Hans Knevel, in the Year 1572

As many know, the world has become so corrupted through the false teachings of antichrist, and iniquity has, according to the prediction of Christ (Matthew 24, verse 12), so gained the upper hand, that the princes and kings of the earth have been utterly turned, by her seductive wine of fornication (Revelation 17, verse 2; Revelation 18, verse 3), from the reasonable nature born in them — they who usually are inclined to show some love and mercy to their own friends and relatives, and also to those who love them and do them good. This reasonableness seems to have almost ceased in many princes and rulers of this world, so that in place of the reasonableness born in them they are now like irrational beasts, which by nature are born to be taken and slain. Second Peter 2, verse 12; Jude 1, verse 10. This also appeared, among many other instances, about the year 1572, in the city of Antwerp, where they arrested a pious follower of Christ named Hans Knevel. He was a young single man and a cloth shearer by trade. The circumstances that led to his imprisonment were these: it happened that one of his closest friends became known to the margrave and to one of his servants, and they then laid plans to arrest him. This plot was made known to Hans Knevel in his shop where he worked. So he very earnestly warned his friend about it, and advised him to leave, saying that he would go with him. So they went together and settled at Hamburg; and after living there for a time, Hans Knevel went back to Antwerp again, seeking to make a living there by selling wool. So, about ten o'clock, the margrave came with his servants into the inn where he lodged, and asked him: "Is not your name Hans Knevel?" He answered: "Yes." They said: "You are an Anabaptist; you must go with us." And he was also able to tell him that he had gone from there to Hamburg with his close friend Steven Janss Dilburgh. And so he was shut up in a dark dungeon, and on the following Monday brought before the lords: the margrave, the bailiff, two judges, and the clerk of the criminal court. Now when this friend of God, Hans Knevel, out of modesty hesitated to sit down at once, the bailiff said: "Sit down and do what you are told; you obey your people, you must also obey us." When he asked him what he held concerning their infant baptism, Hans answered that he had read nothing of infant baptism in the New Testament, and therefore he could hold nothing concerning it. Question. "Were you baptized upon your faith?" Answer. "Yes." Question. "How long ago?" He told them, and that it took place between Chronenburgh and the Oever. This they wrote down, as he understood. Question. "Where have you attended preaching, and whom have you seen there?" He named several persons to them, and some who had already been offered up. Then they said: "You name to us people who are out of the country, and people who have been burned; we want to know those who live in this place, and who your teachers, ministers and informants are." And they said that such people as he, the prisoner, was had no liberty anywhere, and had to roam about everywhere. Hans replied that Christ Himself also had no liberty anywhere. They took it ill that he, the prisoner, sought to compare himself to Christ. The margrave said: "At Hamburg you people have no liberty either." Hans replied: "There, however, they deprive no one of property and life, as is done here." Margrave. "What do they do there, then?" Hans. "They are sent out of the city." Margrave. "Then they have to go into another one again." Hans. "Yes, but they will not have gone over all the cities of Israel till their redemption is at the door." Matthew 10, verse 23. At this they laughed. Margrave. "We will send you learned men, and if you will let yourself be instructed, mercy will be shown you." Hans. "Yes, you will show me such mercy that I will have my head cut off." Margrave. "No, but we would release you." Hans. "Even if it were as you say, you would love my body, but hate my soul." Margrave. "No, but I love your body, and your soul still much more, since you are young yet, and have been brought to it innocently; but if you will not listen, you will fare like the rest."

Hans said that he was well satisfied, and so they parted. Afterwards these prisoners of the Lord were brought for three days in a row before a priest, who tried with all his might to make them believe his false doctrine, telling them many things about their old custom, which this friend of God did not think worth writing to his friends. The priest especially made many words over Romans, chapter 13, by which he wanted to justify the murdering and slaying carried out by the Romish church, saying that the magistracy did not bear the sword in vain, and that it must therefore be obeyed. Hans replied that he was willing to obey the magistracy in customs, taxes and the like; but that the priest ought to be ashamed to seek to justify their wicked murdering and burning even by the Scriptures; and he asked him where Christ and His apostles had ever done this. He further asked the priest why he had come to him. The priest answered: "To win your soul." Hans Knevel told him that if he sought to win souls, he should go around in the city, into the brothels, the drinking houses and the tennis courts, and to those who shed so much innocent blood, and seek to win their souls. Christ had already won his own soul. So this prisoner disputed five different times with the priest. Afterwards he was put on the rack several times; but the Lord his God, in whose grace he trusted, faithfully helped him according to His promise. When he appeared before the lords again, he was severely rebuked for refusing to listen to the learned men whom they had sent. Hans replied: "Your learned men wanted to make me believe in infant baptism, of which the Scriptures nowhere speak"; and he offered to show the lords the Scriptures about the true Christian baptism, but the lords did not want to hear it, claiming that they did not understand the matter. Hans asked how they then dared to judge such an important matter, involving body and soul, and one which, by their own saying, they did not understand.

Having been held in harsh confinement for about nine days in the Emperor's Chair, he was summoned again before the margrave and the clerk of the criminal court. The margrave told him that he had received a letter from the Duke, to the effect that the prisoner must be examined still further, or more rigorously. Hans replied that he could not give them any further information. So he had to go on the rack again. When they could get nothing more out of him, they released him from the rack. Hans said: "How can you torment us like this, when no one complains of us, that we have injured anyone?" The margrave said: "You will not obey the authorities." Hans replied:

"We will gladly obey the authorities in all taxes, customs and excise duties. Indeed, we would be sorry if we withheld from the authorities one stiver of what is their due." They then compared him to the Munsterites. Hans said that his faith was as different from the Munsterite sect as heaven is from the earth. And after they had finished tormenting, tempting and otherwise abusing him as they pleased, and he, the prisoner, could not be moved in any way, since he was firmly built on the cornerstone Christ Jesus, he was burned at the stake in the marketplace at Antwerp, about the year 1572, confirming the faith of the truth with his death and blood, as an instructive and lasting example to all true Christians; for he has fought the fight, finished his course, obtained the crown of eternal glory through the grace of God, and now rests with all his fellow soldiers who have striven lawfully (Second Timothy 2, verse 5), under the altar of Christ Jesus.

We have taken this account chiefly from Hans Knevel's own letter, which he wrote at Antwerp, from prison, to his dear brother Steven Janss Dilburgh and his wife Leentjen at Hamburg; in which he sets forth at length the firm foundation of his faith and living hope in God's grace and blessed promises, which we have left out to avoid being long-winded, as we have also done with a large number of similar writings.

Persecuted, but not forsaken. Second Corinthians 4, verse 9.