A67922:746
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.
An other error also may be noted in the Papists, touching the efficient or formal cause of good works. For albeit they all confess in their books, that Gratia dei gratis data, is the chief principal cause thereof, and worketh in us justitiam primam (as they call it) yet the good works after regeneration,1 they refer to other subordinate causes under God, as to free will, or to habitum virtutis, or ad integra ⟨p. 26⟩naturalia, & nothing at all to faith, when as faith only next under God, is the root and fountain of all well doing: as in the fruits of a good tree, albeit the planter or the husbandman be the principal agent thereof, and some cause also may be in the good ground, yet the next and immediate cause is the root that maketh the tree fruitful. In like manner the grace of God, in a soft & repentant mollified hart planteth the gift of faith. Faith as a good root can not lye dead or unoccupied, but springeth forth and maketh both the tree fruitful, and also the tree thereof to be good.2 which otherwise had no acceptation nor goodness in them, were it not for the goodness of the root from whence they spring. So Paul although he had certain works in him such as they were, before his conversion, yet had he no good works before the grace of Christ had rooted faith in him. So Mary Magdalen the sinner, and Zacheus the Publican. So all the nations of the Gentiles began to bring forth fruit, and especially good fruit, when they began to be ingrafted in Christ,3 and to receive the root of his faith, whose fruits before that were all damnable and unsavoury. As touching the cause therefore of good works,4 there is no other in man but faith, whose office as it is to justify us in heaven so the nature of it is here in earth to work by love, as the root worketh by the sap. For as a man seeth and feeleth by faith, the love and grace of God toward him in Christ his Son:5 so beginneth he to love again both God and man, and to do for his neighbour as God hath done to him. And hereof properly springeth the running fountain of all good works and deeds of charity.