Puritan of the Week: John Penry

Due to winter weather, I am away from my desk and Puritan book.  However, there is one Puritan Thinker that is not included in the book but is worth noting.

John Penry  (1559 - May 29, 1593), is said to be Wales’s most famous Protestant martyr.  Because of his lack of withdrawal from the church of England he is not always considered a Puritan, but due to his conviction of Puritan type thought he was charged with sedition by the queen of England and hanged in 1593.  He was considered an ordinary preacher and few of his writings have survived, but a note to his wife and daughters from his dungeon cell is worth noting.

When John Penry, four hundred years ago, sat in his dungeon in the Tower of London the day before his execution he wrote a letter to his wife and the four little children. He left the four girls a Bible each and he then gave his love to his wife, and he signed the letter from her “husband for a season and her eternal brother.”    (Sermon by Geoff Thomas)

Our desire must to be to cling so loosely to the things of this earth and so tightly to the things of eternity.