The English reformer John Hopper was imprisoned from September 1553 and killed in February 1555. Just before Hopper was martyred for his faith in Christ, Sir Anthony Kingston, whom he had once offended by rebuking his sins, came to see him, and begged him, with much affection and many tears, to think about his safety and recant. Kingston said to Hopper, "Consider, that life is sweet, and death is bitter. Your life hereafter may do [much more] good." Hopper answered : "The life to come is more sweet, and the death to come is more bitter”. After seeing that Hoper was not going to change his mind, Kingston left him with bitter tears, telling him, "I thank God that I came to know you, because God appointed you to call me to be His child. By your good instruction, when I was before a fornicator and adulterer, God has taught me to detest and forsake the same”. John Hooper afterwards said that this meeting with Kingston had drawn from him more tears than he had shed
Our supposedly secular society has in fact hyperspiritualised the question of justice. Every claim to justice takes on an importance equivalent to that of a final battle between Christ and the devil, with good unambiguously on one side and evil on the other, along with all the apocalyptic fervor that this framing implies. But no human struggle can bear this divine weight. That way lies totalitarianism and making any means legitimate in attaining an end that is so pure, so noble, and so absolute. It is the logic behind the proclamation in "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" that in the advance of the Northern troops, "My eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord." It is the logic that led to the "Terror" of the French Revolution, with the guillotining of around 17,000 people, including many former revolutionaries whose convictions were subsequently considered to be insufficiently radical. It is the logic that led to the Chinese cultural revolution, i