On this day in 1697, Scottish medical student Thomas Aikenhead, age 20, was hanged for blasphemy in Britain's last execution for blasphemy. The Edinburgh student was found guilty of cursing and railing against God, denying the incarnation and the holy trinity and scoffing at the scriptures. He was convicted on the testimony of five "friends" to whom he had confided his strong religious doubts. Evidence against him were "atheistic" books in his possession. The Church of Scotland urged his "vigorous execution."
From "A Complete Collection of State Trials and Proceedings for High Treason and Other Crimes and Misdemeanors from the Earliest Period to 1783" (1816): "The prisoner had repeatedly maintained, in conversation, that theology was a rhapsody of ill-invented nonsense, patched up partly of the moral doctrines of philosophers, and partly of poetical fictions and extravagant chimeras: That he ridiculed the holy scriptures, calling the Old Testament Ezra's fables, in profane allusion to Esop's Fables; That he railed on Christ, saying, he had learned magick in Egypt, which enabled him to perform those pranks which were called miracles: That he called the New Testament the history of the imposter Christ; That he said Moses was the better artist and the better politician; and he preferred Muhammad to Christ: That the Holy Scriptures were stuffed with such madness, nonsense, and contradictions, that he admired the stupidity of the world in being so long deluded by them: That he rejected the mystery of the Trinity as unworthy of refutation; and scoffed at the incarnation of Christ."