A67922:883
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.
Thus hast thou (Christian reader) first the causes declared of these persecutions.1 2. The cruel law of their condemnation. 3. Now hear more what was the form of inquisition, which was (as is witnessed in the second Apology of Justinus) to this effect: that they should swear to declare the truth, whether they were in very deed Christians or not: and if they confessed then by the law the sentence of death proceeded. Just. Apol. 2.
Thus hast thou (Christian reader) first the causes declared of these persecutions.1 2. The cruell law of their condemnation. 3. Now heare more what was the forme of inquisition, which was (as is witnessed in the second Apologie of Iustinus) to this effect: that they should sweare to declare the truth, whether they were in very deed Christians or not: and if they confessed then by the law the sentence of death proceeded. Iust. Apol. 2.
- 1Ex Just. Mart. in. 2. Apolog. The form of inquisition against the Christians in the old time.Ex Iust. Mart. in. 2. Apolog. The forme of inquisition agaynst the Christians in the old tyme.
Neither yet were these tyrants and organs of Satan thus contented with death only,1 to bereave the life from the body. The kinds of death were divers, and no less horrible then divers. Whatsoever the cruelness of mans invention could devise for the punishment of mans body, was practised against the Christians (as partly I have mentioned before, and more appeareth by the Epistle sent from the brethren of France,2 hereafter following. Crafty trains, outcries of enemies, imprisonments, stripes and scourgings, drawings, tearings, stonings, plates of iron laid to them burning hot, deep dungeons, racks, strangling in prisons, the teeth of wild beasts, gridirons, gibbets and gallows, tossing upon the horns of Bulls: Moreover, when they were thus killed, their bodies laid in heaps, and dogs there left to keep them, that no man might come to bury them, neither would any prayer obtain them to be interred and buried. Ex Epistola fratrum Viennensium ac Lugdunensium. &c.