A14350:13
The Common Places
The common places of the most famous and renowned divine Doctor Peter Martyr divided into four principal parts: with a large addition of many theological and necessary discourses, some never extant before. Translated and partly gathered by Anthony Marten, one of the sewers of her Majesties most honourable chamber.The common places of the most famous and renowmed diuine Doctor Peter Martyr diuided into foure principall parts: with a large addition of manie theologicall and necessarie discourses, some neuer extant before. Translated and partlie gathered by Anthonie Marten, one of the sewers of hir Maiesties most honourable chamber.
Imprinted at London : In Pater noster Rowe, by Henry Denham and Henry Middleton at the costs and charges of Henry Denham, Thomas Chard, William Broome, and Andrew Maunsell, 1583Imprinted at London : In Pater noster Rovve, by Henry Denham and Henry Middleton at the costs and charges of Henrie Denham, Thomas Chard, VVilliam Broome, and Andrew Maunsell, 1583
No title page in the transcription: set from the catalogue record.
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
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To the Christian Reader.
Among all the sundry and manifold affairs of this short life of ours, there is nothing (good Christian Readers) that so nearly toucheth man, whether we regard the end whereunto he was first made, or the salvation, which he hath obtained by Christ, or the love he hath to his own kind, as doth religion. For if man be carried with a continual desire of increasing mankind in the propagation of the flesh; with how much more ardent desire is he lead to multiply the spiritual seed of souls? Because he knoweth, even by the light of nature engrafted in his hart, and by a consideration of the power omnipotent, and provident government of all things, not only that man consisteth of two parts; the soul and the body: but that though the body die, and be dissolved into dust, yet the soul is immortal, and never perisheth. And therefore all people in the world, in what country soever they live, and what manner of God soever they serve, do most highly esteem their own religion: whereby they think, of mortal and corrupt creatures, to make a long and everlasting generation, and of a daily dissolved knot of society, to make a perpetual bond of friendship. And for this cause, when all other questions and debates, between man & man, between state and state, between kingdom and kingdom, whether they concern the body, or the temporal goods & possessions, are easily decided, and in process of time are finished, and the adversaries at the length reconciled: yet the controversy in religion, which toucheth the conscience, which concerneth souls, which pertaineth to eternal salvation, not of one only, but of innumerable others, is never finished, is never pacified, is never quieted. And as this happeneth generally between all religions in the world; so the nearer that religions: be of likeness, the harder it is to discern the difference; the nearer the adversaries be of country and kindred, the sharper is the contention, and the more desperate is the hope of reconciliation.