OTD in 1651, Baptist preacher Obadiah Holmes was publicly given 30 lashes in Boston for preaching and worshiping outside the established church. Holmes had been arrested while visiting fellow Baptists in Massachusetts and refused to pay the fine imposed upon him, believing that doing so would acknowledge the government’s authority over his religious convictions. After enduring the brutal whipping, Holmes reportedly told the magistrates, “You have struck me as with roses.” His suffering became an important episode in the long Baptist struggle for religious liberty in America, a liberty Baptists would continue fighting for more than a century later.