I Will Stay In Jail to the End of My Days Before I Make a Butchery of My Conscience
In this you greatly rejoice, even though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been distressed by various trials. 1 Peter 1:6 God often allows for situations that are outside the control of the Church to arise that make life difficult for us. Like the way a blacksmith uses fire, these circumstances are applied to our formerly hard and metallic lives, melting away that which isn’t pure and allowing God to shape us in a new way. Trials are times of purification and transformation (at least for those who can endure them) and though they are painful should be seen as a means by which the Lord does things in us and in the world. In my previous post I spoke about the tumultuous period in English history that ranged from the reigns of Henry VIII to Elizabeth I. Protestants went from being a secretive underground movement to being legal under Henry, followed by a short period of peace with Edward, to a horrifying season of persecution by Bloody Mary, to seeing England turn in
