N20568:7304
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.
ALTHOUGH I look hourly when I should be had to the stake, (my right dearly beloved in the Lord) and although the charge over me is great and strict, yet having by the providence of God secretly pen and ink, I could not but signify unto you my solicitude which I have for all of you in the Lord, though not as I would, yet as I may. You have often and openly heard the truth (especially in this matter wherein I am condemned) disputed and preached, that it is needless to do any more but only to put you in remembrance of the same: but hitherto you have not heard it confirmed, and as it were sealed up, as now you do and shall hear by me, that is, by my death and burning. For albeit I have deserved (though my uncleanness, hypocrisy, avarice, vain-glory, idleness, unthankfulness, and carnal• ty, whereof I accuse myself, to my confusion before the world, that before God through Christ I might, as my assured hope is I shall, find mercy) eternal death and hell-fire, much more than this affliction and fire prepared for me: yet my dearly beloved, it is not these, or any of these things, for which the prelates do persecute me, but God's verity and truth; yea, even Christ himself is the only cause for which I am now condemned, and shall be burned as an heretic, because I will not grant the Antichrist […] Rome to be Christ's vicar general and supreme head of his church here, and every-where upon earth, by God's ordinance, and because I will not grant such corporal, real, and carnal presence of Christ's body and blood in the sacrament, as doth transubstantiate the substance of bread and wine, and is received by the wicked, yea by dogs and mice. Also I am excommunicated and accounted as a dead member of Christ's church, as a rotten branch, and therefore shall be cast into the fire.
ALTHOUGH I look hourly when I should be had to the stake, (my right dearly beloved in the Lord) and although the charge over me is great and strict, yet having by the providence of God secretly pen and ink, I could not but signify unto you my solicitude which I have for all of you in the Lord, though not as I would, yet as I may. You have often and openly heard the truth (especially in this matter wherein I am condemned) disputed and preached, that it is needless to do any more but only to put you in remembrance of the same: but hitherto you have not heard it confirmed, and as it were sealed up, as now you do and shall hear by me, that is, by my death and burning. For albeit I have deserved (though my uncleanness, hypocrisy, avarice, vain-glory, idleness, unthankfulness, and carnal• ty, whereof I accuse myself, to my confusion before the world, that before God through Christ I might, as my assured hope is I shall, find mercy) eternal death and hell-fire, much more than this affliction and fire prepared for me: yet my dearly beloved, it is not these, or any of these things, for which the prelates do persecute me, but God's verity and truth; yea, even Christ himself is the only cause for which I am now condemned, and shall be burned as an heretic, because I will not grant the Antichrist Rome to be Christ's vicar general and supreme head of his church here, and every-where upon earth, by God's ordinance, and because I will not grant such corporal, real, and carnal presence of Christ's body and blood in the sacrament, as doth transubstantiate the substance of bread and wine, and is received by the wicked, yea by dogs and mice. Also I am excommunicated and accounted as a dead member of Christ's church, as a rotten branch, and therefore shall be cast into the fire.