We owe the Christian liberty we have today, the freedom of our religion, to those noble men and women who are our reformed ancestors. For them, no cost was too high, the only cost they would not pay, was at the cost of truth.

Christ was everything to them, and if but for their valour, when it was downright dangerous to speak of the doctrines we so openly and freely converse of today without fear, we would perhaps have the same tyranny ruling over us, as we may have had if not for the soldiers who fell on the battlefields of the two world wars; we owe the liberty we have in our countries today, to those servicmen, who fell in battle, and fought to protect our liberty against Nazi invasion and rule. And no less do we owe the same debt of liberty to the flames of martyrdom, persecution, torture, loss of livings and homes, not just for themselves but also their wife, children and any other dependants they had. When their cost was so great, I can’t help but wonder why often times, the price we are willing to pay often times today, is so small.

“The King began to discover his zeal against the Sacramentaries [and Annabaptists] (as those were called who denied the corporal presence of Christ in the eucharist), by prohibiting the importing of all foreign books, or printing any portions of Scripture till they had been examined by himself and council, or by the bishop of the diocess; by punishing all that denied the old rites, and by forbidding all to argue against the real presence of Christ in the sacrament on pain of death. For breaking this last order, he condemned to the flames this very year that faithful witness to the truth John Lambert, who had been a minister of the English congregation at Antwerp, and afterward taught school in London; but hearing Dr. Taylor preach concerning the real presence, he offered him a paper of reasons against it: Taylor carried the paper to Cramner, who was then a Lutheran, and endeavoured to make him retract; but Lambert unhappily appealed to the King, who after a kind of mock-trial at Westminster-hall, in presence of the bishops, nobility, and judges, passed sentence of death upon him, condemning him to be burnt as an icorrigible heretic. Cramner was appointed to dispute against him, and Cromwell to read the sentence. He was soon executed in Smithfield in a most barbarous manner; his last words in the flames were “None but Christ, None but Christ!”
–Daniel Neals History of the Puritans Volume 1

The puritans are often portrayed as pedantics who concentrated on the small stuff like vestiages, and that’s why the battle for truth ensued. Christ said if we are not faithful in the small things then we won’t be in the big, but their real battle, was for liberty of conscience, that the Lord only was our consicence answerable to, and the Christian liberty we have today, lies directly at the feet of their sacrifices, even unto death.

Reformed Christians have a noble heritage and a lot to live up to because of it; it takes more than just sharing the same doctrine, IMHO, it takes also sharing the same spirit of Christ is all, and we will part with anything to defend his glory, sacrifice anything to defend his truth and his church, an attitude that they had and lived out, even unto death and bloodshed in the most barbarous and cruelest of manners. I can’t help but wonder why today, for the majority of the visible church, the cost of their faith, and sacrifices for it, is so small by comparison.