A67926:3784
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.
Which thing you do, ye discover & notify unto men our fragility, lying before as hid & covered, because before it was not known & for the same you bring the holy ministry & mysteries of god into contempt & hatred: as though the polluted life of other did any thing pertain thereto to pollute the same, & as though our uncleanness did any thing blemish them, or diminish the pureness thereof, where as the Psalmist saith:1 The law of the Lord is pure and immaculate: Or as though they were any whit polluted by our infection, which do receive the said mysteries either by our mouth, or by our ministry. Which if you grant to be so, then the Lord would never have spoken so to his disciples & the people, touching the Pharisees, saying: Whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do. And again, if it were so, the Lord would not have sent forth Judas, whom he knew should betray him,2 with the other Disciples to preach, neither would have committed to him the power of working miracles, & of giving health nor admitted him to the Communion of the Supper. And if our impurity should infect our holy mysteries or ministrations, and make them worse that hear and receive the ⟨p. 1162⟩same then the Lord would never have touched the Leper whom he had healed, neither would he have kissed him, neither would have eaten with Simon an other Leper, neither would have suffered his feet to be kissed, and with the tears to be washed, and with the hear to be dried, & his head to be anointed of Mary the sinner. Therefore the holy Canons have thus decreed, that no man which rightly receiveth the Lords Sacraments of an heretic, should be therefore any thing corrupted by his heretical pravity, nor the said Sacraments should be any whit distained by the infection of him. Whereupon the Church of Rome in a certain Epistle directed unto Anastasius the Emperor, by Anastasius the Pope, did so ordain and write, that none of all them whom Acatius did baptise, or whom he ordained Canonically to be priests or Levites, should be any thing hurt by the name of the said Acatius: so that thereby the Sacraments which by him were ministered, should seem the less firm and effectual. For the sacrament of Baptism also being ministered of an adulterer or a thief (which God forefend to be in the Church) doth come unto the receiver never a whit the worse.