusation. In 1660 Peden was ordained minister at New Luce, Galloway; but having refused to comply with the acts of parliament, 11 June, and of the privy council, 1 Oct. 1662, requiring all who had been inducted since 1649 to obtain a new presentation from the lawful patron and have collation from the bishop of the diocese, letters were directed against him and twenty other ministers of Galloway, 24 Feb. 1663, for ‘labouring to keep the hearts of the people from the present government in church and state,’ and he was ordered to appear before the privy council on that day month to answer for his conduct. Failing to do so, he was ejected from his living. He preached his farewell sermon from Acts xv. 31, 32, occupying the pulpit till night, and as he closed the pulpit-door on leaving it, he knocked on the door three times with his Bible, saying, ‘I arrest thee in my Father's name that none enter thee but such as come in by the door as I have done,’ a prohibition which is said to have been effectual in preventing the intrusion of any ‘indulged’ minister, the pulpit remaining vacant until the Revolution. After his ejectment Peden began to preach at covenanting conventicles in different parts of the south of Scotland, obtaining by his figurative and oracular style of address and his supposed prophetical gifts an extraordinary influence over the peasantry, which was further increased by his hardships, perils, and numerous hairbreadth escapes. On 25 Jan. 1665 letters were directed against him for keeping conventicles, and, as he disregarded the summons to appear before the council, he was declared a rebel and forfeited. He continued, however, to remain in the country, holding conventicles whenever opportunity presented. Patrick Walker states that he joined with that ‘honest and zealous handful, in the year 1666, that was broken at Pentland Hills (on 28 Nov.), and came the length of Clyde with them, where he had a melancholy view of their end, and parted with them there.’ He was excepted out of the proclamation of pardon on 1 Oct. 1667, and in December all persons ‘were discharged and inhibited to harbour, reset, supply, correspond with or conceal’ him and others concerned in the late rebellion. For greater safety he therefore passed over to Ireland; but having returned in 1673, he was in June apprehended by Major Cockburn in the house of Hugh Ferguson of Knockdow, Ayrshire, and sent to Edinburgh. After examination before the privy council on the 26th he was imprisoned on the Bass Rock in the Firth of Forth. On 9 Oct. 1677 the council ordered him to be liberated from the Bass, on condition that he bound himself to depart forth of Britain, and not to return under pain of being held pro confesso to have been at Pentland. He does not appear to have complied with this condition, but was shortly afterwards removed to the Tolbooth, Edinburgh. While there he on 14 Nov. petitioned the council to be liberated, and permitted to go to Ireland. Instead of granting the request the councilin December ordered that he and certain others should be transported to the plantations in Virginia, and be discharged from ever again returning to Scotland. They were therefore shipped from Leith to London; but Peden, according to Patrick Walker, comforted his fellow prisoners by the declaration that ‘the ship was not yet built’ that would take him or them ‘to Virginia or any other plantation in America.’ And so at last it turned out; for the captain of the ship chartered to convey them to Virginia, on learning that they were not convicts of the class to which he was accustomed, but persons banished on account of their religious beliefs, refused to take them on board, and they were set at liberty. Peden returned to Scotland in June of the following year, and went thence to Ireland. He was in Ayrshire again in 1680, and after performing the marriage ceremony of John Brown (1627?–1685) [q. v.], the ‘Christian carrier,’ in 1682, went back to Ireland. He returned to Ayrshire in 1685, and preached his last sermon at Colinswood at the water of Ayr. His privations and anxieties had gradually undermined his health, and, resolving to spend his last days in his native district, he found shelter in a cave on the banks of the river Ayr, near Sorn. Having a presentiment that he had not many hours to live, he one evening left the cave and went to his brother's house at Sorn, where he died on 28 Jan. 1686. Before his death he had an interview with James Renwick [q. v.], and the two became fully reconciled. Peden was buried in the Boswell aisle in the parish church of Auchinleck; but forty days after the burial a troop of dragoons came, and, lifting the corpse, carried it two miles to Cumnock gallows, intending to hang it up there in chains. Finding it impossible to do so, they buried it at the gallows' foot. After the Revolution the inhabitants of the parish of Cumnock, in token of their esteem for Peden, abandoned their ancient burial-place, and formed a new one round the gallows hill. Peden's fame as a prophet was perpetuated among the peasants of the south of Scotland by the collection of his prophecies, with instances of their fulfilment, made by Patrick Walker. He was the most famed and revered of all the Scottish covenanting preachers. ‘The Lord's Trumpet sounding an Alarm against Scotland by Warning of a Bloody Sword; being the substance of a Preface and two Prophetical Sermons preached at Glenluce, Anno 1682, by that great Scottish Prophet, Mr. Alexander Peden, late Minister of the Gospel at New Glenluce in Galloway,’ was published at Glasgow in 1739, and reprinted in 1779. [The Life and Prophecies of Alexander Peden by Patrick Walker has been frequently reprinted; see also Histories of Kirkton and Wodrow; Howie's Scottish Worthies; New Statistical Account of Scotland; Hew Scott's Fasti Eccles. Scot. i. 168; Scott's Old Mortality, note 18; Watson's Life and Times of Peden, Glasgow, 1881. The French Huganots in the history during and after the reformation At the end of seventeenth century, widespread tongues-speaking occurred for a little over a decade in southern France among a group of persecuted Huguenots. This is stated by Grant. R. Osborne (Ph.D., University of Aberdeen), “Tongues, Speaking in,” Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, 2nd Ed., Paternoster Press, 2001, p. 1208. Calvinist who are respected who experienced manifestations of the Spirit who admitted to the practice. American Puritan Cotton Mather (1663-1728), recorded in his diary. Mather asked God to "fulfill the ancient Prophecy, of pouring out the Spirit on all Flesh," and in so doing "revive the extraordinary and supernatural Operations with which He planted His Religion in the primitive Times of Christianity, and order a Descent of His holy Angels to enter and possess His Ministers, and cause them to … fly thro' the World with the everlasting Gospel to preach unto the Nations." Transported by the power of this vision, Mather concluded after this prayer that the Holy Spirit was already preparing to so empower his ministers, and that as a result "The World shall be shaken wonderfully!" Charles Spurgeon (~A.D. 1875) was a famous Reformed Baptist preacher. In his autobiography, he said: While preaching in the hall, on one occasion, I deliberately pointed to a man in the midst of the crowd, and said, 'There is a man sitting there, who is a shoemaker; he keeps his shop open on Sundays, it was open last Sabbath morning, he took ninepence, and there was fourpence profit out of it; his soul is sold to Satan for fourpence!' A city missionary, when going his rounds, met with this man, and seeing that he was reading one of my sermons, he asked the question, 'Do you know Mr. Spurgeon?' 'Yes,' replied the man, 'I have every reason to know him, I have been to hear him; and, under his preaching, by God's grace I have become a new creature in Christ Jesus. Shall I tell you how it happened? I went to the Music Hall, and took my seat in the middle of the place; Mr. Spurgeon looked at me as if he knew me, and in his sermon he pointed to me, and told the congregation that I was a shoemaker, and that I kept my shop open on Sundays; and I did, sir. I should not have minded that; but he also said that I took ninepence the Sunday before, and that there was fourpence profit out of it. I did take ninepence that day, and fourpence was just the profit; but how he should know that, I could not tell. Then it struck me that it was God who had spoken to my soul through him, so I shut up my shop the next Sunday. At first, I was afraid to go again to hear him, lest he should tell the people more about me; but afterwards I went, and the Lord met with me, and saved my soul' . . . I could tell as many as a dozen similar cases in which I pointed at somebody in the hall without having the slightest knowledge of the person, or any idea that what I said was right, except that I believed I was moved by the Spirit to say it; and so striking has been my description, that the persons have gone away, and said to their friends, 'Come, see a man that told me all things that ever I did; beyond a doubt, he must have been sent of God to my soul, or else he could not have described me so exactly.' So this research came from a historical project on manifestations of the Spirit in Church history among Orthodox believers.
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AuthorTimothy Ross is a faithful believer in the God of the Bible. He has been a confessing believer for 32 years. ArchivesCategories |