The gospel now received its first testimony in blood. With joyful confidence Luther beheld what God had done, but could not refrain from lamenting, with sorrowful humility, that he himself had not been found worthy of martyrdom. In the Imperial hereditary lands, where for some years missionaries, chiefly members of Luther's own Augustine Order, had been actively labouring in the strength of the convictions derived from Wittenberg, two young Augustine monks, Henry Voes and John Esch, were publicly burnt, on July 1, 1523, as heretics. Luther thereupon addressed a letter to 'the beloved Christians in Holland, Brabant, and Flanders,' praising God for His wondrous light, that He had caused again to dawn. He spoke out even stronger in some verses in which he celebrated the young martyrs; they were published no doubt originally as a broadsheet: A new song will we raise to Him Who ruleth, God our Lord; And we will sing what God hath done, In honour of His Word. At Brussels in the Netherlands, It was through two young lads, He hath made known His Wonders, &c. They conclude as follows:-- So let us thank our God to see His Word returned at last. The Summer now is at the door, The Winter is forepast, The tender flowerets bloom anew, And He, who hath begun, Will give His work a happy end. He was, later on, deeply grieved by the death of his brother-Augustine and friend Henry Moller of Zütphen, who, after having been forced to fly from the Netherlands, had begun a blessed work at Bremen, and was now murdered in the most brutal manner on December 11, 1524, by a mob instigated by monks, near Meldorf, whither he had gone in response to an invitation from some of his companions in the faith. Luther informed his Christian brethren in a circular of the end of this 'blessed brother' and 'Evangelist.' He mentions, with him, the two martyrs of Brussels, as well as other disciples of the new doctrine; one Caspar Tauber, who was executed at Vienna, a bookseller named Georg, who was burnt at Pesth, and one who had been recently burnt at Prague. 'These and such as these,' he adds, 'are they whose blood will drown the popedom, together with its god, the devil.' With regard to his work of reformation, which had now spread so widely and found so many coadjutors, Luther at present thought as little about the outward constitution of a new Church as he had thought about any outward organisation of the war itself, or an external alliance of his adherents, or of a cleverly devised propaganda. Just as here the simple Word was to achieve the victory, so his whole efforts were devoted solely to restoring to the congregations the possession and enjoyment of that Word in all its purity, that they might gather round it, and be thereby further edified, sustained, and guided.