A67926:3770
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.
Forasmuch as we are created under the power of *free will,2 & not under the law but under grace let us so live as we are created. You which lay upon us the law of continency against our will, do deprive us of the liberty of free will. You command us, and by commanding compel us to will that we would not, & not to will that we would do. You bind us to the law, from the which by grace we are made free: and you constrain us to receive the spirit of bondage again to fear: and go about to make the grace of God of no effect, without the which we can do nothing, so that, as the Apostle saith: Grace is now no grace: and the gift of God is not the gift of God. And not of God, but of man: not of him that calleth, but of him that worketh where as the Apostle saith: It is not in him that willeth, nor in him that runneth, but in God that showeth mercy.3 For where as there be three principal & effectual things whereby every humane soul endued with reason apprehend death & perceiveth whatsoever spiritual thing it is able to apprehend and perceive, and without the which it can perceive nothing: the which three things be these:4 to wit free will, the commandment, and grace (for by free will we discern and chose the good from the evil: by the commandment we are provoked and stirred up to do all things: by grace we are furthered & holpen to perform the same) yet of all these, grace is the Lady & Mistress, and as a mighty Empress and Queen,5 upon whose beck the other do wait and give attendance, receiving of her both strength and efficacy, and without her can do nothing, but remain as things of themselves dull and dead, much like as amongst the Philosophers, their Materia without Forma, being thereto adjoined. For in the stead of Materia, we may, after a manner not unfitly place free will: and in the place of Forma we may set grace, & the commandment (which is the mean between them both,6 as a certain instrument) to have respect to both: whereby the principal Artificer which is God, furthereth and setteth forward free will as a rude dull matter, applieth to it his grace as the form thereof.