N20568:9435
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.
AND yet as long as they minister the word of God, or his sacraments, or any thing that God hath ordained to the salvation of mankind, wherewith God hath promised to be present, to work with the ministration of the same to the end of the world, they to be heard, to be obeyed, to be honoured for God's ordinance sake, which is effectual and fruitful, whatsoever the minister be, though he be a devil, and neither church nor member of the same, as Origen saith, and Chrysostom; so that it is not all one to honour them and trust in them, St. Jerome saith: but there is required a judgment to discern when they minister God's word and ordinance of the same, and their own, lest peradventure we take chalk for cheese, which will edge our teeth, and hinder digestion. For as it is commonly said, The blind eateth many a fly, as they did which were persuaded by the high priests to ask Barabbas and to crucify Jesus: and ye know that to follow the blind guides, is to come into the pit with the same. And will you know, saith Augustine, how pertly they resist Christ, when men begin to blame them for misliving, and intolerable secularity and negligence? They dare not for shame blaspheme the name of Christ himself, but they will blaspheme the ministers and preachers by whom they be blamed.
THEREFORE whereas you will pray for agreement both in the truth, and in uttering the truth, when shall that be, as long as we will not hear the truth, but disturb with crafty conveyance the preacher of the truth, because they reprove our wickedness with the truth? And, to say the truth, it were better to have a deformity in preaching, so that some would preach the truth of God, and that which is to be preached without detriment and adulteration of the word, (as Lyranus saith in his time few did, what they do now-a-days I refer to them that can judge) than to have such an uniformity, that the silly people should be thereby occasioned to continue still in ignorance, corrupt judgment, superstition and idolatry, and esteem things as they do all, preposterously, doing what they need not to do, and leaving undone what they ought to do, for lack of knowing what is to be done, and so show their love to God, not as God commandeth, (who saith, If you love me, keep my commandments; and again, He that knoweth my precepts, and doth them, he loveth me) but they command, which seek their own things, not as Christ's; as though to tithe mint were more than judgment, faith and mercy.