A67926:2136
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. 2, part 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. 2, part 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
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.
Against this book of the Beggars above prefixed, being written in the time of the Cardinal,1 another contrary book or supplication, was devised and written shortly upon the same, by one sir Thomas More knight, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, under the name and title of the poor silly souls puling out of Purgatory. In the which book, after that the said M. More writer thereof, had first divided the whole world into four parts, that is, into heaven, hell, middle earth, and purgatory: then he maketh the dead mens souls by a Rhetorical Prosopopoea, to speak out of Purgatory pinfold, sometimes lamentably complaining, sometimes pleasantly dallying & scoffing at the author of the Beggars book, sometimes scolding and railing at him, calling him fool, witless, frantic, an ass, a goose, a mad dog, an heretic, & all that nought is. And no marvel, if these silly souls of purgatory seem so fumish • testy. For heat (ye know) is testy, & soon inflameth choler, but yet these Purgatory souls, must take good heed how they call a man a fool, and heretic so often. For if the sentence of the Gospel doth pronounce them guilty of hell fire,2 which say fatue, fool: it may be doubted lest those poor silly melancholy souls of Purgatory, calling this man fool so oft as they have done, do bring themselves thereby out of purgatory fire, to the fire of hell, by the just sentence of the gospel: so that neither the 5. wounds of S. Francis, nor all the merits of S. Dominic, nor yet of all the Friars can release them poor wretches. But yet for so much as I do not, nor cannot think, that those departed souls, either would so far overshoot themselves if they were in purgatory, or else that there is any such fourth place of Purgatory at all (unless it be in M Mores Utopia) as Master Mores Poetical vain doth imagine,3 I cease therefore to burden the souls departed, and lay all the wit in master More the author and contriver of this Poetical book, for not keeping Decorum personae, as a perfect Poet should have done,4 They that give precepts of Art, do note this in all Poetical fictions, as a special observation to foresee and express what is convenient for every person, according to his degree and condition to speak and utter. Wherefore if it be true that M.