• Real martyrs do not kill themselves
• Real martyrs suffer harm but never inflict harm
• Real martyrs do not seek death but accept it when it comes
• The Christian martyr does not die out of hatred of the enemy, but out of love for Jesus
• Real martyrs die bearing witness to truth
• Martyrdom properly involves death, not just suffering, however intense
• Some people are victims but not martyrs
• Some people are heroes but not martyrs

The Protestant Reformation had established the fundamental distinction between the Protestant and the Catholic positions. The Protestant took his stand on the ultimate sovereignty of the Bible and, subject to that, the finality of the private judgment of the individual conscience on matters of both faith and morality. The Catholic position was that, when either Pope or Council spoke 'authoritatively' on matters of faith or morals, the content of those declarations was binding on the conscience of the Catholic. If a Catholic believed that such definitions were outrageously wrong then he must come logically to the conclusion that the Church which promulgated them could not be guaranteed in the rightness of its declarations by God Himself. It was difficult to see what point there was in belonging to a Church whose basic claim had thus been falsified in the event. If, however, the Catholic believed that the fundamental basis of divine guidance on this quite restricted list of subject-matters was established, he was clearly bound by what was thus guaranteed.


There are strong arguments for both Protestant and Catholic positions, both of which have been held by strong intellects animated by high principles. But they are basically opposed positions. . . . The binding force of this external authority is the exact difference between the Catholic and the Protestant positions. It is in fact what the Reformation was all about. It is why Thomas More and John Fisher went to execution.

. . . In one of the more ironic manifestations of the general mood, St Thomas More was invoked as authority for the dubious proposition that the private conscience was the supreme arbiter of a Catholic's religious and moral beliefs: that so long as it was done in good conscience the obligation of Sunday Mass could be set aside (if the ceremony 'did you no good'), or that pre-marital sex was permissible (so long as the couple genuinely loved each other).
Some five centuries too late, one began to feel a little sorry for the martyred Chancellor. It was bad enough to be beheaded in the sixteenth century. It was much worse to become a cult figure in the twentieth. Because of the dramatic brilliance of Robert Bolt's A Man for All Seasons, he came to be regarded as the patron saint of 'protest', in the name of individual conscience against external authority: a kind of sixteenth-century Jane Fonda.

. . . it became necessary to point out that Thomas More was nothing of the kind. His carefully framed last words — 'the King's good servant, but God's first' — indicated the opposite.

. . . It is now claimed, with increasing emphasis, that Thomas is not only, in Bolt's words, a 'man for all seasons', but the common property of all Christian religious persuasions. For, it is said, he died for conscience, and this is the only thing which really matters. For this reason, Thomas More is sacred to all Christians, regardless of denomination, just as are Latimer and the Anglican martyrs, who also died, equally and undoubtedly, for conscience.
In our own age, we have seen Marxists, anarchists, Serbs, Croats, Macedonians, all die bravely for conscience. Like all brave men who die for ultimate conviction, they are worthy of our admiration, however one may judge their principles.

But it is a very different thing to imply either that the principles for which men die are all equally valid, because heroic men have died for all of them; or equally unimportant, since what matters is not the principles but the tribute of conscience, regardless of the principle, in the martyr's final testimony.
Such a view seems to make a nonsense of their decision to die at all. Why die violently, when what you think you are dying for is not of ultimate worth at all?