Tjaert Reynerts, in the Year 1539

About the year 1539, there was also a God-fearing peasant, named Tjaert Reynerts, who lived near Harlingen, in Friesland. He was brought as a prisoner to Leeuwarden, where he had to suffer much for the truth from the bloodthirsty papists. Proverbs 29, verse 10. [n651-1] The cause of his imprisonment was that, out of compassion and brotherly love, he had secretly harbored Menno Simons, in his great misery, in his house. When this was brought to the notice of the enemies, he was arrested and examined very cruelly; but he, as a valiant hero and witness of Jesus (Revelation 2, verse 13; Revelation 20, verse 4), would not forsake his Creator in this extremity, but freely and undauntedly confessed the faith of the everlasting truth against these tyrants and bloodthirsty men. For this reason he was, at that place, as a chief of murderers (according to the example of his Lord Jesus), placed upon the wheel, though even his greatest enemies bore witness that he was an upright and pious man. First Timothy 3, verse 7.

At this time the tyranny and persecution against the God-fearing Christians was very dreadful, so that the envious papists, who hated the truth, had likenesses made of many of the principal teachers and overseers of the church of Jesus Christ, and had them posted up on doors, gates, and other public places, promising a large sum of money to anyone who would deliver them into the hands of the officers and executioners. And the God-fearing Menno Simons, who was zealous for God, was one of the principal teachers and elders in this bloody and perilous time. By his glorious admonitions, and by his writings from the Word of God, he so flourished that none of his adversaries dared come before him in an open and free scriptural disputation, though he at various times and very earnestly requested it; and through this sound doctrine and Christian admonition, and through the power of the Most High, this same Menno Simons drew, turned, and won to God a great number of men, from dark and erring popery; indeed, from the dumb idols to the living God. Therefore the servants of antichrist were embittered the more against him, and, in order to quench and hinder this, they had a dreadful decree proclaimed against him, in the year 1543, throughout all West Friesland; in it all malefactors and murderers were offered remission of their crimes, the pardon of the Emperor, the freedom of the country, and one hundred Carl Guilders, if they could deliver Menno Simons into the hands of the torturers and executioners. But though these envious men thirsted for his blood with such exceeding tyranny and great bitterness, and sought and persecuted him even to death, yet the Almighty God preserved him, and most miraculously protected him from the designs of all his enemies, so that they could not carry out their tyrannical desires on him; for he died a natural death, as God had appointed it for him, at Wuestefeld, near Luebeck, on the 13th of January, in the year 1559, in his sixty-sixth year. Psalm 31, verse 15; Job 14, verse 5; Psalm 139, verse 16.

Whoever wishes may read Menno Simons, contra Gallius Faber, folio 23, where the offering of Tjaert Reynerts is referred to.* [n651-2]