Patrick Hamilton Quotes
I will rather be content that my body burn this fire for confession of my faith in Christ than my soul should burn in the fire of Hell for denying the same.
Hamilton had studied with Martin Luther at Wittenberg and returned to Scotland where he converted many from the Catholic Church. He was offered a chance to recant and spare his life but he refused. He became the first Protestant Martyr in Scotland and his death brought many new converts.
Patrick Hamilton, 1527-1587, Scottish Abbot of Fern of Ross-Shire, First Major Protestant Reformer of Scotland, Last words while being burned at the stake for heresy, c. 1527
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
Martyrs to most Muslims are people who die when defending Islam, which includes under the definitions of the Muslim Fundamentalists murdering innocent civilians including women and children. In addition to ascending directly to heaven, the male martyr gets 72 virgins in Paradise.
In August of 1572 Catholics in Paris led by the Marshall and his soldiers attacked the homes of all known Huguenots, murdering the inhabitants. Tavannes rode through the streets of Paris on his horse shouting the first quotation to his troops who would murder the helpless Protestants. The frenzy spread to the countryside. When it was over 50,000 innocent, unsuspecting Protestants had been murdered. When asked how he, a military marshal felt about such a one sided action against unarmed civilians he responded with the second quotation. The event came to be known as the Massacre of Saint Bartholomew as it commenced on that Saint’s day.
This is a particularly interesting historical quotation because it succinctly gives a history of the various horrors of religious strife in British history—a history that was very well known to the American Founding Fathers and the general American Colonial population. This history was the major driver behind the public insistence for the Bill of Rights and the 1st Amendment which erected a wall of separation between church and state with government never favoring or abetting any particular religion.
Patrick Hamilton was a Scottish churchman and an early Protestant Reformer in Scotland. He travelled to Europe, where he met several of the leading reformed thinkers, before returning to Scotland to preach. He was tried as a heretic by Archbishop James Beaton, found guilty and handed over to secular authorities to be burnt at the stake in St Andrews.
