On this day in 1612 Edward Wightman was burned at the stake for heresy. While there would be a few more executions in England for heresy this would be the last time the horror of the stake would be used. The litany of his theological crimes was long. He repudiated, a number of conventionally held theological views but principally and most scandalously infant baptism and the Trinity. At his trial these opinions were found to be “heretical, execrable, and unheard of opinions, by the instinct of Satan, by him excogitated and holden.” As a unitarian Baptist both traditions can with considerable justice claim him as an ancestor.
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