Wendelmutha Klaessen.
In the town of Monnikendam, on the shores of the Zuyder Zee, there was living at this time a widow named Wendelmutha Klaessen, who had sorrowed greatly for the death of the partner of her life, but had also shed other and still more bitter tears over the sad state of her own soul. She had found the peace which Christ gives, and had clung to the Saviour with a constancy and a courage which some of her friends called obstinacy. The purity of her life created a sanctifying influence around her; and as she openly avowed her full trust in Christ, she was arrested, taken to the fortress of Woerden, and soon after to the Hague to be tried there.
The more steadfast her faith was, the more the priests set their hearts on getting her to renounce it. Monks were incessantly going to see her, and omitted no means of shaking her resolution. They assailed her especially on the subject of transubstantiation, and required her to worship as if they were God the little round consecrated wafers of which they made use in the mass.[[794]] But Wendelmutha, certain that what they presented to her as God was nothing more than thin bread, replied—‘I do not adore them, I abhor them.’ The priests, provoked at seeing her cling so tenaciously to her ideas, urged her kinsfolk and her friends to try all means of getting her to retract her speeches. This they did.
Among these friends was a noble lady who tenderly loved Wendelmutha.[[795]] These two Christian women, although they were as one soul, had nevertheless different characters. The Dutch lady was full of anxiety and distress at the prospect of what awaited her friend, and said to her in the trouble of her soul—‘Why not be silent, my dear Wendelmutha,[[796]] and keep what thou believest in thine own heart, so that the schemes of those who want to take away thy life may be baffled?’ Wendelmutha replied, with simple and affecting firmness—‘Dost thou not know, my sister, the meaning of these words—With the heart man believeth unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation?’
Another day, one of her kinsfolk, after having endeavored in vain to shake her resolution, said to her—‘You look as if you had no fear of death. But wait a little, you have not yet tasted it.’ She replied immediately with firm hope—‘I confess that I have not yet tasted it; but I also know that I never shall taste it; for Christ has endured it for me and has positively said—If a man keep my saying he shall never see death.’
Shortly afterwards, Wendelmutha appeared before the Dutch Supreme Court of Justice, and answered that nothing should separate her from her Lord and her God. When taken back into prison, the priest urged her to confess. ‘Do this,’ he said, ‘while you are still in life.’ She replied—‘I am already dead, and God is my life. Jesus Christ has forgiven me all my sins, and if I have offended any one of my neighbors, I humbly beg him to pardon me.’
On the 20th of November, 1527, the officers of justice conducted her to execution. They had placed near her a certain monk who held in his hand a crucifix, and asked her to kiss the image in token of veneration. She replied—‘I know not this wooden Saviour; he whom I know is in heaven at the right hand of God, the Almighty Saviour.’[[797]] She went modestly to the stake: and when the flames gathered round her she peacefully closed her eyes, bowed down her head, as if she were falling asleep, and gave up her soul to God, while the fire reduced her body to ashes.
Other victims besides were sacrificed. Among their number was an Augustinian monk of Tournay, whose name was Henry. Having been brought to a knowledge of the Gospel, and finding the inactivity of cloister life insupportable, he betook himself to Courtrai, a neighboring town, scattered there the seed of faith, married, and to preaching added the example of the domestic virtues. Arrested at Courtrai,[[798]] he was committed to prison at Tournay. He was tried, deprived of the symbols of the priesthood, and condemned to the flames. At this moment, the sense of the blessedness which he was about to enjoy in the presence of the Saviour so powerfully possessed his soul that, unmindful of the priests and the judges who were around him, he began singing aloud that fine old hymn attributed to Ambrose and to Augustine—Te Deum Laudamus. The spectators went away from the stake touched by the courage of his soul and the greatness of his faith.[[799]]
The ‘Revived Gospel.’
The Reformation therefore showed itself to be in truth the revived Gospel, as it has been called.[[800]] It was this Gospel, not only on account of its conformity with the writings of the apostles, but for yet other reasons. In the presence of the splendid palaces of a proud hierarchy, it restored apostolical poverty and humility to a declining Christendom. In the midst of death it created life. Light sprang up in the midst of darkness; devotion and self-sacrifice stood face to face with monkish and sacerdotal egotism. It was a holy religion, holy to the pitch of heroism, and formed Christians whose life, full of good works, was crowned by the triumphant death of martyrdom. This faith, this courage, and these deaths were the preparation for and the introduction to the formidable and immortal conflict which was afterwards to make the Church of the Netherlands illustrious. They were only the outworks of the fortress which this people would one day erect against the oppression of the papacy. They formed the junction between the lowly walls which the faith of the little ones was at this time constructing in these lands and the glorious building which was afterwards erected. They served as the beginning of a great future. Moreover, these lives and these deaths were not isolated events. They were continually recurring in all countries during the epoch of the Reformation, and they filled it with glory. Nothing like them has been produced either by Rome or by systems of philosophy.