N20568:9400
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.
Volume 1 › Book 2 › Chapter 12 › Letter: LETTER From Mr. LATIMER to Sir EDWARD BAYNTON. Knt.
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.
FIRST, He did never inhibit me in my life; and if he did inhibit his curate to receive me, what pertaineth that to me, who did neither know thereof, nor yet made any suit to the curate deceitfully; nor did it appear to me very likely, that the curate would so little have regarded my lord's inhibition, which he maintaineth so vigilantly, not knowing my lord's mind before. Therefore I conjectured with myself, that either the curate was of such acquaintance with my lord, that he might admit whom he would; or else (and rather) that it was a train and a trap laid before me, to the intent that ⟨p. 852⟩my lord himself, or some pertaining to him, appointed to have been there, and to have taken me if they could in my sermon; which conjecture both occasioned me somewhat to suspect those men which desired me, though they spake ever so fair and friendly, and also rather to go. For I preach nothing, but if it might be so, I would my lord himself might hear me every sermon I preach. So certain I am, that it is truth which I take in hand to preach. If I had with power of my friends (the curate gainsaying and withstanding me) presumed to have gone into the pulpit, there had been something wherefore to pretend a contempt. I preached in Kent also, at the earnest request of a curate; yet I do not hear that this ordinary layeth any contempt to my charge, or yet doth trouble the curate.
I marvel not a little how my lord bishop of London, having so large and populous a diocese committed to his charge, can have leisure for preaching and teaching the word of God, opportunely and pressingly, in season and out of season, publicly and privately, to his own flock, in persuading, confuting, exhorting, and admonishing with all mildness and doctrine, have leisure (I say) either to trouble me, or to trouble himself with me, so poor a wretch, a stranger to him, an• nothing pertaining to his cure, but as every man pertaineth to every man's cure, so intermixing and intermeddling himself with another man's cure, as though he had nothing to do in his own. If I would do as some men say my lord doth, gather up riches, warily and covetously, and yet neither preach for it in mine own cure, nor elsewhere, peradventure he would deny me nothing. In the very deed I did admonish both judges, and ordinaries, to use charitable equity in their judgments towards such as be accused, namely, of such accusers, who be as like to hear and betray, as others be to say amiss, and to take men's words in the meaning thereof, and not to wrest them in another sense than they were spoken in: for all such accusers and witnesses do evil before God, as St. Jerome saith, upon the 26th chapter of St. Matthew. Nor yet do I account those judges well advised, who wittingly will give sentence after such witnesses, much less those who procure such witnesses against any man: nor do I think judges now-a-days so deeply confirmed in grace, or so impeccable, but that it may become preachers to admonish them to do well, as well as other men both great and small. And this I did, occasioned of the pie which I declared,