450 years ago this day, Bishops Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley were burned at the stake by the fanatical Papist Bloody Mary Tudor near Balliol College at Oxford.

It is a sad measure of the committment of so-called "conservative" Anglicans that, on this solemn anniversary, there is no memory expressed of the dedication of those brave saints who loved not their lives even unto death, but declared a good confession to Christ's Gospel against the devil's antichrist and all his Babylonian Romanist system.

Why is there no remembrance of Latimer and Ridley? Why do modern-day "conservative" Anglicans ignore and ridicule and degrade the memories of the martyrs of Jesus, the founders of Anglicanism, all the while they pine after the very institution that is drunk with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus?

Bishop Ryle predicted this would happen a hundred years ago. He wrote that as the Anglican Church adopted an over ritualistic view of the Lord's Table, it would be drawn closer into the embrace of popery. That is why the martyrs went to the stake, to defend the biblical view of the sacrament, and the truth of Christ's Gospel against the pagan idolatry and blasphemy of the Mass. Ryle warned that if their lesson was forgotten, the Church was lost.

Latimer and Ridley must be suppressed by "conservative" Anglicans because they have repudiated the reason and meaning the martyrs' bodies were committed to the flames: they would not subordinate Christ's Gospel to the traditions of man's teachings, even when those traditions were presented (falsely) as the "truth of the Only Holy Apostalic Catholic Church." Modern "conservative" Anglicans have largely abandoned the martyrs' gospel, and thus the martyrs' cause must be written off as well.

Now, even amongst "conservatives", the game is all about upholding dead traditions that defy the plain teachings of Scripture, a false gospel that denies the finished work of Christ, and embraces sacramentalism and works-redemption of a type more and more similar to apostate Romanism. A warm hand is extended to Antichrist while a cold shoulder is turned against the Latimers and Ridleys who would not submit the truth of the Scriptures to the judgments of "the Church".

And for those who still claim to embrace the true Gospel, there is a distaste for the martyrs and their cause, because it displays the true emnity between Christ's Gospel and popery, an enmity that is inconvient to them for modern politico-religious reasons. After all, the Roman Church has more in common with modern "conservative" Anglicans than, say, their Christian brothers who refuse popery and cling to the old Bible doctrines, the Baptists, the Brethren, the dissenters, Free Presbyterians, etc.

Reviewing the lives and deaths of the martyrs who died this day, it becomes very clear: we are not the men they were. We have not the courage they had. They shame us, and so on this, the 450th anniversary of their murder, we ignore them, even as we make our plans to join with their murderers to "unify Christ's Church".

But the end of such false church is clear:

Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition; Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God. Remember ye not, that, when I was yet with you, I told you these things? And now ye know what withholdeth that he might be revealed in his time. For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way. And then shall that Wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming: Even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders, And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness. (2 Thess 2:3ff)

Latimer and Ridley were cruelly slain for the Faith, and they may be ignored and ridiculed and held in contempt by so-called "conservative" Anglicans today, but they were and are more than Conquerors through Jesus Christ.