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The Goose
“If he were prophetic, he must have meant Martin Luther, who shone about a hundred years after.” So wrote John Foxe in his sixteenth-century Book of Martyrs, referring to a statement attributed to the Bohemian reformer Jan Hus on the occasion of his death. Convicted of heresy in 1415 by the Council of Constance, Hus—according to a story that originated some years after the fact—turned to his executioners shortly before his sentence was carried out and remarked, “Today you burn a goose, but in one hundred years a swan will arise which you will prove unable to boil or roast … View Resource
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How the Scots Changed the World
The sixteenth-century Scottish divines (pastors and theologians) who labored to build a national church characterized by sound doctrine and biblical worship never realized how far their influence would reach. They aimed, after all, to reform the Kirk, not to change the world. Ultimately, they did both. Their efforts bore fruit not only in a redefined church for the Scots, but in theological commitments, liturgical patterns, social customs, and political persuasions for people around the globe. The extensive impact that the Scottish Reformers had was not due to any real novelty in their beliefs. The men who engineered the reformation of … View Resource

Aaron Denlinger
Dr. Aaron C. Denlinger is department chair in Latin at Arma Dei Academy in Highlands Ranch, Colo., adjunct professor of church history at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, and a research fellow for the Puritan Studies Program of the University of the Free State, South Africa.