A67922:1141
Acts and monuments of matters most special and memorable, happening in the Church. [vol.…Actes and monuments of matters most speciall and memorable, happenyng in the Church. [vol.…
Acts and monuments of matters most special and memorable, happening in the Church. [vol. 1] with an universal history of the same, wherein is set forth at large the whole race and course of the Church, from the primitive age to these latter times of ours, with the bloody times, horrible troubles, and great persecutions against the true martyrs of Christ, sought and wrought as well by heathen emperors, as now lately practised by Romish prelates, especially in this realm of England and Scotland. Newly revised and recognised, partly also augmented, and now the fourth time again published and recommended to the studious reader, by the author (through the help of Christ our Lord) John Fox, which desireth thee good reader to help him with thy prayer.Actes and monuments of matters most speciall and memorable, happenyng in the Church. [vol. 1] with an vniuersall history of the same, wherein is set forth at large the whole race and course of the Church, from the primitiue age to these latter tymes of ours, with the bloudy times, horrible troubles, and great persecutions agaynst the true martyrs of Christ, sought and wrought as well by heathen emperours, as nowe lately practised by Romish prelates, especially in this realme of England and Scotland. Newly reuised and recognised, partly also augmented, and now the fourth time agayne published and recommended to the studious reader, by the author (through the helpe of Christ our Lord) Iohn Foxe, which desireth thee good reader to helpe him with thy prayer.
London: printed by John Daye, 1583London: printed by Iohn Daye, 1583
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.
After Fabianus (or as Zonaras calleth him Flavianus) next succeeded into the bishopric of Rome Cornelius, 1whom Cyprian noteth to be a worthy Bishop, and for his great virtue & maidenly continency much commendable, chosen to that room, not so much of his own consent, as of the full greement both of the Clergy men,2 and also of the people. Hierome addeth also that he was a man of great eloquence, whereby it may appear those two Epistles decretal, which go in his name not to be his, both for the rudeness of the barbarous and gross stile, and also for the matter therein contained, nothing tasting of that time, nor of that age nor doings then of the Church. Whereof in the first he writeth to all ministers & brethren of the Church,3 concerning the lifting up of the bodies & bones of Peter & Paule, De cathecumbis, and transposed to Vaticanum, at the instance of a certain devout woman named Lucina, having no great argument or cause to write thereof unto the churches, but only that he in that letter doth desire them to pray unto the Lord, that through the intercession of those Apostolical Saints; their sins might be forgiven them. &c. In the second Epistle writing to Ruffus a Bishop of the East Church, he decreeth and ordaineth that no oath ought to be required or exacted of any head or chief Bishop, for any cause, or by any power. Also that no cause of Priests or Ministers ought to be handled in any strange or foreign Court, without his precinct, except only in the Court of Rome by appellation; whereby who seeth not the train of our latter Bishops, going about craftily to advance the dignity of the Court of Rome, under and by the prtenced title of Cornelius, and of such ancient Bishops. If Cornelius did write any Epistles to any in deed in those so turbulent times of persecution; no doubt but some signification thereof he would have touched in the said his letters, either in ministering consolation to his brethren, or in requiring consolation and prayers of others. Neither is there any doubt, but he would have given some touch also of the matter of Novatus, with whom he had so much to do, as in deed he did: for so we find it recorded both in Eusebius, and in Hierome that he wrote unto Fabius Bishop of Antioch, of the decrements of the council of Rome, and an other letter of the manner of the Council: