Good evening. Before I proceed to the purpose of the hour, I have a debt to acknowledge tonight. I believe this commemorates 20 years since your pastor, your senior pastor, first suggested this series of Reformation leaders. You have been the guinea pigs. You have heard every one of these. There are seven of them now. before anybody else did. And in spite of that, you have regularly asked me to come back. I have appreciated very much this enlargement of my own ministry, which the Lord has used, and I've been able to do this in most states from Maine to California, in Ulster, in Russia, and this last summer in South Africa. And God willing, my health and mine holding together, the latter is a matter of doubt for some people at the present. I hope to step aside from the classroom in this coming spring and hope to let this be an enlargement of the ministry in churches and schools where, because they are not as well taught as you folks are, The knowledge of the servants whom God has used in past generations is not so well known. So I thank you and I regularly remember what one bishop who arrived in England in Latimer's time when he came to a certain pulpit and was not properly introduced, was not properly welcomed. The bell in the belfry was not ringing to announce his presence. And he asked why. And he was told, the bell hath no clapper. And then a layman hearing that pointed to the pulpit and said, there is a bell that has had no clapper for twenty years. I think of the number of clappers that have stood in this pulpit. It has never been said, it can never be said, by the grace of God it will never be said, that this pulpit hath no clapper. The sound that goes forth in your presence is one that is in no way uncertain and it is a melody of grace to the hearers. In the same year that your history books tell you that a certain Italian mariner sailed the sea I understand you commemorated his birth a few weeks ago in this month. In 1492, approximately, I was born to an upright, respectable yeoman who had walk enough for 60 sheep. That was the way his wealth was measured. He had space enough for 60 sheep. My mother milked thirty cows. Thirty cows. My mother. She was the mother of six daughters. And I was the only surviving son. My father was able to supply through his labors a dowry for each of the six daughters. No little achievement. And an education for his son. We were the Latimer family one of 25 families listed in the Domesday Survey back in the 11th century in the town of Thurcaston in Leicestershire. Leicestershire. Leicestershire. I later became Bishop of Worcester spelled Worchester, which makes no sense either to you. I was able to get an education, I say, at Cambridge University. Cambridge was the university that you remember was the university of the Bible men in the 16th century. We had fellowship together with Cranmer, Ridley, Frith, Parker, Rogers, and old Bilney. Coverdale was on that number, and for a time also, Tyndale. We met at the White Horse Inn regularly, and we conversed, discussed, considered matters of the Scripture. The work of Erasmus had been published in 1516. In parallel columns, a corrected Latin version of the New Testament and the Greek. He corrected the Latin, the ecclesiastical medieval Latin, with the Greek. And this was the means by which old Bilney came to understand the Gospel. Bilney. He, too, became a martyr for the gospel. But we had great fellowship. In fact, all of those men in that club, as it were, eventually were martyred for the gospel's sake, but one, Miles Coverdale, he lived to be 81. No little accomplishment in that time, given the testimony of those men. matriculated at Cambridge University in 1510 and by 1514 had earned a bachelor's degree. I was interestingly ordained at 23, ordained a bishop at 43, and ordained to heaven at 63. That is the lifespan of Hugh Latimer. After the bachelor's degree, the master's degree, and then the Bachelor of Divinity, a strange order you might say, the Bachelor of Divinity degree at Cambridge required an oral presentation of a thesis, a public defense of a proposition. I chose Melanchthon, German Reformation, Greek scholar, colleague, fellow faculty member with Martin Luther at the University of Wittenberg, younger, gentler soul. Luther said of him, in compliment and in self-recognition, I am as one who goes through the forest with an axe and carve a rough path. Melanchthon comes along afterward and smoothens the path. Luther had a high regard for Melanchthon, but at this time I looked at Melanchthon as a heretic, and I set forth to prove in my public oral defense the errors of Melanchthon. In the audience listening to my presentation was old Bilney. Bilney. I honored him, expected compliments from him. He very humbly approached me afterward and invited himself to my rooms so that I might hear his confession. I was not a little proud that he, the elder, would come to me to give his confession, a young priest. He came, and his confession was, it is a faithful saying worthy of all acceptation, that the Lord Jesus came into the world to save sinners. He was not confessing his sins to me, a priest. He was confessing the grace of God, the finished work of Jesus Christ in man's behalf. I learned more in those exchanges with Bilney than from all my learning at the university. And I came to understand the gospel. Oh, I did not slough off immediately all of the trappings of Rome in which I had been reared and which had diffused themselves to my soul. But in time, I was only a preacher. I built nothing and I wrote very little. Others collected my sermons, wrote them down, collected them, published them in a volume, Fruitful Sermons. I was for a time a parish priest, for a time a bishop, but built no institutions, wrote no books of significance. I was a preacher. God gave me that gift, and God was to use it in ways which I could not comprehend. I lived under four monarchs in English history. I preached to two kings, was promoted to heaven by the fourth monarch, did not know more than two of these four, but had very close personal relationship with Henry VIII and his son Edward VI. You know Henry VIII. I was born under his father, Henry VII. Henry VIII something of a chameleon, changed color depending on the times and circumstances, something of a theologian, having been prepared to join the church as a servant of the church, being the second son of his father, his father having assumed that Arthur, the elder son, would succeed the father. And Henry, who became Henry VIII, thought so too. But as you know, the son died before the father did, and therefore the throne passed to the second son, who was Henry VIII. Henry VIII had not yet begun the Reformation in my youth. That was to be in the 1530s. I was to have opportunity to preach to Henry VIII privately. I say privately, I mean in audience to the King. But he was interested in hearing sermons so that he could evaluate them, compare them, comment on them, take them apart. He was not much moved. until I included in one such sermon the responsibility of the Christian to be subservient to the civil authority. He liked that. I had occasion to eat at table more than once with Anne Boleyn, the second wife of Henry VIII. In fact, she made me a loan of 200 pounds with which to pay the elevation to the bishopric you see by sometime later Henry VIII wanted to woo these Protestants as a counter foil against his enemies and he appointed four bishops among these of my kind and I was appointed to the Bishop of Worcester. It was customary to pay to the ecclesiastical official who carried out the appointment an annate or the first year's income of the office about to be entertained. Two hundred pounds in this case. I say Anne Boleyn made a loan to me of that amount. This was not very different from simony, the buying and selling of church offices, named after Simon Magus in the Book of the Acts, who wished to buy the gift of the Holy Spirit. It was commonly done. One bishop, I recall, was presented by one whom he was advancing into office a tray of rich red apples. And he replied, this is no apple matter, until he discovered that in each of the apples were ten gold pieces. Then he said to young theologues seeking ecclesiastical advancement, get you to that orchard, get you a graft of that tree. that will mean promotion. One bishop came to hear me as a parish priest in West Kingston and he arrived late I think on purpose and with his retinue settled himself over a space of more than a few seconds And I decided in his presence to change the text I had intended for that hour. I went to Paul's list of requirements for one who seeks the office of bishop. Of good report, honorable, husband of one wife, maintaining well the behavior of his household, not given to filthy lucre, sober, apt to teach, and more. And every one of those did not fit that bishop. Not one of those fit that bishop. And he became more than a little agitated at the hearing. of this Pauline description of one who should hold his office. God was using the preaching to those high and low. I preached at the request of the young boy king, Edward VI, but prior to that had had some part in the drawing up of the Ten Articles of Religion, which Henry VIII proposed. as a kind of sump to the budding Protestant movement. Ambiguous articles which could be interpreted either by Rome or Wittenberg. It was in that context that he appointed these bishops of whom I was one. But then he withdrew them when northerners in the country began to agitate for more direct focus on the part of the king toward biblical teaching. He resented their dissatisfaction and ingratitude with the little he had given them, and insisted that he would not give them more, in fact he would take from them what he had given. So he proposed the six articles of religion, clearly papist in every point, with which I could not concur and said so. So the king withdrew the bishopric. He made clear that he would be pleased if I would resign my bishopric, which I did. I had been summoned to Cardinal Woolsey when this bishop who was unhappy at my recounting Paul's prerequisites for the bishop's office reported me to the cardinal The Cardinal invited me to a hearing. He examined my position. He cautioned me about some of my criticisms of the clergy, but examined my teaching and my position and accepted it. Indeed, gave me a license to preach anywhere in the kingdom. He died very soon after that, and I declared, well, now I have the license of heaven. Unless, of course, the cardinal is in the other place. It was often that I was invited by Edward VI to preach this boy king, protege of Thomas Cranmer, the archbishop. A good and godly man, weak in character to a point, but he died well. I'm reminded to measure not a man until you measure the earth for his grave. There were falterings in the late years of Cranmer, but he died as a martyr. He died well. I say there was opportunity to minister to and for the king, Edward VI, the boy king, coming to the throne before he was ten. leaving the throne in death before he was 20, precocious of mind and soul, but weak of body, well-taught, under whom the Reformation really became doctrinally biblical, having been political and personal under Henry VI, his father. I say Edward invited me to address on a series of seven Fridays, Lenten sermons at Westminster Hall. The hall that dates from the Middle Ages, adjacent to which has been in your time built the houses of Westminster, the Parliament buildings, but the old ancient hall soon proved, and it's a cavernous place, soon proved inadequate for the crowds that came on those Friday sermons. So a pulpit was erected in the gardens of Westminster, and we had outdoor services. And the gospel was being proclaimed. The more I studied the book of heaven, the more I came to abandon the practices of Rome. You marvel that they did not all leave at once. It was when we compared the teachings of the Church of Rome with Scripture, and we studied the Scripture, and later on meticulously, and could find neither bone nor marrow nor sinew of the masses, the doctrine of the mass, And it was not the words of men, it was the word of God which taught us truth. So must it always be. Preaching to Edward VI, having preached the funeral of his mother at her death soon after his birth, perhaps the one of the six wives of Henry VIII, with whom there was real exchange of love. Having given him the son he long desired, she expired after childbirth. There was a closeness, therefore, with this young boy king, and it was reciprocated. The time passed. The opportunities for ministry were enlarged. but they were also preparatory to the coming of Edward's half-sister, Mary, to the throne. Having preached to two kings, Henry VIII and Edward VI, I was now to be examined very thoroughly by Mary. Mary Tudor, the only child of the first, and in the eyes of Rome, the only legitimate marriage of Henry VIII, whom history has remembered as Bloody Mary, and I expect you remember her thus as well. Clearly eager to vindicate her mother's testimony as a papist, clearly opposed to the work of both Henry and the boy King Edward, seeking to reverse the direction of the church in England, which had become on the brink of the Church of England. It had been the Church of Rome in England under Henry VIII. The 42 Articles of Religion compiled by Thomas Cranmer under the reign of Edward VI set forth a biblical foundation for the Church of England, and this was to be reversed now in the coming of Mary, who through her ecclesiastical advisor, Cardinal Pohl, proceeded against the Protestant preachers. Ridley, Nicholas Ridley, Thomas Cranmer, and I were imprisoned in separate cells at the Tower of London. I had had a brief stay there in the year of Henry VIII's death. I was under observation, ecclesiastical, not physical, under observation. In very comfortable surroundings, the Tower of London is one major structure dating from the Middle Ages, around which have been subsequently erected more recent buildings. It is a quadrangle and a very attractive place. It doesn't appear to be a prison. It is for those confined, but there are residences there for a sheriff and for a bailiff and for groundskeepers and all. I was to meet them very closely later. So it was rather comfortable confinement. It was not in a cell, as you would say, in this first opportunity under Henry VIII. which ended with his death. I was there just a few months and then he died. All the king's decrees expire at the death of the king. I was released. But now under Bloody Mary, confined with these two friends, at first in separate cells, and then because she, the Queen, was so active in confining many more heretics in her eyes, the space was needed, so the three of us were put in one cell. What a wonderful fellowship we enjoyed. We were all to go to the stake, but we enjoyed times of reading the scripture together. We read through the scriptures seven times together, and I say could find nothing of papism, of Romanism, And it confirmed and strengthened our wills and determination and certainty in the truth. Soon we were moved to the stinking Bocardo prison at Oxford University, where eventually stakes were erected outside Balliol College at Oxford. With what remarkable irony, this place was chosen. In the 14th century, John Wycliffe was a tutor and master at Balliol College, Oxford. Wycliffe died a natural death, no little accomplishment then for what he had taught. But his followers, poor priests, carried the message of biblical truth throughout England. Lollards, they were dubbed by the people and by their enemies, playing on la la la la la la, just babbling preachers. Lollards, though the term was nobly embraced by them. Wycliffe had been a master at Balliol College, and it was appropriate that Balliol College be recognized as the source from which these heretical truths of these Protestants had stemmed. You remember that Wycliffe was posthumously exhumed and excommunicated some 30 or 40 years after his death What a remarkable presumption this. He had been buried in sacred ground, in sanctified ground, as a communicant of the Church of Rome. The Church at the Council of Constance recognized that much of the teachings of John Hus at the Council there to be judged and finally condemned and burned. had stemmed from Wycliffe, had been much similar to Wycliffe, and acknowledging that, they ordered the exhumation of those remains, the burning of those bones, and the casting of those ashes into the brook. And the English historian has beautifully rhapsodized on that experience And he said that, like Wycliffe's teachings, his ashes have been strewn the world over. For they were cast into the brook Severn, from there into the larger river Swift, from there to the narrow sea, and then to the larger ocean. So that his ashes, like his testimony, has been spread the world over. But I parenthetically observe the presumption of the infallibility of the Church of Rome is brought into some serious question here. Were they correct when they buried Wycliffe? Or were they correct when they exhumed him and excommunicated him? I will let them answer that. for 18 months in the Boccardo prison at Oxford. Our prayer was that God would spare and strengthen the Princess Elizabeth to bring peace to the land. That God would prosper Tyndale's testament and spread it over the land. and that God would give us firmness in the hour of our death. We were asked to write by the authorities, to write views concerning whether or not the Mass is a propitiation for man's sin. Whether or not the elements, the wine and the bread are turned in fact to the real body and blood of Christ. and whether or not those remain so after the sacrament. They did not need to know what we believed. They wished by our own words in writing to condemn us. The exercise was not instructive, it was formality because the outcome had been predetermined. Today, in the city of Oxford you may visit Balliol College and you may observe that in the stone paved street adjacent to a stone wall in the midst of which is a wooden gate spanning an opening in the stone wall You can see on that wooden gate, very thick wood, the charred black of a burning in the middle of the paved street, so that the stake was evidently some 10, 12, perhaps 14 feet from that gate. So fierce were those flames, that that wooden gate is charred to this day. It was 1555, my 63rd year. The sentence had been handed down, the burning was prepared. My companion in flames was Nicholas Ridley. We had been in the days leading up to this Denali, housed and boarded in the very home, Ridley of the Sheriff, I of the Bailiff." Ridley said when he observed Mrs. Irish, the name of the wife of the Sheriff, Ridley said he was so glad he had never married because he observed in that home, she who must be obeyed. On the day of our burning, we were entertained at breakfast together by these, our gentle captors, and I thought to remark, what a thing is this Today we breakfast on earth and shall take supper in heaven." As we came to the spot, the stone, the large stone adjacent to where the stake had been erected, I observed that one whose foundation is the living stone need not fear the tempest. Ridley said to me, take heart brother, for God will either assuage the fury of the flame or give us grace to bear it. This burning was a civil action ordered by the church. The church sheds no blood and like Pilate washes her hands of responsibility. hands the heretic over to the secular arm to be appropriately judged. An actual bill of fare was discovered, an accounting that the civil treasury paid so many shillings and so many pence for wood so many shillings and pence for nails, so many shillings and pence for chain, so many shillings and pence for tinder, so many shillings and pence for the wages for four men. As a grocery list, this burning was prepared. I said to Ridley, be of good cheer, Master Ridley, We shall this day, by God's grace, light up such a candle in England as I trust will never be put out." Ridley's brother-in-law, Master Shipside, received from Ridley his fur-trimmed gown. We wore a Bristol gown somewhat like your academic gowns, but far less full. Mine had typically a leather belt and a leather rawhide hanging from it to which was tied my testament. It was always accessible. I didn't tell you that my description was tall and lean, ample hair, strong voice and an evil back. In my youth a tree limb had fallen on my back and from then on it was an evil back. Any change, some of you understand this, I dare say in your generation and century too. Whenever there was a change in weather and weariness from labor, and those months in that stinking prison. That evil back reminded me of that event in my youth. The fire was lighted. I say Master Shipside had prepared for us each a small packet of gunpowder. on a necklace, as it were, of twine, so that as soon as heat and flame reached it, it would explode and deny us the suffering of the fire any longer. That was an act of mercy. And we were translated from this world to a better. I came upon a statement by Erasmus, who looked upon the Lutherans, as we were all called, yet Protestants were called Lutherans before they were called Protestants. It was assumed everybody was a Lutheran who opposed Rome. Lutherans were accused of being sick in the head. of being insane, having departed from truth. Erasmus said that he had a very weak stomach. The smell of fish made him ill. He said, I have a Catholic heart and a Lutheran stomach. Well, our heart and stomach both. were consigned to flames. The only descendant of my family was a Dr. Sampson who was the husband of one of my sisters. For many years there were descendants through that parallel line. Just as Tyndale's dying prayer was answered, When at his burning, he prayed, Lord, open the King of England's eyes. And in that very same year, the King of England ordered a copy of the Scriptures in English be placed in every pulpit in the land. Just as Tyndale's vow that if God should spare his life, he would cause that a boy that driveth a plow would know more of the Scripture than did the clergy. In that very year of his burning, the Bishop Fox of Hereford declared that the common people know the Scriptures better than do the priests. So also in the providence of God, this dying confidence that we will light a candle which will never be put out, has remained true. Your land has received the gospel largely from England, but in my land that gospel light flickers low, has flickered low, but has never gone out altogether. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven.