Having reached the scaffold, a Christian friend standing by called out to her to turn to the people, and entreat them to forgive her if in anything she had offended them. This she at once did in the frankest and most cordial manner. The monk again presented to her the crucifix, which she pushed aside with her hand, and turning away, said, annoyed by his harassing solicitations, "Why do you tempt me? The Lord, my God, is in heaven above." Still he continued urging her to recant with such persistency as was offensive even to the executioner, who advised her to abide by God, and not to suffer herself to be drawn away from him. Meanwhile she took her place at the stake at which she was to be burned, and was unmoved at the sight of the fire. The executioner having made ready the cords to strangle her, she took off her neckerchief or scarf; and when the cord was fastened around her neck, she was again assailed by the monk, who to the last moment of her life evinced extreme solicitude for her conversion; whether from a sincere though blinded concern for her welfare, or from an officious impertinent disposition, it is not easy to determine. "My good Wendelmuta," said he, "do you wish to die as a Christian? Do you renounce all heresy?" "Yes I do," she replied. "That is right," continued the monk. Are you likewise sorry that you have erred?" "I erred formerly," she cried out, "for that I am sorry; but this is no error, it is the right way; I cleave to God." These were the last words she spoke. As soon as she had uttered them the executioner proceeded to strangle her; on feeling which she closed her eyes, as if about to fall asleep, and life became extinct without a struggle, before the flames had seized upon her to consume her.

1 Brandt, vol. i., p. 56.-Foxe's Acts and Mon., vol. iv., p. 377.-Braght's Martyrology of the Baptists, vol. i., pp. 40-44. In this last work she is named "Weynken Claes" Though included among the martyrs of the Baptists, it is doubtful whether she be longed to that sect. She was not accused of any heterodox opinions about baptism, which she probably would have been had she denied the validity of infant baptism.

1

YSKEN DIRKS belonged to the body of the Anabaptists, who form so large a proportion of the vast numbers that were slain in the Netherlands for the Word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ.

The fate of the Anabaptists was peculiarly hard. Not only were they treated with unusual severity by the government, but strong prejudices and antipathies were entertained by the other Reformers against them, not merely against the party

called by that name, which, under the influence of a fanatical enthusiasm, dishonoured and injured the Reformation by their extravagance and insubordination to civil authority, but against those Anabaptists who had no share in these excesses, who condemned them, who were as sincere in their loyalty as they were fervent in their piety. These prejudices and antipathies, perpetuated in a great measure through ignorance and misrepresentation, have been transmitted to our own time. Even the best of the Anabaptists of that period are still very generally regarded as a moody, whimsical sort of beings, who, setting sober judgment aside, were actuated by mere fantastical feeling, and who are rather to be contrasted than compared or equalled with the martyrs of the Lutheran and reformed churches, as if there was an entire opposition in all material points between the two parties. An impartial investigation into their history-in conducting which we ought not to trust implicity to the statements of their opponents-will teach us to discriminate. The Anabaptist martyrs were in error, as we believe, in denying the validity of infant baptism, and were mistaken on some other questions; but they held the great fundamental articles of Christian truth, particularly the doctrine of justification exclusively through faith in the blood of Christ, and they displayed under their sufferings much of the spirit of Christ. How scriptural, devout, edifying, and consolatory, were the sentiments they expressed in their letters, written from their prisons to their Christian friends! How fervent

1 One of the other tenets maintained by them was, that while Christ was born of the Virgin Mary, he did not derive his human body from her flesh, it being formed in her womb by the immediate operation of the Holy Spirit. But the Scriptures expressely say that Christ was "the seed of the woman" (Gen. iii. 15); that he was con ceived in the womb of the Virgin, and was "the fruit of her womb" (Luke i. 32, 42); that he was "made of the seed of David according to the flesh" (Rom. i. 3); and that he was made of a woman" (Gal. iv. 4). See also Heb. ii. 14, 16, 17. The argument of the Anabaptists, that the Virgin being a sinful woman, nothing but an impure being could proceed from her flesh, whereas Christ was perfectly pure (Braght's Martyrology of the Baptists, vol. i., p. 308), evinces a commendable zeal for the purity of Christ's humanity, but the premises do not warrant the conclusion. The human nature of Christ was formed of the flesh of the Virgin without sin, by the miraculous power of the Holy Ghost (Luke i. 35).

and disinterested their love to their Christian brethren, whose names their enemies could not extort from them by the most inhuman tortures! How unshrinking their courage, and triumphant their faith in meeting the most terrible deaths! No Christian person who, laying prejudice aside, reads with candour the truthful and touching narratives of their martyrdom, can hesitate in coming to the conclusion that many of them, both male and female, as little deserve to be reproached as misguided visionary zealots, and were governed by as sincere a love to Christ, and as ardent a love to the truth, according to the measure of their light, as Luther, Zwingle, and Calvin, whose names are sanctified and immortalized in the memory of the church. They were, indeed, almost exclusively confined to the humbler ranks of life, and their names are unknown to fame. But the sacrifice they made of their lives for God, was not on that account the less precious to Him, nor did that prevent them from being included, and we believe that thousands and tens of thousands of them are included, among that honoured company described in the Apocalypse: "And one of the elders answered, saying unto me, What are these which are arrayed in white robes? and whence came they? And I said unto him, Sir, thou knowest. And he said unto me, These are they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Therefore are they before the throne of God, and serve him day and night in his temple; and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes" (Rev. vii. 13–17).

The character and spirit of the excellent woman of whose sufferings and martyrdom we are now to lay before the reader a brief account, afford a fair representation of the character and spirit generally of the maligned body of martyrs with whom she was associated in ecclesiastical fellowship.1

By whatever other means Lysken was brought to the knowledge 1 Van Braght's Martyrology of the Baptists, printed for the Hanserd Knollys Society, 1s our chief authority for this sketch. This work contains interesting narratives of many other pious female Anabaptists, who intrepidly suffered death for their principles, in the various forms of beheading, burning, drowning, and burying alive.

of the truth, it is evident, from the memorials left concerning her, that the Sacred Scriptures were the chief. Being a woman of an active and inquiring mind, she eagerly perused them in her secret hours, drinking deep at the great fountain of Divine truth, and thereby she discovered that Popery is a system of imposture, and the mystery of iniquity. This discovery was not inoperative. Too many in those times of persecution, while abhorring the system of Popery, yet joined in its idolatrous and impure worship, from the dread of personal danger. But true to the light which shone upon her mind, Lysken having renounced the Popish faith in her heart, deserted its worship, and openly professed the doctrines of the Reformation, undaunted by the persecution which awaited all who avowed or were suspected of a leaning to these doctrines.

She was married, probably in the year 1549 or 1550, to Jeronimus Segerson, an intelligent young man of high Christian character. and also a convert to the reformed and Anabaptist principles. They were united before the church at Antwerp, of which they were members, the Anabaptists refusing to have this rite performed by the Popish clergy; "which was made a matter of reproach and accusation by their enemies, as if they encouraged and practised licentiousness."1

Having both attached themselves to the Reformation and to the Anabaptists, they were surrounded by the snares of death; and in entering into wedlock, they could hardly have been without some presentiments that they might be called, as thousands in their native country had been called before them, to die as martyrs--to seal their faith with their blood. That they had such forebodings appears from one of Segerson's letters, written to his brethren and sisters in the church, after his imprisonment. "This is the hour," says he, “regarding which I so long besought the Lord, knowing myself to be unworthy to suffer for his name's sake."2 To human nature this

1 "When marriage became a civil act in the Netherlands, in 1574 and 1580, the Baptists ceased to marry in their assemblies, and resorted to the civil authorities."-Braght's Martyrology of the Baptists, note by editor, vol. i., p. 374.

2 Braght's Martyrology of the Baptists, vol. i., p. 393.