A67927:1201
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 2] 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 2] 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.
Ridley. 1My Lord, I most heartily thank your Lordship, as well for your gentleness, as also for your sobriety in talk, and for your good and favourable zeal in this learned exhortation, in the which I have marked especially three points, which you used to persuade me to leave my doctrine, and Religion which, which I perfectly know & am throughly persuaded to be grounded not upon mans imagination and decrees, but upon the infallible truth of Christs Gospel, and not to look back, and to return to the Romish sea, contrary to mine oath, contrary to the prerogative and crown of this Realm, and especially which moveth me most) contrary to the expressed word of God. 2The first point is this, that the sea of Rome taking his beginning from Peter, upon whom you say Christ hath builded his Church, hath in all ages lineally from Bishop to Bishop been brought to this time. Secondly,3 that even the holy Fathers from time to time, have in their writings confessed the same. Thirdly, that in that I was once of the same opinion and together with you I did acknowledge the same. First, as touching the saying of Christ, from whence your Lordship gathereth the foundation of the Church upon Peter,4 truly the place is not so to be understand as you take it, as the circumstance of the place will declare. For after that Christ had asked his Disciples whom men judged him to be, and they had answered, that some had said he was a Prophet, some Elijah, some one thing, some an other, then he said, whom say ye that I am? Then Peter said: I say that thou art Christ the son of God. To whom Christ answered: I say Tu es Petrus, & super hanc Petram aedificabo Ecclesiam meam. i. Thou art Peter,5 and upon this stone I will build my Church: that is to say, upon this stone not meaning Peter himself, as though he would have constitute a mortal man, so frail and brittle a foundation of his stable and unfallible Church: But upon this Rock stone, that is this confession of thine,6 that I am the son of GOD, I will build my Church. For this is the foundation and beginning of all Christianity, with word, heart and mind, to confess that Christ is the son of God. Whosoever believeth not this, Christ is not in him: and he cannot have the mark of Christ printed in his forehead,