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"...The church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth."
I Timothy 3:15
John Deswarte and Family
From Memorials of Baptist Martyrs, 1854
Brandt, in his History of the Reformation, in the sixteenth century, at Halwin, in Flanders, states that John Deswarte, whom he calls an Anabaptist, and his family, who had been betrayed by the professedly Christian pastor of that town, were carried away by the dean of Rousen, to Lisle.
Deswarte was taken with his wife and four sons. The two youngest of his children not being at home when the inquisitor broke into the house, were warned by the neighbors to escape; but one of them said to the other, "Let us not seek to save ourselves, but rather die with our father and mother."
In the meantime they carried the father out who seeing his sons, said to them, "Will ye also go to the New Jerusalem?" One of them who was scarcely sixteen, cried out, "Yes, we will father;" and they at once surrendered themselves.
These, with two other persons of the same faith, who happened to be in the house, as also two married couples, and a man who had endeavored to comfort them, were, at several times, all burnt at Lisle.