Numbered With the Martyrs - Henry Forest

This is taken from "Foxe's Book of Martyrs" and intended to impress upon those of us that take our freedom of religion for granted that there have been, and continues to be, men and women who pay with their lives in order to worship God. Let us be grateful for what the Lord has provided us and lament and pray for those who do not have what we have. Doctrine is important, vitally important, but where saints are shedding their blood to worship God I pray that we will be forgiving of their errors for those societies do not foster a great understanding of deep theology. Yet if they have placed their faith in Christ they are still our brothers and sisters with whom we will share eternity.

Today we look at Henry Forest, a Scotsman who was moved by the pious witness of Patrick Hamilton and paid for it with his life.

Within a few years of the martyrdom of Master Patrick Hamilton, one Henry Forest, a young man born in Linlithgow..., affirmed that Master Patrick Hamilton died a martyr. For this he was apprehended, and put in prison by James Beaton, Archbishop of St. Andrews, who, shortly after, caused a certian friar, named Walter Laing, to hear his confession. When Henry Forest had declared his conscience, how he thought Master Patrick to be a good man and not heretical, and wrongfully to be put to death, the friar came and uttered to the bishop the confession that he had heard, which before was not throroughly known. Hereupon it followed that, his confession being brought as sufficient probation against him, Henry Forest was concluded to be a heretic, equal in iniquity with Master Patrick Hamilton, and given to the secular judges, to suffer death.

When the day came for his death, and that he should first be degraded, he was brought before the clergy... As soon as he entered in at the door, and saw the faces of the clergy, perceiving whereunto they tended, he cried with a loud voice, saying, "[Shame] on falsehood! [Shame] on false friars, revealers of confession! After this day let no man ever trust any false friars, contemners of God's word, and deceivers of men!" After his degradation, he suffered death for his faithful testimony of the truth of Christ and of His Gospel, at the north church-stile of the abbey church of St. Andrew, to the intent that all the people of Forfar might see the fire, and so might be the more feared from falling into the doctrine which they term heresy.

This faithful saint stood firm to defend the truth knwoing it would more than likely cost him his life. Even when they brought him in to be ridiculed before death he did not lose courage and plead for his life, he spoke truth and stood by the side of Christ his Lord. I have long seen an ever increasing dearth of Christians in this country of ours that will not do the same though it costs them nothing. Let the faithful witness of Henry Forest, and others like him, move you to be vessels for truth to the glory of our precious father in heaven.