Providential Deliverances by W. A. S.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jul 15, 1909

Providential Deliverances

By W. A. S.

An Informer's Lips Sealed

THE Catholic authorities of Leeuwarden, Holland, were making a savage effort to rid the district of Baptists. In 1542 an edict had been published against Menno Symons, a godly and scholarly man, leader of this sect in that time. It was declared that any who sheltered him should forfeit goods and life, and “one hundred gold Carolus-guilders” were promised to any one giving information leading to his arrest. Menno Symons' daughter told of one providential deliverance at that time:—

A man agreed with the magistrates to deliver her father up for a sum of money, or lose his head. One day he went with an officer to arrest him. Menno passed by in a boat, but the man said nothing until he saw Menno land some distance off, and then he exclaimed, “See! the bird is flown.” The officer called him a villain. “Why did he not speak before?” He answered, “I could not speak; for my tongue was held.” The would-be informer lost his head! The sleuth-hound persecutors of Menno Symons missed their prey. He died a natural death at the age of sixty-five.—'Story of the Anabaptists,' by E. C. Pike.

The same God who sent his angel to shut the mouths of lions in Daniel's day, must have sent his angel to seal the lips of the informer.

The Opened Prison Door

Two young Baptist women were arrested in Leeuwarden, Holland, in 1549. One Elizabeth was tortured by thumb-screws, and drowned in a sack. Death by immersion in water seemed to the Catholics of Holland, as to the Protestants of Zurich, the proper method of putting Baptists to death. The other young woman, Hadewyck, was waiting in prison for trial, and perhaps torture and death. T. J. Van Braght, a Dutch author, in his “Martyrology of the Churches of Christ Commonly Called Baptists,” says:—

As she was praying, a voice came to her and called, “Hadewyck!” Looking up and around, she perceived no one, and proceeded with her ardent prayer. She heard the voice a second time, and still seeing no one, persevered in her supplications, until the same voice a third time said to her, “Hadewyck, I tell you to depart!” Seeing the door open, she put on her cloak, and went out of the prison.

She knew not then where she would hide herself, and went, for the present, into the church, where she heard it said by those who were walking there, that the gates of the city were shut in consequence of a female Baptist having escaped from prison without its being known by what means, and as many suspicions were excited that it might be by means of witchcraft, great exertions were used everywhere to discover her.

Leaving the church, she immediately heard the drummer giving notice in the street that whoever should give information of her should receive a reward of a hundred guilders, but that whoever should conceal her should incur a fine of one hundred fifty guilders, which accordingly increased her alarm.

At last she found refuge in the garret of a priest's house, through a weak-witted servant whom she had known, and by whom she sent a message to her brother-in-law, who came by boat to the steps at the rear of the house, on the canal, and took her away. She was spared to work for God many years, and died a natural death at Emden.

W. A. S.