Thomas Aikenhead
From Philosopedia
Aikenhead, Thomas (1678—1697)
A Scottish undergraduate of Edinburgh University, Aikenhead was a martyr of freethought. Joseph McCabe notes that, brooding over his bible, Aikenhead came to the conclusion that it was “a rhapsody of ill-contrived nonsense” and said so. After a travesty of a trial, the eighteen-year-old was condemned and hanged for calling the Old Testament “Ezra’s Fables,” ridiculing the doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation, and expressing the hope and belief that Christianity would be extinct within a century.
He had no counsel at the trial, and the only witnesses were those of the prosecutor. Found guilty, he reluctantly retracted what he had said. But Lord Advocate Stewart “called for blood” and the clergy, afraid William III might offer clemency, successfully pressed for Aikenhard’s death. He became the last person executed for blasphemy in Britain, 12 January 1697, in Edinburgh.
The Church of Scotland had urged his "vigorous execution," and on that date he wrote to a friend,
- . . . it is a principle innate and co-natural to every man to have an insatiable inclination to the truth, and to seek for it as for hid treasure. . .
