JANNEKEN AND NOELE.— A.D. 1558.
A young female, named Janneken, was apprehended at Antwerp for her faith. Before the magistrates, she made a fearless confession of her faith. The margrave said, ” Janneken, if you will recant, I will show you favour; do as I wish you, and I will grant you your life.” But she answered, ” The life that you would give me I do not desire ; your promises are vain, and fragile as a reed, and would bring me into greater trouble. All that trust in man, are accursed.
A teacher, named Balthazar, endeavoured to persuade her that God was in the sacraments. She would not admit this, but said, “You profane God by your body ; only read the Paternoster.” He, having read that, she said. observe that you read that he is in heaven ? how then dare you assert that he is in the sacrament?” At the tribunal, she was asked by the sheriff, if she had been re-baptized ? She said, ” If you Avill question concerning luy faith, I will freely confess it to you; or, are you yourself ashamed of it? I acknowledge but one baptism, which must be upon faith, and concerns not children ; it requires first, amendment of life.” The sheriff said, ” We have done enough to win you over ; had you suffered yourself to be persuaded to recant, you would have done well.” She answered, ” You have had regard to my body, but not to my soul, which you would willingly destroy. But God will receive me as his child, and make me his heir. And though you are now in dignity a sheriff; you will, nevertheless, lament it at the judgment-seat of God, and wish rather to have been a shepherd in the fear of God.”She was at last condemned to die ; and having commended her spirit into the hands of God, she was drowned in a tub, with another woman, named Noele.
From: Martyr’s Mirror of Baptist Churches
