To Loose Those That Are Appointed to Death by W. A. S.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Oct 14, 1909

“To Loose Those That Are Appointed to Death”

By W. A. S.

A Token of Deliverance

Two men, in Queen Mary's day, were lying in the Salisbury prison condemned to the stake for Protestant heresy. The chancellor of Salisbury had urged immediate execution of the sentence, but the sheriffs had delayed matters, disapproving of the cruelty of the clergy. The chancellor, however, had brought matters to the point where little further delay seemed possible, when suddenly he died. Fox, the old martyrologist, says of an incident associated with this persecutor's death:—

Concerning whose death this cometh by the way to be noted, that these two aforesaid, John Hunt and Richard White, being the same time in a low and dark dungeon, being Saturday, toward evening, according to their accustomed manner fell to evening prayer; who, kneeling there together, as they should begin their prayer, suddenly fell both to such a strange weeping and tenderness of heart (but how, they could not tell), that they could not pray one word, but so continued a great space, bursting out in tears. After that night was past, and the morning come, the first word they heard was that the chancellor their great enemy, was dead; the time of whose death they found to be the same hour when as they fell in such a sudden weeping.

Their bitterest enemy being dead, they continued a little longer in prison, and were released by the death of Queen Mary and the accession of Elizabeth.

Brought by a Bird

In the days of persecution in Bohemia, one Matthias Dolanscious was arrested for heresy. Cast into prison in the city of Prague, he endured much suffering by cruel neglect. But the same God who fed Elijah by the ravens was watching over his children in Bohemia. We can not question the ways of Providence. Ofttimes the servants of the Lord were strengthened to bear witness by martyrdom to the glory of God. But the work of Dolanscious was evidently not finished. The extraordinary manner in which relief came to him at this time is thus related:—

One day, when he was on the point of starving, he cast his eyes toward the grate of his prison windows, and saw a little bird, perhaps a carrier-pigeon, sitting there with something in his bill. His curiosity led him thither, the bird flew away, but left a bit of cloth, in which, when he took it up, he found a piece of gold; with this he found means to furnish himself with bread until he obtained full deliverance.—American Tract Society Primer, No. 2.

Held Powerless

A young woman, Mrs. Bosome, visiting at Richmond, near London, in the time of the cruel Queen Mary, was pressed by her mother to attend church. She refused to turn and bow with the congregation, according to Catholic form, and was arrested by the church warden and constable, and ordered to appear next day before these officers at Kingston, across the River Thames. Suspected heretics were being burned all about in those times. Fox says:—

The next day, according as they were assigned, they came to Kingston to appear before the foresaid officers, who, at the same time (as it chanced) were going over the ferry, and meeting them by the way [leading up] from the ferry] saluted them by their names; but at that time had no further power to speak unto them. Afterward, as they [the officers] were in the boat going over, they knocked their hands, stamped and stared, lamenting that they had let them so pass their hands.

The ferryman reported this afterward. The young woman, going on to London, “escaped their cruelty,” Fox says, “through the secret working (no doubt) of the Lord, who in all his works, and evermore, be praised. Amen.”

“For he hath looked down from the height of his sanctuary; from heaven did the Lord behold the earth; to hear the groaning of the prisoner; to loose those that are appointed to death; to declare the name of the Lord in Zion, and his praise in Jerusalem.” W. A. S.