N20568:7346
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.
I Beseech the everlasting God to grant you all▪ my good brethren and sisters, the comfort of the Holy Spirit, and the continual sense of his mercy in Christ our Lord, now and for ever, Amen.
THE world, my brethren, seemeth to have the upper hand, iniquity overfloweth, the truth and verity seemeth to be oppressed, and they which take the part therewith are unjustly treated; as they which love the truth, lament to see and hear as they do. The cause of all this is God's anger and mercy: his anger, because we have most grievously sinned against him; his mercy, because he here punisheth us, and as a Father nurtureth us. We have been unthankful for his word; we have contemned his kindness; we have been negligent in prayer; we have been so carnal, covetous, licentious, &c. we have not hastened to heaven-ward, but rather hell-ward, We were fallen almost into an open contempt of God, and all his good ordinances; so that of his justice he could no longer forbear, but make us feel his anger as how he hath done, in taking his word and true service from us, and permitting Satan to serve us with antichristian religion; and that in such sort, that if we will not yield to it, and seem to allow it in deed and outward fact, our bodies are like to be laid in prison, and our goods given we cannot tell to whom.
WE should look upon this as a sign of God's anger procured by our sins; which, my good brethren, every one of us should often call to our memories, as particularly as we can, that we might heartily lament them, repent them, hate them, earnestly ask mercy for them, and submit ourselves to bear in this life any kind of punishment which God will lay upon us for them. This should we do in consideration of God's anger in this time. Now his mercy in this time of his wrath is seen, and should be seen in us, my dearly beloved, in this, that God doth vouchsafe to punish us in this present life. If he should not have punished us, do not you think that we would have continued in the evils we were in? Yes verily, we should have been worse, and have gone forwards in hardening our hearts by impenitence, and negligence of true godliness. And then if death had come, should not we have perished both soul and body in eternal fire in perdition? Alas, what misery should we have fallen into, if God should have suffered us to have gone forward in our evils? There is no greater sign of damnation, than to lie in evil and sin unpunished by God, as now the papists (my dearly beloved) are cast in Jezebel's bed of security, which of all plagues is the most grievous that can be. They are bastards and not son […] are not under God's rod of correction.