N20568:9841
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.
ALL these things do administer more matter of mourning and bewailing the miserable state that now is: for by this it may be perceived, how England hath deserved this just plague of God. And also it is greatly to be feared, that those good things, whatsoever they were that had their beginning in the time when God's word was so freely preached, now with the exile and banishment of the same, will depart again.
BUT to return again to the consideration of this miserable state of Christ's church in England, and to leave farther and more exquisite searching of the causes thereof unto God's secret and unsearchable judgments, let us see what is best now to be done for Christ's little flock. This is one maxim and principle in Christ's law; He that denieth Christ before men, him shall Christ deny, before his Father and all his angels in heaven. And therefore every one that looketh to have by Christ our Saviour everlasting life, let him prepare himself so, that he deny not his master Christ, or else he is but a castaway, and a wretch, howsoever he be counted or taken here in the world.
NOW then seeing the doctrine of Antichrist is returned again into this realm, and the higher powers (alas) are so deceived and bewitched, that they are persuaded it is the truth, and Christ's true doctrine to be error and heresy, and the old laws of Antichrist are allowed to return with the power of their father again: what can be hereafter looked for, by reason, to the man of God, and true christian, abiding in this realm, but extreme violence of death, or else to deny his Master? I grant the hearts of princes are in God's hands, and whithersoever he will he can make them bow: and also that christian kings in old time used a more gentle kind of punishment, even to them which were heretics indeed; as degradation, and deposition out of their rooms and offices, exile and banishment out of their dominions and countries: and also (as it is read) the true bishops of Christ's church were sometime intercessors for the heretics unto princes, that they would not kill them, as is read of St. Augustine. But as yet Antichrist's kingdom was not so eected at that time, nor is now accustomed so to order them th will not fall down and worship the beast and his image (but even as all the world knoweth) after the same manner that both John and Daniel hath prophesied before, that is, by violence of death and Daniel declareth farther, that the kind of death accustomably should be by sword, fire, and imprisonment.