Hans de Ruyter, with his Wife and Daughter, in the Year 1577

At Antwerp there was imprisoned for the sake of his faith, with his wife and daughter, in the year 1577, the brother Hans de Ruyter, a minister of the church of God, and a very experienced man in the Scriptures. But when he was assailed with many severe trials, and many fair promises of release and other things were held out to him, he let himself be moved to renounce his faith; indeed, he even urged his wife to do the same. But afterwards, hearing that he would have to die nevertheless, it produced such terror and dismay in him (seeing how he had let himself be seduced with lies by the blind leaders, he who ought to have been a leader of others), that with a distressed heart and an anxious mind (perceiving what he had let himself be brought to, and what was approaching him), he turned to the Fountain of grace, and prayed with scalding tears, out of the bitterness of his soul, that this apostasy from his Lord, and this denial of Him, might be forgiven him, and that he might be received back into favor with the prodigal son; and he would steadfastly hold to this all the days of his life, and let nothing turn him away from it again. This he not only promised with words, but also proved it indeed, for whatever temptation, pain, or torture was afterward inflicted upon him, he steadfastly held to the faith he had taken up again, so that he was finally burned for it, with his wife and daughter; and they are now waiting under the altar, till the number of their brothers and sisters is fulfilled.

NOTE. In the beginning of the preceding year, 1577, we showed the perverse zeal of certain followers of the Calvinistic doctrine, who, at Middelborgh in Zealand, had obtained so much that the Anabaptists, who had fled out of the Romish Babylon and settled there, were forbidden to carry on the temporal occupation or trade by which they had to sustain their life; and this because they refused the swearing of the civil oath, and the use of external weapons of war.

Thereupon, as shown in that place, the Prince of Orange commanded the magistrate of said city to allow the aforementioned people to live in quietness, and not to oppress their consciences.

But the magistrates there, instead of heeding this as coming from high authority, acted entirely contrary to it; so much so that the Anabaptists who lived there, and especially those in the country, were compelled to turn once more to the Prince with a humble supplication, to obtain their religious liberty; and he thereupon, for the second time, wrote and sent the following charge to said magistracy: