October 16, 2019 Show with Andrew Smith on “Today in Church His-Story: The Martyrdom of Latimer & Ridley (& Why We Must Never Forget Their Sacrifice)”

Live from the historic parsonage of the 19th century gospel minister, George Norcross, in downtown Carwile, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors, Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

Proverbs chapter 27 verse 17 tells us, Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another. Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have in view in conversation, to make one another wiser and better.

It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions. And now, here's your host, Chris Arnzen.

Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth. We're listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Wednesday on this 16th day of October 2019.

Andrew Smith and the Today in Church History Podcast

And I'm thrilled to have back on the program Dr. Andrew Smith, who is pastor of Christ Reformed Community Church in St. John's, Florida, and he's also the host of a podcast called Today in Church History, and history is spelled H-I-S-D-A-S-H-T-O-R-Y.

And we are going to be discussing today the martyrdom of Latimer and Ridley, and why we must never forget their sacrifice. And that martyrdom took place on this date in history, October 16th. And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Dr. Andrew Smith.

For having me on again, brother, I really appreciate it.

And first of all, we are intending to have you back on monthly, sometimes more than once a month, to address a date in church history that should be remembered. Tell us about this podcast.

Well, the podcast was birthed at the end of last year, just in my mind, in my heart, as I was working on my doctorate of ministry degree at Master's Seminary and trying to think through maybe some of the ways that I could put to use the many years of education that I've been blessed to receive.

And preaching and history, and so I was looking for a way to kind of tie those two things together, rather than writing articles, although I do write some articles on my website. I thought that a podcast in our day and age would be a better means to reach more people.

And so I started it at the beginning of this year, and really shot for a five to ten minute, just a small little kind of lunch hour listen occurs on that particular day in which I do the broadcast, and then apply it with various scripture passages for Christians today.

And I know that the podcast is archived at heartofflame .org, that's H-E-A-R-T, the letter A, F-L-A-M-E dot org. Is that where folks can hear it live also, or how do they hear this program?

Yeah, unfortunately it's not a live program, as yours is, you can go to our website and get all the archived copies of the podcast, 33 at this point, or if you're familiar with Apple iTunes, which most of the listeners probably are, you can search for today in church history.

Again, history is spelled H-I-S hyphen S-T-O-R-Y at Apple iTunes, and you can listen that way as well.

Okay, now to let our listeners know, for the sake of our listeners who did not hear you during your previous interviews on Iron Trip and Zion Radio, tell our listeners about Christ Reformed Community Church in St. John's, Florida.

Well, Christ Reformed is a church that I'm very, very blessed to also be establishing past. We started back in September of 2015, me and my wife and another couple, and since then the church has, spiritually and numerically, we're able to minister to the community and minister to those who...

And we are basically an independent, non-denominational, Reformed church. So we would be confessional, we have baptism, we're a Reformed Baptist, we have quite a few Presbyterians that are part of our congregation, and so our church is unique in the sense that Christians and Baptists tend to get along pretty well.

And Christ Reformed Community Church, for those of our listeners that want to look up that website, it's christreformedcc .com, christreformedcc .com, and I've just been informed that there is a loud hissing noise from a listener in Ireland who said that she's listening to the program and there's a loud hissing noise.

I'm sorry, there's nothing else I can do right now, I don't understand why that is occurring, but if you could please be patient and just deal with that as much as you can. The date that we are addressing today, October 16th, first of all, what year were Latimer and Ridley martyred?

So the year was 1555, so the middle of the 16th.

1555, and so tell us about these two brave souls that would rather be executed than deny their precious faith.

Having comments, beginning with the fact that they would fit in that category that historians typically call the Marian martyrs, and there were three of them that were executed around the same time. Of course, Ridley and Latimer were executed together back-to-back on this burnt at the same stake, and then a couple of weeks later, Thomas Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury, was also executed in the same exact spot, and as a matter of fact, he witnessed from the rooftop of a nearby building the execution of Ridley and Latimer, and that was sort of the motivation of the Roman Church to try to get him to recant his Protestantism, which he actually did recant his Protestantism, but then he recanted his recantation later on, as we famously know, and was executed and died being a Protestant.

And requested that his hand that signed his original recantation of the Protestant faith, that that hand be burned first.

Yeah, yeah, all the accounts say that he actually put his hand in the fire, his right hand in the fire, and said this was the hand that committed the offense of denying the precious faith, and so it will be the part of my body that burns first.

And by all accounts, that indeed did take place. But the Marian martyrs were, there were more than just Ridley, Latimer, and Cranmer. There was about 300 that were burnt at the stake, and there was another, you know, I don't know how many that died in prison as a result of being imprisoned by Queen Bloody Mary, who was the daughter of King Henry VIII and his first wife, Catherine of Aragon.

She was intensely Roman Catholic, and really, after all the reforms that had taken place in England over a period of about 20 years, when she became the queen, she tried to reverse all of those things.

And it was somewhat of a counter-reformation led to all of these martyrs of the faith that we look up to today.

Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley Before Their Martyrdom

And the names, the full names of these two individuals to whom we are paying tribute today are Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley. Why don't you tell us about these men before we even get to the point of why they were executed?

Sure. I'll start with Latimer. He was the older of the two. We don't know exactly what year he was born, but it was the latter half of the 15th century, so somewhere between 1480 and 1491, most historians say he was born.

Like Nicholas Ridley, they were both educated at Cambridge. Hugh Latimer was educated at Christ College, and he received three degrees. So they were both very learned men. And for Latimer's part, he was intensely against Protestantism.

In fact, his oral defense for one of his degrees, one of the three degrees that he received, was basically a polemic against Martin Luther, and specifically against Philip Melanchthon's teachings on justification by faith alone.

But just in God's providence, it was through that oral defense that a man named Thomas Bilney, who was listening to this defense, was sympathetic to Protestantism and took Latimer by his side and convinced him that these Reformed principles were actually closer to the Bible than what the current Roman Church was teaching.

And so Latimer changed from a fierce opponent of the Reformed faith, or Protestantism, to become an ardent supporter of it. And the thing that helped Latimer out more than anything is that he was a very good preacher.

He was a popular preacher, and I don't say that in the sense that he tickled people's ears, but he had a certain wit about his sermonic delivery. He spoke in plain language that the people could understand.

And so he was able to gain a hearing just based upon his ability to communicate effectively in his day. But he was licensed with 12 other preachers by Cambridge College to basically go in a circuit around England and to preach.

And eventually he gained the hearing of King Henry VIII. He became an advisor to King Henry VIII under the influence of Thomas Cranmer, who encouraged that relationship. And Latimer also became chaplain to Anne Boleyn, who was the second wife of King Henry VIII, who was a Protestant.

And as I said, he was known primarily for his preaching, and even had the ability to have humor in his sermons. Historians say that he preached up to two hours long. So he preached long sermons, but during that day it wasn't extremely uncommon for Reformed people to do that.

And then Nicholas Ridley was about 20 years younger than Hugh Latimer. And Ridley was born near Newcastle, England in Northumberland. He was also educated at Cambridge much later than Latimer. And Ridley is considered to be the scholar of the two, although by no means do historians think that Latimer wasn't also a scholar.

It's just that Ridley not only was educated at Cambridge, but he also went off to Paris and studied there. And he held many educational posts at Cambridge College. He was the proctor, I think it was, of Penbroke College.

But Ridley was also a good preacher. He was appointed as the king's chaplain. So Latimer was the chaplain for Anne Boleyn and was an advisor to King Henry VIII. But Nicholas Ridley was the king's personal chaplain.

He was also the Bishop of London, which was a very, obviously, prestigious position. Latimer also held a bishopric as well. And so both of these men, they were actually imprisoned in the same room along with Cranmer in the Tower of London when they were arrested by the time that Queen Mary came to the throne.

And so they knew each other before that, but they really developed a bond there as they were in the Tower of London. And we can only imagine what sort of prayers they prayed and what sort of scriptures they quoted to each other, as they inevitably knew they were all going to be executed for their faith in the one and only true gospel of Jesus Christ.

Religious and Political Turmoil in Tudor England

So tell us a bit about the religious turmoil that had been taking place in England, in the Church of England prior to this. The Church of England seemed to be, for quite a while, swinging back and forth like a pendulum from Roman Catholicism to Protestantism and even different forms of Protestantism, where you had even the Puritans who eventually chose to depart from the Church of England because they themselves were being oppressed for the purity of the stances they took regarding biblically faithful belief and practice.

But tell us a little bit in more detail about the pendulum of Romanism to Protestantism and back to Romanism that seemed to be plaguing the Church of England, which actually led to the deaths of Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley.

Yeah, well, I appreciate the question. It's not an easy question to answer, only because of the complications of not only history and theology, but just even genealogy. I mean, you're talking about King Henry VIII, who had multiple wives.

Some of them were Protestant, some of them were Catholic. And King Henry VIII, it's been said by one historian that he would go through theological moods like he went through his wives. In other words, he wasn't a man necessarily driven by the conviction of Scripture or driven by Protestant principles.

He was a religious man. He took Mass three times a day, and so it wasn't that he wasn't religious. He was part of that religious climate of the day. But he was all about power. And so he was actually an ardent defender of the Roman Catholic faith, and him and Martin Luther butted heads.

In fact, didn't he have that official title of defender of the faith while Roman Catholic?

He did. Yeah, he received that title in 1521. Of course, the Pope can only give that title to someone, and the Pope gave it to Henry VIII. And the reason the Pope gave it to him is because Henry wrote a defense of the seven sacraments, in which, you know, Luther was arguing there are only two sacraments, Lord Supper and Baptism, and Henry VIII, with the help of some other scholars, a polemic against Martin Luther that said, no, there are seven sacraments.

There's confirmation, there's penance, there's ordination, there's the last rites, there's marriage, and the Pope was so proud of Henry VIII that he entitled him defender of the faith. But Henry's problems were more about the fact that he couldn't have an heir to the throne.

That was really his issue. So his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, couldn't give him a son. He did have a daughter by her by the name of Queen Mary, who later became Queen Bloody Mary, and as I'm sure we'll talk about later, this divorce or annulment from Catherine of Aragon really, I think, settled in the heart of Queen Mary a resistance toward Protestantism because King Henry VIII, her father, had divorced her mother.

But he sought to get annulment of this marriage by appealing to texts like Leviticus 20, 21, which said you're not supposed to take your brother's wife, and Catherine of Aragon was, in fact, his dead brother's former wife.

And so he tried to appeal to the Pope to annul the marriage based upon that so that he could marry someone else so he could have a male heir. So again, Henry was motivated more by political things in terms of how his legacy was going to be carried on through the throne rather than theological convictions and priorities.

And so he did end up marrying Anne Boleyn. His marriage was not annulled by the Pope, but he went ahead and divorced her anyway. And with the Act of Supremacy in about the year 1534, he was declared the Supreme Head of the Church of England.

And Chris, I don't know if you've heard kind of the legend that was used by some of the scholars surrounding Henry VIII as to the legitimacy of naming King Henry VIII the Supreme Head of the Church of England.

Are you aware of the legend that surrounds that?

Just by that description, no.

So there was a legend current in that day, and who knows, maybe even King Henry VIII scholars made this story up. But the legend said that the first church planted was actually not planted in Rome by the Apostle Peter, but that it was planted in England by Joseph of Arimathea.

And so the argument was that every other country in the world needs to submit to the Pope, but England doesn't need to submit to the Pope. England is different because England had the first church, and therefore the church in England in some odd, convoluted way actually owed her allegiance to the king first above the Pope, which is an interesting part of history.

And those were the type of arguments that were ultimately used by King Henry. So he was not trying to start a Protestant Reformation by the things and decisions he made. It was more motivated by his marriages and trying to get an heir to the throne.

In fact, I have heard from people who seem to be very knowledgeable. In fact, one of the individuals who told me this during an interview is a Thomas Cranmer scholar. He's considered to be one of the foremost experts on the life and legacy of Thomas Cranmer, if not the most knowledgeable living expert.

Ashley Null, Dr. Ashley Null, who is an Anglican teaching in Berlin, Germany. But he has written on Cranmer, and he said that Archbishop Cranmer, although he was friends with King Henry VIII, and although King Henry VIII is the one that had appointed him, he never believed in the genuineness of King Henry's conversion.

He viewed him as remaining a Roman Catholic, and on Henry's deathbed, according to Dr. Null, Thomas Cranmer was holding Henry's hand and said, if you believe in justification by faith alone, please squeeze my hand.

And apparently Henry did. Whether that was a sign of true conversion or not, I don't know. But that is the story that I've heard. I don't know if you have heard that as well.

No, I haven't heard that story. But I wouldn't put it out of the realm of possibility, just because, like you said earlier, the pendulum swing back and forth with Henry. I mean, even after instituting these reforms that were in support of Protestantism, after he broke away from the Pope in 1534 with the Act of Supremacy, a few years later, after he won all the support of these reformers, the six articles came out, which were basically a capitulation back to Romanism.

And people like Hugh Latimer actually resigned their posts as bishop and kind of fell out with King Henry VIII because he was fearful that this Reformation was going too far. And so he was a man, and I'm not a psychologist, and I'm not going to try to be one, but he was certainly a man who had a lot of internal issues going on with his temperament and with wanting power and all of those sorts of things.

So I wouldn't put it past him at all just to swing back and forth, and who knows what happened at his deathbed.

Doctrinal Charges Against Latimer and Ridley

Now, lead us up to the point where Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley knew that they were in trouble with the authorities in the Church of England. And what were the specific reasons, doctrinally specifically, or matters of practice, that were really getting the authorities hot under the collar, if you will, and determined to either get them to repent of these things or to execute them?

Well, initially, as I said, Latimer especially gained the support of Henry VIII because he preached against the clergy and the abuses of the clergy. There was a sermon series that he preached at St. Paul's Cross entitled On the Plow in about the year 1547, and this was later on.

But he had a refrain in it where he said, the devil is never out of his diocese. And that was kind of Latimer's... He was a lot like Luther in attacking the corruption of the clergy, and King Henry VIII liked this.

So in that sense, King Henry VIII supported Latimer. Latimer would say things like, the priests are always lording and loitering, and because their lording and loitering have come up, it makes preaching go down.

They pamper their ponches, they munch in their mangers, they moil in their mansions, which is all very colorful language to suggest that the clergy just fed themselves food and were gluttonous and weren't worth anything.

That really appealed to King Henry VIII, but what put pressure on people like Latimer and Ridley was ultimately their view of justification by faith alone, ultimately their views against images, things like that, their stance against transubstantiation, which King Henry VIII really...

He gave them a long leash on these things, but these were issues that, when Queen Mary ascended the throne, she had no toleration for, because she was staunchly Catholic. So with King Henry VIII, when he was reigning, there was a longer leash with Latimer and Ridley.

Latimer was imprisoned briefly under King Henry VIII's rule, but after King Henry VIII died, Edward VI came to the throne, who was the son of King Henry VIII's third wife, Jane Seymour, and she was an ardent Protestant, and so that's when you start to see things really pick up in terms of the Reformation picking up in England.

But it wasn't until Queen Mary came to the throne, she didn't like the teaching against transubstantiation, she didn't like the teaching against purgatory, she didn't like the teaching against images.

For example, Nicholas Ridley, when he was the Bishop of London, he removed the altars in the churches of London, and he replaced them with communion tables. And of course, the reason he did that is because he did not believe that Christ was re-sacrificed at the Lord's Supper, that this was a table feast for all of God's family to partake in.

So those are just some of the examples, the normal doctrines that Martin Luther himself upheld were the same evangelical doctrines that Ridley and Latimer upheld, and more ultimately, they were ultimately killed for holding up to these, for these truths.

So when Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley were given the option to either recant their beliefs or be executed, it was really not one or two, it was basically a litany of beliefs that would fall under the umbrella of reformational teaching, and of course,.

You and I would call it biblical teaching. Yeah, I'd say that that is true, except for the fact that if you read the records of the final hearing of Latimer and Ridley, because they were actually tried at the same time, so they were not only executed at the same time, but they were tried at the same time, and the main charge brought up against them is that they did not hold the transubstantiation.

That was the primary thing, and when Latimer was asked to recant, or when he was asked at that same trial, which I think was in the year 1554, because they were arrested in 1553 and then executed in 1555, Latimer said, I don't owe you a response.

If you want to know what I believe, then just read the New Testament. I mean, that's basically what he said, and he just refused to, he was not like Cranmer when it came to the end of his life. He was very strong.

And resolute, and... You mean Cranmer in his first threat? Temptation. Yes, exactly. Well, we're going to go to our first station break right now. If anybody would like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

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We are discussing today in church history, the martyrdom of Latimer and Ridley and why we must never forget their sacrifice. If you have a question for our guest, Dr. Andrew Smith, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com.

Martyrdom, Public Witness, and the Courage of Latimer and Ridley

Can you tell us, Andrew, about any of the conversations that took place between Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley during their imprisonment and right up to their execution? And also, perhaps, if you could tell us something about the reaction of the crowds observing this.

Well, I'll start with the latter.

Question because I think it's the more important question. Something interesting occurred when these three Oxford martyrs, as they're called, Ridley, Latimer, and Cranmer, were burnt at the stake in 1555.

But the crowds were so in witnessing this, and especially witnessing his Protestantism, and then turn around right before he's executed and recant his newfound Catholicism again. All of this really created some momentum for the Protestants.

I believe that Queen Mary would have been well on her way of instituting Roman Catholicism as the primary religion in England if Cranmer would have kept the Protestant faith. But when he changed that, when he went back to Protestantism right before he died and put his hand famously in the fire and said, this is the fire that signed my denial of the Protestant faith.

I should have never done it, and so this hand is going to be the first to burn. When he did that, something happened with those who had seen Ridley and Latimer burnt at the stake and those who had witnessed Cranmer burnt at the stake.

And what happened was they became national heroes. They became patriots, and they became spiritual patriots, if I could use that language. So much so that in the year, I think it was 1558, or the latter part of the 1550s, England made a new law that from that day forward, no more heretics or alleged heretics would be burnt at the stake publicly.

They would be burnt at the stake behind the walls of the prison. And then when you take into account the fact that Cranmer, witnessing his brothers that he had been in the same cell with until the end, witnessing that as they're being burned and the things that they were saying back and forth to one another, most famously in Foxe's Book of Martyrs, Latimer said to Ridley, as the flames were being lit, play the man, so by God's grace in England, as I trust, shall never be put out.

Things like that that are being said when you're being put to death, the confidence in the gospel that they had, the relaxed conversation that they were having between one another even as the faggots were being lit, the wood around them was being lit, all of this was encouragement to the people of England regarding the credibility of the Protestant faith.

Here are these men who have such a strong faith, they refuse to recant. And I don't want to say every execution, but certainly at many of them, if not most of them, and something that did occur at Ridley and Latimer's execution was the preaching of a sermon.