Martyrs Mirror 1047FAES DIRCKS, AND TWO OTHERS, A. D. 1570

In the year 1570, on the 7th of April, there was apprehended for the Word of God and the testimony of Jesus, at Gouda, in Holland, a pious follower of Christ, named Faes Dircks, a chairmaker by trade. Afterwards, the 27th of May, he was very unmercifully and tyrannically tortured by the bloodthirsty servants of antichrist, and led forth under the blue sky, and on the 30th of May of the same year, put to death, and burned for the genuine faith of the truth, following the footsteps of his Lord and Master Christ Jesus. Some time prior to this two other pious followers of Christ were put to. death at Gouda, for the testimony of Jesus, one of whom according to the counsel of God, was not yet baptized upon his faith; but the God of all grace, who knows the heart, mind and thoughts of all men, accepted in him the will for the deed. Thus they suffered with Christ, and shall be received. with Him into eternal glory, at that time when all the earthly, carnal generation of men shall weep and lament over themselves eternally.

Subsequently, when Gouda was taken by the troops of the prince of Orange, it was deliberated upon to exhume the priest who had been the cause of the imprisonment and death of said Faes Dircks, and of the dispersion and persecution of many of those who feared God. They afterwards changed their mind, but hired a man for about four guilders, who took down the bones of Faes Dircks from the scaffold, and opened the grave of the aforesaid priest, who had previously died, and been interred in the church of the Franciscans, near the high altar, and then laid the bones of Faes Dircks upon the body of the priest; thus deriding this traitor, because he had deemed the God fearing unworthy to live with him in the same town, and, after their death, their bodies unworthy of burial, but they had to be given as food to the birds of heaven. But at the speedy coming of Christ from heaven, this idolatrous priest shall find, when it will be too late for repentance, who of them both will be acknowledged and accepted by the chief Shepherd as an acceptable sheep, or as a rejected goat.

Concerning this martyr Faes Dircks~ we have obtained three examinations, namely, two without torture and one on the rack, just as the same have been extracted by the secretary there from the town records of Gouda, which we therefore will communicate to our fellow believers for the greater confirmation of the foregoing account; they read as follows.