I Beg Your Indulgence
This page is supposed to contain a few facts and comments about things going on in the United States, some light, some serious, some in-between. But I can't seem to bring myself to do any of those this month, even though I've tried several times. My problem is that for several weeks I've been working on translating Foxe's Book of Martyrs into modern English for our publishing house. The medieval language in Foxe's book is difficult to understand, and often there is no direct translation into our modern English. So to help in the translating, I've tried to sit in the author's chair as he wrote the material, and live with the martyrs through their experiences: thinking and feeling what they did, loving God and Christ and believing in the truth of the Scriptures in ways we hardly know today, and living with them through the frustrations, fears, terrors, pains, sufferings, and the grace of God that at times strengthened them beyond belief. I became a scribe to the apostle Paul, now an old man, and sat in a Roman prison with him in A.D. 66 and wrote down the words to his second epistle to his beloved disciple Timothy. As I listened to his somewhat weak voice, weakened now even more by age and the many years of travels and afflictions, realizing with him that this would be the last letter he would write to anyone, I understood well his words to Timothy: "I am already being poured out like a drink offering, and the time has come for my departure. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day—and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing. Do your best to come to me quickly." Timothy did not get there in time. Soon after he wrote his letter, Paul was judged guilty of crimes against the emperor and condemned to death. I walked with Paul and the executioner to the chopping block, and I cried as the axe plunged downward and there fell to the ground the most noble head in all of Christendom. Thirty-one years later, I was with Timothy in Ephesus when he blocked the pagan procession that was celebrating the feast called "Catagogion" and rebuked them for their idolatry. I cautioned him against such boldness but he wouldn't listen to me. He had heard the voice of his spiritual father from the Roman prison and gained courage from him—if he was so counted worthy he, too, would die for Christ. I don't know whether Timothy saw the anger building in the pagans as I did, but he continued preaching Christ to them. And though I tried, I wasn't able to stop them when they took hold of him and began to beat him with their fists—they ran through me as if I were vapor. I couldn't understand Timothy, for even as they beat him he continued to speak of Christ, and that angered them even more and they took up clubs and struck at him until he was all blood and unconscious. Two days later I held him in my arms as he died; and I wished to God that I could be like him, and wondered why I was not. Thirteen years later I traveled as scribe to Ignatius, the overseer of the Church in Antioch, on his way to prison and death in Rome. He transcribed a letter to the Church there asking them not to interfere with his martyrdom. In the letter he said: "Now I begin to be a disciple. I care for nothing of visible or invisible things so that I may but win Christ. Let fire and the Cross, let the companies of wild beasts, let breaking of bones and tearing of limbs, let the grinding of the whole body, and all the malice of the devil, come upon me; be it so, only may I win Christ Jesus." In his prison cell in Rome, I listened with Ignatius to the lions roaring just outside the wall, and heard him say, "I am the wheat of Christ: I am going to be ground with the teeth of wild beasts that I may be found pure bread." As I did with Timothy, I wept for his love of Christ and courage in the face of such terror—and wept for my lack of both. Sixty years later in another prison, I heard the governor that condemned Polycarp say to him, "Reproach Christ and I will release you." And Polycarp answered, "Eighty-six years I have served him, and he never once wronged me. How then shall I blaspheme my King who has saved me?"Such love for Christ and courage in the face of being burned alive puzzled me, but I thought I was beginning to understand. Each of these were following the living examples of their teachers, the apostles, for Polycarp had been a student of the Apostle John, Timothy of Paul, and undoubtedly Ignatius also because he sounded so much like Paul. And, of course, the apostles and first Christians who were martyred were following the living example of Jesus. But as the Church moved further down through the years, it would be different. We would not be expected to be like them. I felt better. I was grateful when Constantine came along a couple of centuries later, for it brought a relative peace of a thousand years to the Church. Oh, there were a few persecutions here and there, but nothing serious, and nothing that much disturbed me. Then, in the middle of the twelfth century, the church in Rome brought in something called the Inquisition, informally at first, and then officially. There was a new foreboding in the translating now, and I wondered how strong our love for Christ and our courage was going to be after so many years away from the living examples of Jesus and the Apostles. First came the Waldenses and the Albigenses. When eighty of the Waldenses were captured in the city of Strasbourg and burned at the stake, most of them withdrew into the Alpine valleys in northern Italy to live. Terror, but not detailed, so I wasn't much bothered. But it started changing with the Albigenses. Rome seemed to especially hate them, and they were hunted for over twenty years. In 1209, I watched Simon de Montfort's army massacre the Albigenses citizens of Beziers. It was during that massacre that I heard something I've never forgotten. A soldier asked how he could tell the Christians from the heretics, and his commanding officer replied, "Slay them all. God knows his own." I felt there again the unreasoning hate I felt when Jesus was crucified, when Paul was beheaded, when Timothy was beaten to death, when Ignatius and Polycarp were burned. It still frightened me, and I still did not know if I could sustain my faith in the face of it. Was it me personally, or was I just a product of 20th century Christianity? Over the weeks I lived with Wycliffe, Huss, Tyndale, Jerome, and, as difficult as it was to live through their experiences, the worse of all started on August 24, 1572—St. Bartholomew's Day. I enjoyed the wedding of King Henry of Navarre and Margaret of Valois. And although there had been problems between the Roman Catholics and the French Calvinist Protestants (Huguenots) before this, surely the marriage would heal the breach and the time of bitterness would be past. But only God knows the heart, and foul deeds and treachery are often done in His name. When I listened to the plot by King Charles IX and his mother, Catherine de' Medici, I wanted to warn Admiral Coligny, but I could only stand by and watch when they ran him through with a sword and threw him out his bedroom window to the street below, where his head was cut off as he lay at the feet of the butcher Henry, the third duke of Guise. Then I ran in panic with the Huguenots through the streets of Paris as they were killed by the thousands. Even the King shot some from his window when he saw them trying to swim across the Seine River to the suburbs of St. Germain. No matter where I went throughout France it was the same. There was slaughter and blood everywhere: burnings, stabbings, decapitations, hangings, mutilations—men, women, children, and babies were mercilessly killed. One-hundred-thousand or more were butchered, and I was sick in my spirit, soul, and body. When I finished my work yesterday, the massacre had spent itself, Henry of Navarre, who had been spared, was now King Henry IV of France, and for a while there was peace for the Huguenots. But there is no peace for me, for I still cannot understand how they could face such terror and cruelty and stand fast with Christ. I am haunted by the question: Could we, with our soft and self-serving modern Christianity, follow their examples of such love for Christ and courage that we would suffer being tortured, mutilated, and burned alive rather than recant our faith in Him? But now I must be about my work—John Hooper, Bishop of Worchester, has just been imprisoned and will soon be burned. I must go to him. Thank you for your indulgence. Harold J. Chadwick
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