N20568:4959
The new and complete book of martyrs; or, An universal history of martyrdom: being…
The new and complete book of martyrs; or, An universal history of martyrdom: being Fox's Book of martyrs, revised and corrected, with additions and great improvements. : Containing an authentic account of the lives, persecutions and sufferings of the holy martyrs; and the many dreadful persecutions against the Church of Christ in all parts of the world, by pagans, Jews, Turks, papists, and others, from earliest ages of the church to the present period. ... The whole forming at once a general Christian martyrology, and a complete history of persecutions. / By the Rev. Mr. John Fox, M.A. late of Magdalen College, Oxford. ; Now revised, corrected and improved, with many additional articles, relating to the acts and monuments of the church. By Paul Wright, D.D. ; Embellished with forty elegant copper plate engravings. ; In two volumes. Vol. I[-II].The new and complete book of martyrs; or, An universal history of martyrdom: being Fox's Book of marytrs, revised and corrected, with additions and great improvements. : Containing an authentic account of the lives, persecutions and sufferings of the holy martyrs; and the many dreadful persecutions against the Church of Christ in all parts of the world, by pagans, Jews, Turks, papists, and others, from earliest ages of the church to the present period. ... The whole forming at once a general Christian martyrology, and a complete history of persecutions. / By the Rev. Mr. John Fox, M.A. late of Magdalen College, Oxford. ; Now revised, corrected and improved, with many additional articles, relating to the acts and monuments of the church. By Paul Wright, D.D. ; Embellished with forty elegant copper plate engravings. ; In two volumes. Vol. I[-II].
New-York: printed by William Durell, 1794
Title page typeset from the transcription.
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.
WE must not also murmur against God, but always say his judgments are right and just, and rejoice that it pleaseth him by troubles to use us as he used heretofore such as he most loved in this world. "Be glad, and rejoice, for your reward is great in heaven." His promises shall (by God's grace) work both consolation and patience in afflicted christians. And when our Saviour Christ hath willed men in trouble to be content and patient, because God in the end of trouble in Christ hath ordained eternal consolation; he useth also to take from us all shame and rebuke, as though it were not an honour to suffer for Christ, because the wicked world doth curse and abhor such poor troubled christians. Wherefore Christ placeth all his honourably, and saith, "Even so persecuted they the prophets that were before you." We may also see with whom the afflicted for Christ's sake be esteemed, by St. Paul to the Hebrews, where the number of the blessed and glorious company of saints appear now to our faith in heaven, in joy: yet in the letter, for the time of this life, in such pains and contempt as was never more. Let us therefore consider both them and all other things of the world since the fall of man, and we shall perceive nothing to come to perfection, but with such confusion and disorder to the eye of the world, as though things were rather lost for ever, than like to come to any perfection at all. For of godly men, who ever came to heaven (no not Christ himself) until such time as the world had thought verily, that both he and all his had been clean destroyed and cast away: as the wise man saith of the wicked people, "We thought them to be fools, but they are in peace."
WE may learn by things that nourish and maintain us, both meat and drink, what loathsomeness and (in a manner) abhorring they come unto, before they work their perfection in us. From life they are brought to the fire, and clean altered from what they were when they were alive; from ⟨p. 470⟩the fire to the trencher and knife, and all hacked; from the trencher to the mouth, and as small ground as the teeth can grind them; and from the mouth into the stomach, and there so boiled and digested before they nourish, that whosoever saw the same, would loath and abhor his own nourishment, before it came to its perfection.