An expository comment, doctrinal, controversial, and practical upon the whole first chapter to the…An expository comment, doctrinal, controversal, and practical upon the whole first chapter to the…

Secondly, We may greatly deplore and bewail the Apostasy of the Church concerning those that were Martyrs and sufferers for Christ: in what superstition and sinful devotion were they plunged in about them? So that their sufferings were not for the salvation, but the destruction of many, through the ⟨p. 224⟩sin and indiscretion of after ages. It is true there is a lawful and due honouring of God for his graces bestowed on those Worthies; yet they were but the pens, Gods Spirit was the ready writer; they were but the vessels God poured that curious ointment in them. It was not they so much as God in and by them; for they were men like us, subject to carnal and worldly fears; they were reeds of themselves ready to be shaken by every wind, but God established them. So that it is our duty to bless God, who gave such power and grace to men; yea and we are in a civil way to honour and love them, to desire to imitate them, to make them examples for us to follow. If the Papists had gone no further, we and they should have been at concord in this point; but from imitation they fall to adoration: And although they heap up as many distinctions, as Samson did men by his slaughter, Heap upon heap, to clear themselves in this matter, yet it is but vitreum acumen, these glasses are quickly broken. That the name of such who suffer for Christ should be like a precious ointment, and an honourable esteem of them be had always in the Church, none can deny. Therefore those moral respects vouchsafed to them in the primitive times are not to be blamed; as the regarding of the judgement of a Martyr, as much or more than any Bishop or Doctor. As also when any had fallen by infirmity in times of persecution; such repenting did first go to the Confessors in prisons that were Candidates, or designed Martyrs, entreating their favour, and desiring liberty of admission into Church-communion from them, which the Church received, they making public satisfaction in respect of scandal by serious humiliation; but this afterwards began to be greatly abused, and Cyprian complaineth of it; therefore it was at last justly abrogated, howsoever such respects as were merely moral, are to be allowed; but for religious considerations to do any thing to them that is unjustifiable. A learned man thinketh, that the Prophecy spoken of by Peter, 2 Tim. 4. 1.

Secondly, We may greatly deplore and bewail the Apostasie of the Church concerning those that were Martyrs and sufferers for Christ: in what superstition and sinfull devotion were they plunged in about them? So that their sufferings were not for the salvation, but the destruction of many, through the