FOX'S BOOK OF MARTYRS:
THE
ACTS AND MONUMENTS OF THE CHURCH
BY JOHN FOX

PART 1
A.D. 33-1360

(Illustration: Frontispiece -- Portrait of John Fox )

-- "had trial of cruel mockings and scourgings, yea, moreover of
bonds and imprisonment: they were stoned, they were sawn asunder,
were tempted, were slain with the sword: they wandered about in
sheepskins and goatskins; being destitute, afflicted, tormented; of
whom the world was not worthy." - HEB. xi 36-38.

-- "their blood is shed
in confirmation of the noblest claim
Our claim to feed upon immortal truth,
To walk with God, to be divinely free,
To soar, and to anticipate the skies." - COWPER.

(Illustration: Title Page -- The emperor Commodus casting a dart at
the wild beasts )



INTRODUCTION.
REVERERE VULTUS ET VULNERA TOT FORTIUM VIROILUM, QUOTQUOT PRO
LIBERTATE TAM STRENUE DECERTARUNT, MANES ETIAM EORUM QUl IN IPSO
CERTAININE OCCUEUERUNT. -- MILTON'S DEFENSIO SEGUNDA.

No book, with the exception of Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, has been
so extensively, and at the same time so deservedly, popular as Fox's
Book of Martyrs. It has almost invariably made its appearance under
the auspices of some discerning spirit, at the moment its lessons
needed to be most widely learnt, and its truths most profoundly felt.
No sooner has popery begun to lift its head, like Marius of old, amid
the marshes of Minturnæ, aiming even from its ruins at supremacy and
making proselytes, than the Acts and Monuments have come forth to
resist its spread and crush its hopes. It is here literally true, "he
being dead yet speaketh." Nor is this to be wondered at. The scenes
which Fox so graphically depicts, the tragedies he records, very
often from personal knowledge, to have been acted upon them, the
names of the holy men who fell victims to the emissaries of the
papacy, the truths taught at the stake, which superstitious priests
hoped to annihilate in the flames that consumed their advocates, and
the Bibles they tried to bury in the graves that contained the ashes
of the "noble army of martyrs;" -- - these and other stirring facts
are well fitted to arouse long dead recollections, to lead us to
pity, not to proscribe, the poor Romanist, who is the victim of a
cruel sacerdotal tyranny, and to bless and praise the Lord our God,
who gave to our fathers grace to labour, and to us the high privilege
of entering into their labours. The volumes of Fox are the faithful
registers of the awful deeds of the Church of Rome, the transcripts
of those dreadful principles which have made every country in which
they have obtained the ascendency, from the wilds of the Arab to the
steppes of the Cossack, a very Aceldama. The numerous editions
through which the Acts and Monuments have passed show plainly that
the martyrologist speaks a tongue that finds an echo in the hearts of
the people. They feel his volumes to be the comments only on a sacred
cause, to which were devoted the strength of manhood and the grey
hairs of age. They reverence the martyrs that sealed it by their
blood. May they draw from the earth that contains their honoured
ashes motives to persevere in the paths they travelled. May we never
forget that husbands, wives, brethren, sisters, sons, and fathers
fell, like the beauty of Israel, in their high places, "contending
for the faith once delivered to the saints." Our sweetest and most
precious privileges are, under God, the fruits of their travail, the
price of their lives, freely given, that we, their offspring, may
live free.

Originally Fox's Martyrs appeared in Latin, and bore the following
title:-- Commentarii rerum in Ecclesiâ gestarum a Wiclefi temporibus
usque ad annum AND, 8vo. 1554; or, An Account of Transactions in the
Church from the times of Wycliff to the year 1500. Five years after
this a much larger volume was issued, bearing the following title:--
Rerum in Ecclesiâ gestarum, maximarumque per Europam persecutionum,
ac sanctorum Dei Martyrum Commentarii, in folio, Basileæ, 1559; or,
Records of Transactions in the Church, and of the leading
Persecutions of the Saints and Martyrs of God throughout Europe.
About four years after the appearance of this edition, i. e. about
A.D. 1563, one Henry Pantaleon published at Basle a continuation of
the Acts and Monuments, which seems to have been subsequently
incorporated with the original. The date of the first edition in
English is, according to Dr. Dibdin, A.D.1563, Its title is as
follows:--ACTS AND MONUMENTS of these latter and perilous Days,
touching Matters of THE CHURCH; wherein are Comprehended and
described the great Persecutions and horrible Troubles that have been
wrought and practised by the Roman Prelates, especially in these
Realms of ENGLAND and SCOTLAND, from the Year of our Lord a thousand,
unto the time now present. Gathered and collected according to the
true Copies and Writings, Certificatory as well of the parties
themselves that suffered, as also out of the Bishops' Registers who
were the Doers thereof, By JOHN FOX. London, 1562-3, from the press
of JOHN DAY.

A second edition also in English was printed and issued by Day in
1570, with additional wood cuts and illustrations.

A third edition appeared in 1576, entitled, The first Volume of
Ecclesiastical History. The Sufferings of the Martyrs newly
recognised and enlarged by the Author, J. Fox. 2 vols, folio, 1576.

The fourth edition appeared in 1583. Its title is as follows:--"ACTS
AND MONUMENTS of Matters, most special and memorable, happening in
THE CHURCH, with an Universal History of the same; wherein is set
forth at large the whole Race and Course of the CHURCH, from the
primitive Age to these latter Times of ours, with the bloody Times,
horrible Troubles, and great Persecutions against the true Martyrs of
CHRIST, sought and wrought as well by Heathen Emperors, and now
lately practised by ROMISH PRELATES, especially in the Realm of
ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND. Newly revised, and now the fourth time again
published.
By JOHN Fox. 1583.

The last edition of the sixteenth Century appeared in 1596, and bore
the following title:-- ACTS AND MONUMENTS of Matters happening in THE
CHURCH, with an Universal History, &c., as it was recognised by the 
AUTHOR, Maister JOHN Fox. The fifth time newly imprinted. Anno 1596.

All these editions are in black letter. The best and most authentic
is understood to be that of 1563. Accordingly, it has been selected
as the basis of the present edition. From 1684 to the present time
every edition has been in the Roman letter.

We cannot afford space to enumerate recent editions. Their great
number is proof of the universal esteem and value of the work. But it
may probably be asked, What necessity is there for another edition,
seeing there have been already so many? Our answer is the reason of
our labours. Almost every edition has been either a collection of all
the extraneous and irrelevant matter by which Fox's narratives are
frequently cumbered, of great bulk, and of greater expense; or mere
abridgements, fit for fashionable circulating libraries, but
unnerved, and despoiled of the greatest excellences and most precious
chapters of the hoary martyrologist. Seeley's noble reprint is fit
for the libraries of universities, the archives of museums, the
tables of scholars. It is a literal and exact reprint. But its price
and its shape repel the ordinary reader. The compilations that have
preceded and followed it are entitled to the name of Fox's Acts and
Monuments for no other reason than that the main facts and incidents
have been gathered from the pages of the venerable chronicler. It
does therefore seem to be most desirable that a complete and yet
popular edition of the Acts and Monuments of Fox should appear. Such
an edition we now profess to lay before the public. In this it will
be found that Latin quotations and references, including extracts and
letters to and sometimes from the martyrs, and repetitions in the
shape of headings, are substantially all that have been removed. The
bulk of the work is thus reduced, while the original matter remains
almost unaltered and unimpaired. We have extracted only a few weeds,
in order that those plants which our heavenly Father planted may
appear in all their goodly proportions. The features of the martyrs
themselves are not touched or altered in the least; incrustations
only are removed. The present edition is in all respects fitted to
instruct the learned, to interest the ordinary reader, and to present
to both neither a dull nor a deficient edition of the Acts and
Monuments of Fox.

All the early editions were illustrated by frequent but rude wood
cuts. The engines of perverted mind for torturing the confessors of
the faith were so intricate, the modes of martyrdom so varied, but
all in the infliction of pain exquisite, and some of the scenes at
the same time so extraordinary, that these illustrations became
almost essentially necessary. All that was historically and
topographically correct in the wood cuts of the early and authentic
editions will be retained in the present. The manipulation, style,
and execution only will be of the first excellence. Other subjects
arising out of the body of the work will be illustrated; and thus an
edition of Fox will be got up that will be an acquisition to the
libraries of the learned and unlearned.

Something must be said of the veracity and faithfulness of our
martyrologist. Since his records came to occupy a large share of
patronage and popularity, objections have been urged, not only from
papal sources, as was to be expected, but from professing
protestants. One of the most bitter papal opponents of Fox was the
wily Harding. The following are some of the chaste and indigenous
terms in which this Jesuit speaks of our author: "There have not so
many thousands of your brethren been burned for heresy in these last
twenty years as ye pretend; and this is the chief argument ye make in
all that huge dunghill of your stinking martyrs, which ye have
entitled Acts and Monuments." To this Bishop Jewel makes the
following free and faithful reply: "Ye have imprisoned your brethren;
ye have stript them naked; ye have scourged them with rods; ye have
burned their hands and arms with flaming torches; ye have famished
them; ye have drowned them; ye have summoned them, being dead, to
appear before you; ye have taken up their buried carcasses and burned
them; ye have thrown them out unto the dunghill; ye took a poor babe
newly born, and in a most cruel and barbarous manner threw him into
the fire. All these things are true, they are no lies. The eyes and
consciences of thousands can witness to your doings. Ye slew your
brethren so cruelly, not for murder, or robbery, or any other
grievous crime they had committed, BUT ONLY THAT THEY TRUSTED IN THE
LIVING GOD. The worst word that proceeded from their lips was, 'O
Lord, forgive them; they know not what they do: Lord Jesus, receive
my spirit.' In the mean while, ye stood by and delighted your eyes
with the sight. Oh! Mr. Harding, your conscience knoweth these be no
lies; they are written in the eyes and hearts of many thousands.
These be the marks of your religion. Oh what reckoning will ye yield,
when so much innocent blood will be required at your hands!"

Milner, a zealous and subtle Romanist, in his work entitled The End
of Controversy, declares that "Cranmer and others of the protestants
were consigned to the flames because they had been. guilty of high
treason. Fox is a liar, and not to be believed even when he speaks
the truth." All this may be exceedingly convenient to the champions
of the papal hierarchy, but they know well that the martyrs in the
days of Queen Mary, who, Lingard the Romish historian says "was one
of the best of the English princesses," suffered not for infringement
of civil law, but for the maintenance of gospel truth. The policy of
the Jesuits is always to father on protestants the very crimes of
which they themselves are guilty. Milner and Lingard show how well
they have studied in the school of Ignatius Loyala. The protestants
burned in the days of Queen Mary were burned, as legal and civil
documents still accessible demonstrate, simply for disclaiming
transubstantiation, the supremacy of the pope, and the assumed right
of the Romish priesthood to debar the laity from reading the sacred
Scriptures. But, on the other hand, the papists who suffered in the
days of Elizabeth were, as the indictments and other authentic
records show, executed for high treason, for regicide principles, and
for open or disguised, but clearly proved, opposition to the dynasty
and sceptre of Elizabeth. A convicted murderer of unrenewed heart
will of course naturally impeach judge, jury, and evidence. The
papacy however has not put down the gospel, which embosoms the glory
and the functions of Christ; and it shall not crush the humbler
records, which stamp his true character on the exploits of
antichrist. Neale, a far abler and purer witness than Milner, or
Lingard, or Harding, confirms the testimony of Jewel in these words:
"Fox was a person of indefatigable labour and industry, and an exile
for reigion in Queen Mary's days; he spent all his time abroad in
compiling the Acts and Monuments; which were published first in
Latin, and afterwards when he returned to his native country with
enlargements. Vast were the pains he took in searching records and
collecting materials for his work; and SUCH WAS ITS ESTEEM, THAT IT
WAS ORDERED TO BE SET UP IN ALL THE PARISH CHURCHES IN ENGLAND." "No
book," continues the historian of the puritans, "ever gave such a
mortal wound to popery as this."

It may be objected, that the same necessity does not now exist for
the republication ofthis celebrated work. This is a great mistake. If
the Romish hierarchy had renounced the canons, decretals, bulls, and
rescripts, that embody the worst elements of persecution, it would be
ungenerous to upbraid them with the deeds of their predecessors. But
they neither have renounced, nor can, as Romanists, renounce, the
principles that received the stamp of infallibility in days that are
passed. The Church of Rome cannot recede one jot from her ancient
pretensions without renouncing the ground on which she stands. It
would be suicide to admit that her most sanguinary canons were sinful
and erroneous. Nor does she wish to make any such concession. She may
cast dust in the eyes of protestants, she may profess all meek and
merciful things; but this is designedly, and for a specific end.
Depressed, she arrays herself in all the pomp and splendour of
universal liberality and good will; but upon an uncontested throne,
in Spain, in Italy, and in Britain too, if she were what she would
be, these attractive assumptions drop off, and the woman drunk with
the blood of martyrs trampling on the name of Christ, and on the
hopes and happiness of believers, starts into bold and prominent
relief.

Persecution, it is only fair to admit, has certainly been practised
by individuals claiming to be the children of the protestant faith,
but never has the principle that originated it been incorporated in
any of the creeds of the protestant churches. This is precisely the
difference between papal persecution, and such instances of severity
as have been ascribed to protestant reformers and ministers.
Persecution is embosomed in the canons of the Romish Church, whereas
it is abjured and reprobated in the creeds of the protestant church.
If a Roman catholic persecutes, he acts in full accordance with the
principles to which he has subscribed; if a protestant persecutes, he
acts in diametrical opposition to the articles he professes to adhere
to. When a Roman catholic disclaims persecution, he thereby impugns
the infallibility and retreats from the ground occupied by his
Church; when a protestant persecutes, he thereby renounces his faith,
and enters on territory infamously sacred to Rome. The rule of faith
and conduct held by the Roman catholic is, "The Bible or written
word, and tradition or the unwritten word, and both propounded and
expounded by the Church." Now the two last limbs of this triple rule
have been dyed in blood, They have been the fountain-heads out of
which the Inquisition drew numerous precedents, Dominic most ample
instruction, and the fourth Lateran its anti-social canons. The rule
of faith held by protestants, on the other hand, is, THE BIBLE ALONE,
in which we defy the acutest sceptic or bitterest papist to extract
one precept to persecute, or one precedent for ecclesiastical
extirpation of heretics. When, therefore, Roman catholics persecute,
their rule of faith applauds them; when protestants persecute, their
rule of faith condemns them. The former rule is the nurse of
persecution, the latter the extinguisher of it. The one carries the
faggot, lights the flames, and cheers the actors in the auto-da-fe;
the other brings living waters from life's most merciful fountain, to
quench the fire and to refresh the martyr, and, it may be, to convert
the murderer. Hence in the papal Church Pius V. and Dominic are
canonized and beatified; and to keep their sanguinary conduct fresh
in the minds of their descendants, there are collects with special
reference to these persecutors in the English Missal for the use of
the Roman catholic laity, used on the proper Sundays in every papal
chapel in England. What can be clearer evidence of the animus of the
Roman catholic hierarchy, or of the justice of our charge against
these principles, than the following reference to a canonized! or
beatified! persecutor in the English Missal for the use of the laity:
"O God, who has enlightened thy church by the eminent virtues and
preaching of blessed Dominic, thy confessor, grant that by his
prayers we may be provided against all temporal necessities, and
daily improve in all spiritual good." Again, "Sanctify, O Lord, the
gifts we have offered thee, and by the merits of blessed Dominic thy
confessor, grant that they may be healing to us."

This man was employed by Pope Innocent III. to trace out and punish
those heretics the pious and holy Albigenses. His weapons were
persecution, the blood of saints is on his robes, and were the papacy
improved such a collect as that we have extracted would be expunged
from the Missal.

In the protestant church such men are branded as guilty persecutors,
and thanks and glory rendered unanimously to Him who has made us to
differ. If it may be replied, that some of the protestant Reformers
persecuted, we admit it. This ought not to be denied, as some with
more enthusiasm than discretion have done, May we not ask, Is this to
be wondered at? The Reformers had been nursed at the bosom of a
Church in which persecution is incorporated as a vital and essential
element, and applauded in precedent and urged in precept. The
earliest lesson they had been taught was the propriety of extirpating
heretics in order to put down heresy; and the wonder is not that they
used carnal weapons in one or two isolated instances, but that they
so soon abjured the unholy spirit, exorcised it from the creeds they
drew up, and abandoned it, rejoicing in a holier faith in their
after-conduct. The Church of Rome never can in her corporate
character renounce persecution. She must let go her assumption of
immutability and infaffibility, if she disclaim the principles or
abjure the patrons of persecution. Some of the most illustrious
councils of the Roman Church enacted persecuting canons. The Councils
of Tours, Narbonne, Beziers, and Thoulouse passed a variety of anti-
social and cruel laws against those witnesses for Christ, the
Albigenses and the Waldenses. The third Council of the Lateran, and
above all the fourth, and subsequently the fifth, issued decrees that
stain the history of man, and present the papal hierarchy to future
ages visibly with blood upon its most gorgeous robes. Ultimately the
scattered efforts of the Romish hierarchy were concentrated and
systematized in the institution of the Inquisition. Languedoc, Spain,
Portugal, and Goa all testify to the deeds of this dreadful incubus
on freedom, faith, and happiness. The soil of those lands, it is
true,bears no traces of the innocent blood shed upon it. Vineyards,
and golden harvests, and rural hamlets now meet the eye, where murder
and falsehood, cruelty and bloodshed, fused into one, composed the
character of the murderer, and where mercy and truth, righteousness
and peace, blended into one, made up the temper of the martyrs; but
the wounds inflicted on Christianity, on man, and on the glory of
God, are fresh and bleeding, and will re-open, should we ever prove
forgetful of the deep debt ofobligation we owe the "noble army of
martyrs," or become dead to the yet profounder gratitude we must now
feel to that gracious God, who, in his mercy, has cast our lot in
better, even in halcyon days.

It is almost supererogation to furnish proofs of these assertions.
Romanists must smile at the scepticism of some protestants. We might
refer to the massacre on the eve of St. Bartholomew, as a proof not
merely of the sanguinary spirit then cherished by the Romish
apostacy, but of their yet unabandoned adherence to it at this day.
At Paris, in 1572, the poor Hugonots, who had been decoyed and
deceived by false professions, were murdered to the number of five
thousand according to Mezerai, six thousand according to Bossuet, and
ten thousand according to Davila. "The streets of Paris flowed with
blood. Charles IX. and his queen feasted their eyes on the dead that
floated down the Seine. The day-light, which discovered so many
crimes, which the darkness of an eternal night ought for ever to have
concealed, did not soften their ardour by these objects of pity, but
exasperated them the more. The populace and more dastardly, being
warmed by the smell of blood, sixty thousand men, transported with
this fury and armed in different ways, ran about wherever example,
vengeance, rage, and the desire of plunder transported them. The air
resounded with a horrible tempest of the engines, blasphemies, and
oaths of the murderers, of the breaking open of doors and windows, of
the firing of pistols and guns, of the pitiable cries of the dying,
of the lamentations of the women whom they dragged by the hair, of
the noise of carts, some loaded with the booty of the houses they
pillaged, others with the dead bodies they cast into the Seine; so
that in the confusion they could not hear each other speak in the
streets; or if they distinguished certain words, they were those
furious expressions, "Kill, stab, throw them out of the window." Some
were shot on the roofs of houses, others were cast out of the
windows; some were cast into the water, and knocked on the head with
blows of iron bars; some were killed in their beds -- wives in the
arms of husbands, husbands in the bosoms of their wives, and sons at
the feet of their fathers. They neither spared the aged, nor women
great with child, nor even infants." Mezerai's History ofFrance. See
vol. ii. p. 1098. Paris, 1646.

The question naturally occurs, How would our blessed Lord have looked
on such a scene? What verdict would he have uttered over such a
record? He would have wept over the wickedness of man, and deplored
the dreadful catastrophe that so cruelly overtook the innocent and
the helpless. His professed successor and representative, the pope,
however, "went in procession," according to the testimony of Mezerai,
"to the church of St. Lewis, to render thanks to God for so happy a
victory;" and his legate, in the pope's name, congratulated the
French king on his exploits; and in the Roman Missal or Prayer Book,
used in every Roman catholic chapel throughout the kingdom, this poor
people are taught to pray on the festival of Pius V., who urged
Charles IX. to the murderous massacre, in the following words:

"O God, who wast pleased to raise blessed Pius to the dignity of
chief bishop, in order to depress (i. e. crush) the enemies of the
church."

This keeps persecution fresh before the people. Pope Gregory XIII.,
only regarding the good which he thought likely to result from this
to the catholic religion in France, and to perpetuate the memory of
this event, caused several medals to be struck; whereon he himself is
represented on the one side, and on the other side an angel, carrying
a cross in one hand, and a sword in the other, exterminating the
heretics, and more particularly the Admiral Coligné. In Spain the
same deed was praised in the presence of King Philip, and they dared
to call it the triumph of the church militant. See Fleuri's Eccles.
Hist. vol. xxiii. Book 173, p. 557. Nismes, 1780.

The BULL UNIGENITUS, which, according to the evidence of Dr. Murray,
the Roman catholic archbishop of Dublin, is received by the Romish
Church throughout all Ireland, decrees that, if required, the secular
arm is to be called in to compel and coerce those who hold the truths
of the gospel to recant and renounce them. Its words are, "We
moreover charge our venerable brethren, the patriarchs, archbishops,
and bishops, and other ordinaries of districts, and the inquisitors
of heretical wickedness, utterly to coerce and compel, by the above-
mentioned censures and penalties, and by the other remedies of law
and deed, THE AID OF THE SECULAR ARM BEING INVOKED FOR THIS PURPOSE
IF IT BE NECESSARY, all who oppose and resist."

The Catechism of the Council of Trent asserts, that those who quit
the Church of Rome may "be judged, punished, and anathematized."

Dr. Delahogue in his Class Book for the instruction of the priests
educated at Maynooth, states that the Church retains her jurisdiction
over all baptized persons, as a commander retains authority over
deserters, and may denounce and decree for them similar and severe
punishments.

The worst and bitterest persecutors in the past history of the Romish
Church are, we find, canonized and beatified as saints. St. Dominic,
the harbinger, if not the founder, of the Inquisition, St. Thomas
Aquinas, whose secunda secundæ are replete with persecuting
principles, St. Ferdinand of Castile, a burner of heretics, and Pius
V., are embalmed in the devotions, and presented as models to the
imitation, of the Roman catholics of Great Britain.

We do not so much condemn the laity of the Church of Rome. They do
not know the full extent of the wickedness of that apostacy of which
they are the victims. We pray for them. We pity them. Our present
work is for them as for ourselves. It is another warning cry to come
out of Babylon. Fox's Book of Martyrs is republished in its present
popular form, not only to warn protestants against the subdued
pretences of this awful and unchanged superstition, and thereby to
prepare them to resist and repel it by Scripture, fact, and argument;
but also to stir up Roman catholics to abjure a Church so branded in
the tablets of universal history, and so doomed in the pages of the
word of God. We here enter on no crusade against their rights or
privileges as citizens. We seek higher and nobler objects. We thus
beseech them to flee from Babylon as from a crumbling ruin, replete
with the prestiges of approaching destruction. It is our heart's
desire and prayer unto God for them that they may be saved. But our
affection to them, however intense, must not induce us to compromise
our faithfulness to protestants. We desire to awaken and impress them
especially. We desire to resuscitate and nourish in their hearts a
more thrilling sense of the privileges they enjoy, a profounder
impression of the gratitude they ought to cherish toward their
martyred fathers, and of the responsibilities, the solemn and weighty
responsibilities, that devolve on them.

The loudest boast made at the present day by the Church of Rome is
her UNITY, and with the exhibition of this she expatiates at no
ordinary length on the dissensions of professing Protestants. We do
not in these few observations attempt to vindicate the unity of
protestants, but rather to show that the Romish assumption of unity
is totally devoid of truth. We must not forget that the value of
unity depends on the nature of the things of which it is composed.
Concord becomes conspiracy when it is against the truth of God and
the rights of humanity. Aaron the high priest, and a vast multitude
besides, were united to a man in the worship of the golden calf.
Korah and his people, and the ten tribes at Beth-el, were each
thoroughly united, but are one and all Scripturally and justly
condemned. The Samaritans were more united than the Jews, having no
sects or divisions. Satan and his angels are as united as Michael and
his. Hell is the site of unbroken unity; for unity is an essential
mark of the kingdom of Satan, who knows, and acts upon the knowledge,
that a kingdom divided against itself cannot stand. We must therefore
look at the things in which men are united, in order to elicit a just
estimate of the value of their union. If we apply this test to the
Church of Rome, we shall find it a gigantic conspiracy against the
Prince of peace -- the concord of unenlightened minds and
unsanctified spirits, to raise the creature to a level with the
Creator, and to exalt the church above Christ.

It will be found that the unity of which the Church of Rome so
repeatedly boasts springs from one of two sources, IGNORANCE or
COMPULSION. It arises first from ignorance, and is dissolved the
moment that the light of truth shines upon it. The Ephesians enjoyed
uninterrupted unity when they, ignorant of the one living and true 
God, simultaneously shouted, "Great is Diana of Ephesus." The Jews
almost unanimously concurred in the dreadful sentiment, "Not this
man, but Barabbas." During the middle ages all the doctors of
Christendom were perfectly united in holding that the earth stood
still, and that sun, moon, and stars revolved around it; and so the
Church of Rome is perfectly united in the worship she pays the Virgin
Mary, and the implicit faith she cherishes in the sacrifice of the
mass. But in her case, as in the others referred to, light introduced
breaks up the false harmony, and evolves a powerful discord. Paul
threw a handful of living sunbeams on Ephesus; the gospel was made to
bear on the population of Jerusalem by the apostle of the
circumcision; and the demonstrations of Galileo descended on the
dogged resistance of the Vatican, and unity gave way to division at
the moment that error gave way to truth.

The unity of the Church of Rome is, in the next place, the product of
compulsion. It is that of the iceberg. All heterogeneous substances
are compressed into one mass, not by the sweet attractions of
homogeneous elements ab intra, but by the compression of all
antagonist materials ab extra. It lasts as long as it is unvisited by
light and warmth, but dissolves and separates as soon as the genial
sunbeams fall upon it. In Spain no other faith dare be professed. In
Rome protestantism is treason. No wonder there is an external and
apparent unity. Bayonets are far more effective quellers of discord
than the Thirty-nine Articles. Hands are therefore united, while the
hearts they belong to are at the antipodes of each other. The Church
of Rome in fact confounds unity and uniformity; and for this latter,
which never has been, and never can be secured in the physical,
moral, or spiritual world, she has sacrificed hecatombs of holy men,
and furnished the elements of that solemn and ever-resuscitated
testimony against her, FOX'S BOOK OF MARTYRS.

The Apocalyptic cage of unclean beasts and birds is the meet symbol
of the Church of Rome. These are merely coercion without, and
corruption within; a scene
"Where all life dies, death lives, and nature breeds
Perverse, all monstrous, all prodigious things,
Abominable, unutterable, and worse
Than fables yet have feigned or fear conceived,
Gorgons, and hydras, and chimeras dire."

Let me here avail myself of the opportunity of impressing upon all
protestants the necessity of greater and more cordial unanimity.
Never was Christian union more urgently required. Never were the
prospects of such concord more brilliant. United truth must prevail
against conspiring heresy; but divided brethren will barely maintain
their ground. We do not ask protestants to compromise principles in
order to secure concord. This were wrong, as it is unnecessary. But
we do beseech them to concede prejudices. This is Christian. Let us
look more intensely at the truths wherein we agree, and less
censoriously at the points wherein we differ. The former are weighty
as gold, the latter lighter than chaff. Our points of coincidence and
compact are as the great mountains; our points of divergence as
molehills. The differences are jots and tittles, and positively
microscopic. Our common faith, common hope, common creed, are mighty
and majestic, as the God that gave them. The sweetest sounds in the
Vatican are our quarrels; the greatest barrier to the conversion of
Roman catholics is our strifes. Let us show them, that though there
are tabernacles, we have yet but one city; that though there are many
streams, we have yet but one river. There are many baskets, but one
bread. There is ONE BODY, and ONE SPIRIT, ONE HOPE, ONE LORD, ONE
FAITH, ONE BAPTISM, ONE GOD and FATHER OF ALL.

Such is the apostolic church. Such let pray and labour to be now.

Another very lofty pretension put forward by the Roman catholic
Church is her ANTIQUITY. She proclaims all protestants to be mere
upstarts, and their church throughout all its sections to lie
offshoots from her.

This objection is specious, but false. Certainly one circumstance is
very presumptive against the claims of the Romish Church, viz. those
doctrines peculiar to her, and in which she differs from us, are not
in the Bible, whereas the very truths she condemns in our creed as
novelties are wholly in the Bible. She withholds the cup from the
laity; we give it: which side is Scriptural? "Drink ye ALL of it," is
a decisive reply. Here, at least, we keep to the ancient practice,
and in this point our faith is the old and apostolic, and that of
Rome the modern. The Church of Rome has determined that the clergy
shall live in perpetual celibacy. The protestant church leaves it
optional. How does Scripture decide? "Peter's WIFE'S mother."
"Marriage is honourable in ALL." "A bishop the husband of one wife."
The very name, "husband bishop," would be an abomination in the eyes
of the Romish hierarchy. Whether worse things do not universally
obtain among them we do not at present inquire. We might go over
every tenet of the papacy, and laying it side by side with a
protestant tenet, demonstrate that our articles and creeds are coeval
and coincident with the Scriptures, and that those of the Church of 
Rome are all posthumous to the apostles, and very many of them not
older than the Council of Trent. This assumption also of the Rornish
Church, and her assault upon us, presumes that the Reformers
constructed a new church. This is a misapprehension. They merely
corrected and purified the old one. They removed the accumulated
layers of rubbish that concealed the beauties of the pearl of great
price. They purified and healed, under God, a leprous church, by
bringing her to her long-lost birth-right, the true Bethesda, the
blood of Jesus. The Reformers did with the papal Church as our Lord
did with the Jewish. They drove out the moneychangers, overturned
their tables, took down the symbols and the records of idolatry, and
hung up visibly before all the everlasting record, "My house shall be
called the house of prayer." We admire not the Reformation for its
own sake, but for the transcendent benefits even its most tempestuous
storms wafted to all lands, and deposited as germs of life and
rudiments of a new and holier faith. Let us never forget that the
Church of Rome received its present shape at the Council of Trent;
and so true is this, that if we were to profess all the ancient
creeds, the Apostolic and the Nicene, and cleave to these alone, we
should be denounced by the Romanists as heretics and schismatics. If
we were to adopt all the articles in the creed of Pope Pius IV.
except papal infallibility, we should yet be heretics. Nay, if we
were to sign that creed to-day, and the pope to-morrow to send forth
a new article of faith, we should still be heretics, unless we
received the last with the same faith and confidence with which we
receive the gospel. Nothing short of our frustrating judgment,
conscience, senses, and all we are and have, at the footstool of a
deified hierarch, will be tolerated. The Church of Rome is a new and
upstart communion, built up of the spoils of religion, reason, human
right, and social affection. In the protestant churches alone, we
hail and revere the grey hairs of age and of ancient times, and we
rise and venerate the august and holy form. All that our Reformers
did, and all we desire to do, is to detach the meretricious finery
and fantastic rags wherewith the Lady of Babylon has decked out the
church, and marred her fair aspect, and present her as the apostles
did, bright with the signatures of primeval truth, arrayed in the
robes and adorned by the likeness of Jesus, and inlaid with the inner
glories of the Holy Spirit.

The Church of Rome will twit us with the question, If our articles be
erroneous, tell us when and where they were introduced. We can tell
when they were not, and pretty clearly when they were introduced. But
if we were unable to lay down the dates of their rise, this inability
would not prove they were Scriptural. Was the Nile non-existent when
geographers could not state the longitude, latitude, and locality of
its spring-head. Who can tell what Rabbi introduced the successive 
superstitions of the Jews? The Reformation had respect not to the
date of the error, but to the error itself.

Let it also be observed that error does not flash upon the world,
broad, palpable, and at once. It creeps in by stealth, under a
variety of shapes and ever-adjusting chameleon colours. Truth, like
the fabled Minerva, comes at once and in full glory from above; error
dares not do so. Hence it is easy to mark the introduction of a great
truth, but it is not so easy to trace the commencement of an
ultimately overshadowing heresy. It is sufficient for us to know that
these dogmas, on which popes and councils have struck, with their
mightiest pressure, the counterpart of infallibility, never bore the
image and the superscription of the Son of God. But it is unnecessary
to enter into elaborate proofs that ours is the primeval faith.
History with its thousand tongues attests it; revelation with its
one, but decisive, voice attests it.

It may not be, in closing these remarks, an uninteresting or
unimportant inquiry, What has been the result of all the persecutions
the church has endured from the first martyr Abel to the present
time? We venture to assert, that in every instance it has been proved
that the blood of martyrs is the seed of the church. Persecution
purifies, never mars the church.

That we may obtain a satisfactory view of the successive combats
which have taken place, let us take a retrospective glance at the
records of their time and their locality, and we shall find that not
only has the wholesale result of the past been favourable to the
cause of Heaven, but that in every single struggle the serpent's head
has received an additional bruise, though the heel of the woman's
seed may not have got off unscathed. We shall find that the kingdom
of Jesus in consequence of persecution has been impeded in its march
athwart the length and breadth of the world, but at the same time
that blows have been dealt to the tempter's sway and prospects, from
which he has not easily rallied. What makes the upshot of every onset
with the persecutor more delightful to the Christian soldier, is the
fact that the very schemes which the serpent devised and set in
operation for the overthrow of the kingdom of heaven have been
inverted, and made to hasten the ruin of his own. Let us allude to
some proofs of this, furnished by the word of God.

When Cain, the first papal hierarch, hurried on by the author of
evil, lifted up his hand and slew his righteous and believing
brother, the first protestant martyr, the readiest presumption is,
that the cause of God and its advocate suffered, while that of Satan
and his servant prevailed. Death, the curse and the consequence of
sin, fastens first on a child of God, and passes by a child of the
devil. But from this persecution, so painful, two important lessons
were deduced. Adam and Eve were convinced that sin was a much more
fearful thing than they had previously supposed it to be, and were
thereby led to appreciate and admire more fully that promise of mercy
and those typical indices of a coming Saviour which had been
revealed. The keener our perception of guilt, the deeper is our
admiration of the blood that washes it
away. But a tangible instance was also given of God's punishment of
sin. It would have been mercy to Cain had the knife that entered the
bosom of his brother started upward, and buried itself in his own;
but a severer doom descended on his head; he was branded as a
criminal, and driven with restless and reluctant foot to proclaim to
the gathering multitudes of posterity the Almighty's hatred of
iniquity, and his immovable pmpose to visit with severe chastisement
them that perpetrate it. While the promise, on the one hand,
whispered in the ears of mankind that there was mercy in heaven, and
thus prevented despair, Cain, the wandering herald of wrath, the
visible proof of punishment following the footsteps of guilt,
proclaimed that in heaven there was holiness, and justice, and truth,
and thereby made men careful not to presume. From this scene there
arose a fore-reflected shadow of that righteous One, who came to his
own, and his own received him not; whose blood, nevertheless,
speaketh better things than the blood of Abel; for while the latter
cried to Heaven for vengeance, the former cries at this moment for
mercy upon them who have shed it, and "crucified the Lord of glory,
and put him to an open shame."

Satan, the determined persecutor, did not account his discomfiture
ground of despair. He began the work of contagion with increased
vigour; and so successful were his desolating efforts, that all who
dwelt upon the earth became subject to his sway, and apostates from
Heaven, with the exception of eight "faithful among the faithful
few." But here his victory was not destined to yield much or abiding
joy; for by the righteous judgments of God his myrmidons were swept
from the bosom of the earth, and the followers of holiness and truth
alone were left. From this occurrence a new lesson respecting the
mode of God's dealings with men was elicited, namely, that there is
an accepted time and a day of salvation, at the close of which mercy
retires, and judgment occupies her place. There was also presented to
the believer a type of that better Ark, Jesus Christ the Saviour. in
whom the church is to be borne in safety across the turmoils and
troubles of earth, the billows of Satan's wrath, and the descending
showers of judgment, which shall overwhelm a guilty and a godless
world. In this matter the heel of the woman's seed was wounded, but
the head of the serpent was bruised.

In the history of Joseph and his brethren we have truth amid
persecution exhibiting again.

Just because the image of his God shone forth in him with conspicuous
splendour, because his words, and works, and ways were ordered
according to the will of his heavenly Father, his wicked and envious
brethren, acting as the missionaries of Satan, conspired against his
life. His trials and temptations were strong as his integrity was
great. He was abandoned by his brothers, sold as a slave, consigned
to a dungeon, tempted by a sensual woman, and after all these
thrustings of Satan at him, and through him at righteousness and
truth, he came forth more than conqueror through Him that loved him.
The firmness of Joseph amid his sore temptations proved that in the
true child of God there is a principle superior to all the charms of
earth, and even in this estranged world a prosperous termination to a
life of virtue, which never applies to a life of vice. The very
machinations which Satan instituted, with a view to destroy Joseph,
were made conducive to the temporal as well as the spiritual welfare
of the people of God, aud, more suprising issue still, to the
conquest, but the saving conquest, of those his brethren who had so
unmerci fully dealt with him. The patriarch Joseph was, by Satan's
instrumentality, made an illustrious type of Jesus Christ, who gave
his life for those who condemned him to die, and fed with the bread
of life his brethren who denied him a place whereon to lay his head.
In this case the heel of the woman's seed was bruised a little, in
consequence of Joseph's early sufferings; but the head of the serpent
was bruised by the felicitous end to which all things connected with
him came. When in the providence of God the children of Israel were
subjected to the bondage of Egypt, and when Satan had been permitted
to lord it over Pharaoh so far as to drive him to the most barbarous
measures, that he might extirpate the seed of the woman, as contained
in the church of Israel, we find that the very plans which tended
ostensibly to accomplish the destruction of the people of God
contributed really to their ultimate advancement and well-being. The
cause of God appeared to be in the utmost jeopardy, for it depended
on a babe persecuted by Pharaoh, committed to an ark of bulrushes,
and left to float upon the waves of the Nile; but what was the
result? The household of Pharaoh, the flower of Satan's chivalry,
were, contrary to their expectation or desire, made the instruments
of bruising their master's head, and touching scarcely their
adversary's heel; for the daughter of Pharaoh rescued and educated
the child that was to be the minister of judgment to the first-born
of their native land, and eventually to bury in the Red Sea the
chariots, and horse, and men of war. The infatuated pursuers of the
children of God were overwhelmed by the collapse of the waters of the
Red Sea, and driven to the regions of eternal darkness, to bear the
tidings of defeat to its despot, and to present another
instance of the fruitlessness of coping with Omnipotence. But Satan
was not to be discouraged; he followed them through the wilderness,
and made an extensive havoc. But if the church's sufferings were
great, her hopes were proportionably bright; her course was onward,
amid the most exhilarating promises and the most expressive types. If
we proceed adown the stream of time, we shall discern in the
biography of David another illustration of the church's bruised heel,
and of the serpent's bruised head. The shepherd king put forth to do
battle with opposing principalities, and to bring down spiritual
wickedness on high places, anointed, sealed, and separated, was made,
in a peculiar manner, the object of Satan's attacks, as he was in a
high degree the subject of God's grace. He was persecuted to the edge
of ruin. He fell once and again; but "greater was He that was for him
than all that could be against him." He proved himself,
notwithstanding, a polished shaft in the hands of Heaven, a monument
of mercy possible to the chiefest of repentant sinners, and a most
striking type of that best "Beloved," who summed up in his single
character the scattered excellences, and excluded all the blemishes,
of those that went before him. If we were to go over the lives of the
ancient men who were commissioned in succession to add their
respective light to the brightening dawn that ultimately burst forth
into noon-day, we should find that the sins and short-comings, into
which the serpent dragged them, so far from furthering the cause of
spiritual darkness, contributed to its overthrow, in virtue of that
sleepless superintendency of the great Head of the church, which has
ever made the wrath of man to praise him. The weapons which the enemy
brought into the field turned their points against himself, and
disabled them that brandished them. The heel of the woman's seed was
no doubt bruised, for the march of truth was retarded, and the
terminating conquests of its advocates put a little further off in
the world's history; but what the Redeemer's kingdom lost in time it
gained in extent, what it lost in speed it gained in glory; and the
longer still its progress is opposed, the more comprehen sive and
brilliant its final triumphs will assuredly be.

It is the peculiar characteristic of great and true principles to
advance slowly and firmly, and to strike their roots deeply before
they spread their branches. But the never to be forgotten field on
which Satan's head received its direst bruise, and his cause its most
desolating shock, was the field of the most formidable persecution,
viz., Bethlehem, Gethsemane, and Calvary. Little did the devil
imagine that all his attacks were to be stepping-stones to Christ;
little did he dream that the apparatus he had prepared for the
extirpation of the church was to be wrenched from its intended scope,
and to be made subservient to the cause he hated and struggled to
overwhelm. Little did he anticipate that the blight he had
superinduced upon the spiritual and physical creation, and the
eclipse he had brought on the glory of God, as far as it shone on
this remote planet, was destined to be made the basis of a more
magnificent and felt exhibition of all the attributes of Heaven, and
of a more exalted elevation of the fallen creature. Jesus Christ, the
Root and the Offspring of David, the eternal Son of God, came down
from the hills of the heavenly land, where the tear of sorrow never
dropped, where the cry of want was never heard, and dwelt in flesh as
in a tabernacle, and wandered on this polluted earth, and wept, a
pilgrim and a stranger, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.
Yet did he present himself also as a Leader and a Captain on that
battle field, on which the destinies of unborn millions were
gathered, to rise or to sink as he should conquer or give way. He
entered on the scene of action through the varieties of being which
usher in the multitudes of human kind. He was in the womb, and
dandled on the knees of a mother; he was a boy and a stripling like
one of us; and out of all these estates of life he came into that of
perfect manhood, untouched even by the instantaneous transit of a
sinful feeling or imagination. Oh what a contrast was there between
the young Messias and Adam's young descendants, his coevals! In the
one was inherent infinitely more than Adam's loftiest excellence, but
in the others were developed the accumulated consequences of Adam's
guilt. Here was one whom no sinful pursuits could seduce, whose heart
was impervious to the devil's temptations and the world's guilt,
whose conformity to his Father's will was not to be lessened by any
sublunary force. No doubt Satan knew that the great bruiser of his
head was come, and if he remained inactive, it was the inactivity of
wonder and dismay; it was the fearful pause that intervenes between
the strong resolve and the contingency of irretrievable ruin, the
agonizing interlude of conflicting motives, which tear the heart in
opposite directions. At last he decided to present the front of a
persevering opposition, and to improve every probability of victory
the instant it should appear. He saw Jesus led out in the
arrangements of Heaven to that wilderness which had witnessed the
fastings of Moses and Elijah of old, and here he resolved to track
his footsteps, and to try his constancy in every practicable way.
Here was presented the sacred arena of a second spiritual contest, on
the issues of which the fate of humanity hung. In the first assault
which Satan made on Adam, amid the loveliness of Eden, and with the
right to its fruits and flowers, and countless immunities, with no
sensations of hunger, and no possibility of want, with little
incentive to disobey, and every motive to obey, our first progenitor
fell, and entailed on his posterity the numerous "ills that flesh is
heir to;" but the Son of God, suffering the gnawings of protracted
hunger, and bearing all along, from his Cradle upward, the imputed
guilt and deserved penalties of man, stood untarnished, and upheld
himself in infinite spotlessness. Before the Son the old serpent
stood; and by calling in question his omnipotence, and appealing to
the faintness of his bodily frame, endeavoured to involve in doubts
the faithfulness and the providence of his heavenly Father. Jesus,
however, repelled the temptation as soon as it was presented, by
merging all present sensations, and directing even the fallen angel's
attention to the protestant's rule of faith, the word of God: "It is
written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that
proceedeth from the mouth of God." Satan seeing that the Son of
Joseph was set on a high design, and superior to the urgency of
nature's calls when they might not be lawfully answered, shifts the
points of attack, and plies him with such arguments as his apparent
destitution of means and his meditated enterprise could naturally
suggest. He offered him the kingdoms of this world and their glory,
the wealth of Rome, the experience of her courts and the prowess of
her ablest Champions, to enable him to become the worlds emperor. He
showed him many a fair champaign, and many a glebe, productive of oil
and wine, the necessaries and luxuries of life; and with these he
invited him to contrast the fountainless desert and the barren earth,
his present and only possession; and all he asked in return for these
gifts was, what so great resources seemed justly to challenge, the
recognition of his lordship, and right to the homage of men and the
territories of the world, "Get thee behind me, Satan; it is written,
Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve,"
wasthe reply of the Son of God. Satan was overcome, and the Redeemer,
pained, it is true, by the very hearing of the tempter's blasphemy,
was undisputed victor. Abaddon fell like lightnthg from heaven. Hell
felt her empire narrowing, and gathering inward to the Centre, and
Jesus proceeded to follow up the conquest he had won, by expelling
the devils from the bosoms of men, controlling the winds and waves,
the troubles and diseases of the human family, and inculcating the
principles of love, and mercy, and truth. But the powers of darkness
concentrated again their wiles, and by the instrumentality of the
Jews put in operation every conceivable design against the life and
growing influence of the Son of Joseph. All the sophistry of the
lawyers was enlisted on the side of Satan, and many a perplexing case
of casuistry propounded. "Is it lawful to give tribute to Calsar?"
The reply was as admirable as the question was involved. "Moses in
the law commanded us that such as this woman,who was taken in
adultery, should be stoned; but what sayest thou?" These and many
more were the meshes in which they endeavoured to entangle the
Redeemer. At length they got Judas, one of the twelve, to betray him;
Peter, another of the twelve, to deny him; Pilate, the Roman
governor, to deliver him up; and his countrymen, the Jews, to put him
to a painful and ignominious death. No doubt, when the Divine
antagonist of the powers of evil hung on the accursed tree, in agony
of soul and body inconceivable, the gloom of hell was lightened by a
transient gleam of malignant hope, and the countenances of the damned
smoothed with a momentary smile, as there was now an expectancy that
he who had the keys of hell, and death, and the grave was crushed,
and the power of going in and coming out permitted them for ever.
Satan, racked on the wheel, because of former failures and
discomfiture, gathered courage yet again, and felt almost sure that
the reins of universal sovereignty were lodged in his hands; and when
he saw the Redeemer taken from the cross to the tomb, when he saw the
sun set and the sepulchre sealed, and the fearless warriors of Rome
appointed to sentinel the spot, he doubted not that all was his own;
though the remembrance of ancient prophecies fulfilled, and the
Saviour's exertion of supernatural power in the last tremors of
dissolution, shaded at intervals his brightest hopes. The second day
dawned and closed, and all was still; but scarcely had the sun of the
succeeding day reached the horizon, when the hearts of the Roman
veterans quailed, and helplessness fell upon them and made them as
dead men. The massive stone was rolled aside from the sepulchre, and
the grave's long grasp of man was relaxed; the winding-sheet, the
napkins, and the other pale insignia of death, were left behind, to
demonstrate his reign at length terminated, and the Redeemer rose and
ascended on high, leading captivity captive, and ready to give gifts
unto men. Satan's schemes were baffled, his hopes were blasted, death
and the grave, his ancient allies, were stripped of their sting and
their triumph, and bitter remorse and fell despair were his only
company. What made the devil's defeat trebly galling and disastrous,
the very plans he had devised and put in operation were made to
recoil upon himself, and to expedite the very results which he feared
and struggled to avert. The machinery he set in motion to perpetuate
darkness evolved more glorious light; the emissaries he employed to
add to death, and all our woe, unwittingly diffused life and
immortality, and more enduring joys. From Jesus' sufferings man's
salvation sprung, and from his death our eternal life, and from his
resurrection our destined mastery of all the powers of earth and
hell, and entrance into everlasting blessedness. Hell's gloom grew
deeper, and the despair of its fallen spirits more fearful; its worm
that never dies began to make wider havoc, and its fire which is
never quenched to burn with more intensity.

Satan, though driven to the verge of utter despair, determined not to
remain inactive. He felt that if he could not entirely destroy the
Son of God, and the children whom the Father had given him, he might
vex them, and impair their peace. After he had raised the Jews, from
Dan to Beersheba, against the unbefriended preachers of the cross,
and driven the first converts before him to the remotest provinces of
the Roman empire, he found that this dispersion, instead of
arresting, hastened the march of Christianity over the surface of the
world, and struck its doctrines deeper in the hearts of its
persecuted sticklers. Anxious, therefore, to suppress the gospel in
provinces beyond the boundaries of Judea, he enlisted in this his
foreign service a bold and a reckless missionary, whose name was Saul
of Tarsus. His hot passions, his fervid eloquence, and his
determination to do and to dare to any extent in the service of
error, and in opposition to the truth, seemed to the serpent to
prognosticate no ordinary havoc among the unresisting "men of the
way," as the disciples were frequently called. Little did Satan know
that he was in this matter deepening his own catastrophe; little did
he expect that this polished shaft, which he had culled from the
ranks of intellect, would be inverted and made to quiver in his own
bosom; little did he expect that the powers of reasoning and
impassioned oratory which Paul possessed would soon play against the
bulwarks of the kingdom of darkness, and contribute mainly to its
overthrow. But such was the issue. Paul was snatched from the service
of hell, and arrayed under the banners of heaven; and was more
instrumental in shaking idols on their pedestals, and idolaters even
on their thrones, than all the college of apostles besides. Satan was
foiled again. The heel of the woman's seed was wounded, but the head
of the serpent was severely bruised. He did not yet give over, but
marshalled his devoted bands, and placed them on the battle field. He
saw the apostles and the other preachers of the truth going forth
with the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, and the
shield of faith, and the helmet of hope, and the other spiritual
weapons of a spiritual warfare, to make new conquests over sin, and
fresh accessions to the gospel of Christ. Against them he brought out
a phalanx sufficient to abash all but those who know that God is on
their side; a phalanx composed of the 'learned philosophers ot
Greece, to grapple with the untutored fishermen of Galilee; the
wealthy potentates and magistrates of Rome, to confront the needy and
naked preachers of the cross; and the eagle ensign of the western
empire, that had flapped its victorious wings over thousands of the
fallen brave, and the colours that had waved in the four winds of the
earth, to meet the banner of the cross, the motto of which was, "My
kingdom is not of this world." His phalanx was composed of malignant
Jews, ready to burn the servants as they had crucified the Master; of
debased voluptuaries, who could not bear the streams of their
enjoyment to be stemmed; and of interested craftsmen, who were ready
to shout with greater or less intensity, according to the risk their
craft was exposed to, "Great is Diana of the Ephesians." The records
of Christianity declare what numbers sealed their testimony with
their blood, and entered into their rest from excruciating pains and
bitterest bereavements. Here the serpent seemed to prevail; but what
was the ultimate effect? The blood of the martyrs became the seed of
the church. From the momentary victory of Satan, from the thousands
he dragged to the altars of superstition, and immolated there, we
deduce the most satisfactory proofs of the sincerit of the first
apostles of the truth and of the Divine origin of those principles
they taught. No second causes are sufficient to account for the rapid
diffusion of Christianity, or for the fact that it remained, like the
burning bush on Horeb, unconsumed by the flames that surrounded it.
Our holy faith descends to us impressed with a tenfold more powerful
demonstration than any system, or history, or circumstance in the
world's annals; and, admirable instrumentality! Satan, its most
bitter adversary, has been the unexpected means of accomplishing this
result. The storm he raised, while indeed it disturbed the followers
of the Lamb, whistled nevertheless with most disastrous fury amid the
habitations, the temples, and the shrines which were dearest to him;
and the streams of blood he shed undermined his kingdom, and sapped
the deepest foundations of his throne. Satan, unable to crush
Christianity in its cradle, determined to harass its professors and
its preachers to the uttermost, He therefore went the round of all
the churches in Asia Minor, and sowed among them the most pestilent
errors and destructive heresies; and when he saw the extensive
success with which his efforts were crowned, he imagined that the
scale was for ever turned in his favour. If he could not stem the
streams of living waters, he resolved to intermix with them the most
fatal poisons. But here again he failed, and here again the antidote
administered by Heaven proved more extensively useful than the poison 
proved deleterious. The apostles saw the thickening delusions in
which their converts were enveloped, and with a view to dissipate
them wrote those admirable Epistles which are now embodied in the
records of inspired truth. Satan had induced the Roman brethren to
corrupt the fundamental article of the Christian creed, justification
by faith; but Paul, to vindicate its value, and to open up its
nature, wrote the Epistle to the Romans. Again, the efforts of
Judaizing teachers to leaven the doctrines of the gospel with the
obsolete rites of Moses, and to make the mixture essential to
salvation, drew forth the Epistle to the Galatians, in which the
apostle strips the truth of every earthy accretion, and places the
distinctive features of the Christian scheme in the most satisfactory
and triumphant light. Again, Satan engaged his servants to persecute
and vex the Christian brethren scattered throughout the Roman empire;
but the consequence was the composition of those rich and consolatory
Epistles of Peter, and John, and James, which have ever been the
exhaustless well-springs of the sweetest comfort to the suffering
children of God. The devil made way for God's abounding joys to his
people. Hell prepared this fittest opportunity for Heaven to shower
down blessings co-extensive with the wants and existence of the human
race. It is delightful to see the arrows shot by Satan against the
children of God rebound and penetrate himself, and every step he took
against the woman's seed increase his own discomfiture, and every
stone he brought to build withal the temple of darkness, taken from
him, cut and prepared for a place in the temple of light, and every
weapon he brought into the field wrenched from his hands, and added
to the arinoury of heaven.

Had Satan never vexed the churches with heresy and cruel havoc, we
had not, humanly speaking, been favoured with the most important
books of the Bible. The wrath of hell, as well as the wrath of man,
shall be restrained, and the remainder of it made to praise God. Let
the powers of earth and darkness combine together against the Lord,
and against his Anointed; let all their energies be summoned into
play, and all their plans brought into operation; and at that very
moment when the wreath of victory is ready to encircle them, and the
seal of success ready to be set, the scene shall be changed, and the
foreordained purposes of God shall evolve, and twist the apparatus
and machinery of Satan so entirely to their subserviency and
accomplishments, that uninformed spectators cannot help supposing
that Satan has all along been lending his best efforts to the cause
of God, and to the furtherance of every Christian virtue. At length
Constantine threw the shield of temporal and imperial power around
and above Christianity, throughout the Roman territories. The devil
felt that this state provision for the clergy might lengthen the
cords and strengthen the stakes of Zion, and contribute to the more
speedy dissolution of his kingdom. He therefore meditated deeply and
long, with a view to neutralize such good effects as must flow from
the new recognition which the church had received. After much
meditation and conference, he hit upon his masterpiece, the papacy.
Persecution was a blunder in Satan's policy; Arianism was also a
blunder; for these, instead of benefiting, injured his cause. He now
resolved to uproot Christianity no longer by an open andingenuous
warfare, but by stratagem, and deep manceuvring within the camp, he
determined to deal his bitterest stabs in the garb of a friend. Being
convinced that the Pantheon could no longer be filled with the
statues of Jupiter, and Mars, and Venus, he zealously emptied their
niches, and placed in their stead those of Paul, and Peter, and the
Virgin Mary, and many more saints, who never had a local habitation
and a name before. He baptized the idols, the rites and temples of
pagan Rome, and found for them a welcome reception in the Vatican,
and among the bishops, priests, and monks, and friars that acted
under its power. He just coloured over paganism with the outward
tints of Christianity, and thereby formed popery; a religion which
bears less relationship to true Christianity, than the gilded bauble
to articles composed of pure and solid gold. It was indeed a cunning
contrivance. Satan took the temples, and the shrines, and the priests
set up to propagate Christian truth, and anointed them to destroy and
debase it. Under the covert of zeal for the glory of God and the
salvation of men he reared the Inquisition, and martyred saints in
every land. With hands reeking with the blood of holy men, he went to
the house of prayer with attendant and professed ministers of Jesus,
and gave thanks to God that he had fulfilled his promise, "Lo! I am
with you to the end of the world;" and, "The gates of hell shall not
prevail against you."

Nothing indicates the deceit of Satan or the blindness of men more
clearly, than the fact that the devil was allowed to seal up the
Bible under the pretence of its tendency to mislead men, and to keep
them in the most palpable darkness, lest peradventure they should die
through the excess of the light and the wisdom of God. Has Satan
nevertheless triumphed here, and escaped unscathed? We say no. The
Book of Martyrs is a living witness that the power of religion,
during the iron reign of the papacy, was exemplified most gloriously
in the sufferings of faithful men; and the constancy, to death, of
the Albigenses and the Waldenses showed, that even in the last
extremities of darkness and desolation, light is sown for the
righteous. As the manna that descended from heaven, and the waters
that gushed from the riven rock, bespoke to the children of Israel
the love and the presence of God even in the wilderness; in like
manner the refreshment of the spiritual heritage, in the midst of
Babylon, proclaimed most clearly that a mother may forget the child
she bare, but that his church never can be forgotten nor forsaken of
Jehovah, that she is engraven on the palms of his hands, and nearest
and dearest to him. But we believe that the bondage of the church in
mystic Babylon, during the middle ages, was a meant punishment,
inflicted perhaps for her pride and forgetfulness of her Deliverer
when the sword of persecution was sheathed. At all events, there
cannot be a doubt that the church has learned lessons from her
fearful condition at that time which will not be soon erased from her
memory. Experience teaches communities, as well as individuals, best.
We are now armed at all points against the evils of hell. We know him
alike in the garb of a friend and in the garb of a foe. We will now
prize more highly that blessed book which he shut so widely. We will
now value and cherish those pure truths which apostles instituted,
and the venerable Reformers revived. A season of darkness is often
the precursor of a season of more glorious light. The long day of
moral paralysis is followed often by a more vigorous and
uninterrupted period of exertion. Perhaps the church must live under
the same law as individual members of it. The smile will appear only
where mourning has been. The waters of life roll only in the channels
that have been made by a flood of tears. At all events, at the period
of the Reformation, the church came forth from her wilderness
condition "bright as the sun, fair as the moon, and terrible as an
army with banners," enriched with additional experience of the enmity
of Satan and the plans he pursues to destroy her. We grant that Satan
prevailed awhile during the reign of the papacy; but we assert that
the Reformation quaslled his power and bruised his head, and brought 
the church from her imprisonment, with her heel bruised very sore to
be sure, but soon again to be healed, and her pace athwart the
regions of the globe to be accelerated in an unprecedented degree.
The pressure being removed, Christianity rose up with an elasticity
and onward movement that astonished and confounded Satan, while it
delighted all its advocates. With one simultaneous burst printing was
discovered, Bible Societies organized, and the universe made eloquent
again with the mighty motives and appeals of uncorrupted truth;
missionaries were sent forth, and the whole Christian church animated
with a spirit of exertion more than proportionate to its former
apathy. Thus baffled, he had recourse again to the assistance of
undisguised infidelity, and has succeeded in gaining to his side the
subtle powers of Hume and Diderot, and the sarcastic genius of
Voltaire, and the splendid but hollow descriptions of Gibbon. But the
misrepresentations and the sophistry with which these men have
without exception essayed to overthrow the doctrines of the Bible
have all been met and repelled, and the truth has come forth like
fine gold from the furnace, more brilliant than before its trials and
testings began, and Satan's machinations have again been made to
recoil and destroy his cause. The sun in the firmament, by the
intensity of his beams, draws between him and us vapours and clouds,
which seem for a while to intercept his influences, and to threaten
the earth with barrenness and darkness; but presently the same sun
dissolves them into gentle showers, which fertilize the soil, and
cool the air, and promote the growth of vegetation on all sides. In
the same way the Sun of righteousness, by his very brilliancy,
exhales clouds of infidels, and atheists, and sceptics, whose
writings are met by mightier arguments, and the truths thus called
into question are exhibited in clearer light, and cherished with
warmer feelings of regard. Since the Reformation Satan has brought no
new stratagem into the field. In fact, hisingenuity seems entirely
exhausted, his imagination paralyzed, and his resources done, and
this bitter conviction left him, -- that all he has achieved has
served but to hasten and to deepen his final catastrophe.

We gather this consolation from the review we have laid before you,
and from the serpent's recent recurrence to obsolete and defeated
schemes, that he can bring no new device against us, that he can
discover no vantage ground which he has not already occupied. He
looks at his quiver, it is empty. He looks to his counsellors, they
are in despair. He looks at death, its sting is gone. He looks at the
grave, its strength and its triumph are dissipated. He looks to the
past, and he sees only blasted hopes and foiled attempts, and
fountains of pain, and sorrow, and remorse. He looks to the future,
and he espies a gathering glory he cannot tarnish, and an approaching
victory he cannot impede, and in his own case a fearful inheritance
of burning, and blackness, and agony he cannot avert. All he can do
at present is to ply the old instruments, and bait his hook with
former seductions. His head is deeply bruised. He is giddy, on the
edge of inevitable ruin. Let us go forward, fellow Christians; a gulf
of ruin will soon entomb our foe, and a land of bliss imbosom our
spirits. Let us lift our eyes and our hearts towards the hills from
whence comes our aid, and towards the God of battles, unto whom the
shields of the earth do belong, and resist boldly, and Satan will
flee; for he is a vanquished enemy, he bites the dust. Never more
shall he lord it over the Messiah's heritage. The distant isles of
the ocean, and the far-spread continents of the world, and all
kindreds, and tribes, and tongues, shall yet come forth from the
darkness of spiritual death, and from the fetters of the devil's
despotism, and subscribe themselves by the name of Jesus. The
symptoms of the ruin of Satan's kingdom already appear. The crescent
of the Ottoman wanes fast. The triple crown sits loosely on the head
of the man of sin, and the thunder stamp of revolution is heard at
the doors of the Vatican, and the lightning gleams of truth, made
more vivid by long opposition, are seen and felt in the darkest
chambers of the Inquisition. A spirit of awakenment seems to have
arrested the Jew, and a wider and more cordial welcome of the cross
to have touched the heart of the Gentile. We tread upon the fallen,
though yet unextinguished, body of the enemy. We have only to read
the venerable annals of Fox to see that we move across the ground
that is strewed with the trophies of former victories, and
consecrated by the blood of holy martyrs, and hallowed by the
resting-places of their earthly remains, and smoothed and made even
by the pioneers of the cross that have preceded us to glory. Jesus,
the Captain of our faith, and the noble army of martyrs that took up
their cross and followed him, have already borne the brunt of the
battle, and formed a rampart by their graves, that we may stand
behind their shelter and gather the remaining laurels of spiritual
conquest. From the first century even to the present, the successive
ranks of believers have undergone vicarious substitution for them
that have followed, "each stepping where his comrade stood the
instant that he fell," and have thus, at the expense of their blood
and comfort, left us less opposition to be met in our course to
glory. Let us therefore wrap around us the mantles they have left
behind them in their flight to immortality, and, animated by their
example, and above all by the example of the Author and the Finisher
of our faith, let us neither slacken our efforts nor curb our zeal
till the church shine forth in her millennial glory, or we
individually enter into "the rest that remains for the people of
God." Only let us remember, that besides the conflict that is waged
in the world without, there must be a stiffer tug of battle carried
on in the bosom within. We must remember that none can enter the
ranks of the redeemed warriors around, who cannot exhibit the
unquestionable proofs of victory gained in the bosom within. While
Satan battles it out in the open arena of earth against the
prevalence and progress of Heaven's truth, his zeal is also as hot
and his struggles as incessant for the mastery of a single heart, as
for the mastery of the whole church. To us personally it matters
little whether the cross or the crescent is uppermost, whether hell
or heaven triumphs, if we are yet in the gall of bitterness and in
the bond of iniquity. We must bruise the serpent's head in our own
bosoms before we can contribute to bruise his head in the world. Our
life is not a life of peace, nor ease, nor retirement; but a life of
conflict, and of struggle, and of watchfulness. Time is the hour of
battle, and eternity is the hour of triumph; earth is the
battlefield, and heaven is the victor's home; the cross is our
companion now, and the crown our prize hereafter. We feel the
serpent's life within, but feel we not the Spirit's life more
powerful still? We must feel the foul current of poisoned waters
coming in contact with the streams of purity and love, but thanks be
to God through Jesus Christ we shall be more than conquerors through
him that loved us. Let us break the fetters that bind to the ways and
works of earth, for the Spirit and strength of Omnipotence are with
us; let us be slaves no more. Be ye freemen whom the truth makes
free. Soon the struggle will be done, and the head of the serpent
will be bruised, and amid the opening climes of heaven we shall see
our glorified relations, and friends, and long-lost comrades in the
contest, stretching forth their hands to welcome us to the mansions
which the Saviour has prepared in his Father% house. "Now unto Him
that is able to keep us from falling, and to present us faultless
before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy, to the only wise
God our Saviour, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now
and ever." Amen.



THE FIRST BOOK
THE ACTS AND MONUMENTS, CONTAINING THE THREE HUNDRED YEARS NEXT AFTER
CHRIST, WITH THE TEN PERSECUTIONS OF THE PRIMITIVE CHURCH.

1. FOREWORD
(Illustration: The Crucifixion of Christ )
BY THE GRACE AND SPEED OF CHRIST OUR LORD, WE WOULD DISCOURSE, IN
PARTICULAR SORT, THE ACTS AND DOINGS OF EVERY AGE BY ITSELF, IN THE
FOLLOWING ORDER:

To declare, first, the suffering time of the church,which containeth
about the space of three hundred years after Christ.

Secondly, The flourishing and growing time of the same, containing
other three hundred years.

Thirdly, The declining time of the church, and of true religion,
other three hundred years.

Fourthly, Of the time of antichrist, reigning and raging in the
church since the loosing of Satan.

Lastly, of the reforming time of Christ's church, in these latter
three hundred years.

In the tractation of all which things our chief purpose and endeavour
shall be, (so near as the Lord will give us grace,) not so much to
intermeddle withoutward affairs of princes, or matters civil, (except
sometimes for example of life,) as specially minding (by the help of
the Lord) to prosecute such things only which to the ecclesiastical
state of the church are appertaining: as, first, to intreat of the
stablishing of Christian faith; then of the persecutions of tyrants;
the constancy and patience of God's saints; the first conversion of
Christian realms to the faith of Christ, namely, of this realm of
England and Scotland; first beginning with king Lucius and so
forward, following the order of our English kings here in this land;
to declare the maintenance of true doctrine; the false practice of
prelates; the creeping in of superstition and hypocrisy; the manifold
assaults, wars, and tumults of the princes of this world against the
people of God. Wherein may appear the wonderful operation of Christ's
mighty hand, ever working in his church, and never ceasing to defend
the same against his enemies, according to the verity of his own
word, promising to be with his church while the world shall stand; so
as by the process of this story may well be proved, and will be
testified in the sequel thereof.
[Footnote: This purpose of Fox, not to intermeddle with civil and
political questions, many would do well to observe in the present
day. The question between the Church of Rome and the Church of Christ
relates emphatically to souls, to Christ, and to eternity.]

In the tractation of all which things two special points I chiefly
commend to the reader, as most requisite and necessary for every
Christian man to observe and to note for his own experience and
profit: as, first, the disposition and nature of this world;
secondly, the nature and condition of the kingdom of Christ: the
vanity of the one, and establishment of the other: the unprosperous
and unquiet state of the one, ruled by man's violence and wisdom; and
the happy success of the other, ever ruled by God's blessing and
providence: the wrath and revenging hand of God in the one, and his
mercy upon the other. The world I call all such as be without or
against Christ; either by ignorance, not knowing him; or by
heathenish life, not following him; or by violence, resisting him. On
the other side, the kingdom of Christ in this world I take to be all
them which belong to the faith of Christ, and here take his part in
this world against the world; the number of whom, although it be much
smaller than the other, and always lightly is hated and molested of
the world, yet it is the number which the Lord peculiarly doth bless
and prosper, and ever will. And this number of Christ's subjects is
it which we call the visible church here in earth. Which visible
church, having in itself a difference of two sorts of people, so is
it to be divided in two parts, of which the one standeth of such as
be of outward profession only, the other which by election inwardly
are joined to Christ: the first in words and lips seem to honour
Christ, and are in the visible church only, but not in the church
invisible, and partake the outward sacraments of Christ, but not the
inward blessing of Christ; the other are both in the visible and also
in the invisible church of Christ, which not in words only and
outward profession, but also in heart do truly serve and honour
Christ, partaking not only the sacraments, but also the heavenly
blessings and grace of Christ.

And many times it happeneth, that as between the world and the
kingdom of Christ there is a continual repugnance; so between these
two parts of this visible church aforesaid ofttimes groweth great
variance and mortal persecution, insomuch that sometimes the true
church of Christ hath no greater enemies than of their own profession
and company, as happened not only in the time of Christ and his
apostles, but also from time to time almost continually; but
especially in the later days of the church under the persecution of
antichrist and his retinue, as by the reading of this volume more
manifestly hereafter may appear.

At the first preaching of Christ and coming of the gospel, who should
rather have known and received him than the Pharisees and scribes of
that people, which had his law? And yet who persecuted and rejected
him more than they themselves? What followed? They, in refusing
Christ to be their King, and choosing rather to be subject unto
Cæsar, were by the said their own Cæsar at length destroyed; whenas
Christ's subjects the same time escaped the danger. Whereby it is to
be learned what a dangerous thing it is to refuse the gospel of God,
when it is so gently offered.

The like example of God's wrathful punishment is to be noted no less
in the Romans also themselves. For when Tiberius Cæsar, having
received by letters from Pontius Pilate of the doings of Christ, of
his miracles, resurrection, and ascension into heaven, and how he was
received as God of many, was himself also moved with belief of the
same, and did confer thereof with the whole senate of Rome to have
Christ adored as God; they, not agreeing thereunto, refused him,
because that, contrary to the law of the Romans, he was consecrated
(said they) for God before the senate of Rome had so decreed and
approved him, &c. Thus the vain senate, following rather the law of
man than of God, and which were contented with the emperor to reign
over them, and were not contented with the meek King of glory, the
Son of God, to be their King, were after much like sort to the Jews
scourged and entrapped for their unjust refusing, by the same way
which they themselves did prefer. For as they preferred the emperor 
and rejected Christ, so the just permission of God did stir up their
own emperors against them in such sort, that both the senators
themselves were almost all devoured, and the whole city most horribly
afflicted for the spaco almost of three hundred years together. For,
first, the same Tiberius, which for a great part of his reign was a
moderate and a tolerable prince, afterward was to them a sharp and
heavy tyrant, who neither favoured his own mother, nor spared his own
nephews, nor the princes of the city, such as were his own
counsellors, of whom, to the number of twenty, he left not past two
or three alive. Suetonius reporteth him to be so stern of nature and
tyrannical, that in time of his reign very many were accused and
condemned with their wives and chilthen; maids also first defloured,
then put to death, In one day he recordeth twenty persons to be drawn
to the place of execution. By whom also, through the just punishment
of God, Pilate, under whom Christ was crucified, was apprehended and
accused at Rome, deposed, then banished to the town of Lyons, and at
length did slay himself. Neither did Herod and Caiaphas long escape,
of whom more followeth hereafter. Agrippa also by him was east into
prison; albeit afterward he was restored. In the reign of Tiberius,
the Lord Jesus, the Son of God, in the three and thirtieth year of
his age, which was the seventeenth of this emperor, by the malice of
the Jews suffered his blessed passion for the conquering of sin,
death, and Satan, the prince of this world, and rose again the third
day. After whose blessed passion and resurrection this foresaid
Tiberius Nero lived six years, during which time no persecution was
yet stirring in Rome against the Christians, through the commandment
of the emperor.

In the reign also of this emperor, and the year which was the next
after the passion of our Saviour, or somewhat more, anno 35, St. Paul
was converted to the faith. After the death of Tiberius, when he had
reigned three and twenty years, succeeded C. Cæsar Caligula, Claudius
Nero, and Domitius Nero, anno 39; which three were likewise such
scourges to the senate and people of Rome, that the first not only
took other men's wives violently from them, but also defioured three
of his own sisters, and afterward banished them. So wicked he was,
that he commanded himself to be worshipped as God, and temples to be
erected in his name, and used to sit in the temple among the gods,
requiring his images to be set up in all temples, and also in the
temple of Jerusalem, which caused great disturbance among the Jews,
and then began the abomination of desolation to be set up in the holy
place, spoken of in the gospel. His cruel conduct, or else
displeasure, was such towards the Romans, that he wished that all the
people of Rome had but one neck, that he at his pleasure might
destroy such a multitude. By this said Caligula, Herod, the murderer
of John Baptist and condemner of Christ, was condemned to perpetual
banishment, where he died miserably. Caiaphas also, which wickedly
sat upon Christ, was the same time removed from the high priest's
room, and Jonathan set in his place. The raging fierceness of this
Caligula incensed against the Romans had not thus ceased, had not he
been cut off by the hands of a tribune and other gentlemen, which
slew him in the fourth year of his reign. After whose death were
found in his closet two little labels, one called a sword, the other
the dagger; in the which labels were contained the names of those
senators and noblemen of Rome whom he had purposed to put to death.
Besides this sword and dagger, there was found also a coffer, wherein
divers kinds of poison were kept in glasses and vessels for the
purpose to destroy a wonderful number of people; which poisons
afterward, being thrown into the sea, destroyed a great number of
fish.

But that which this Caligula had only conceived, the same did the
other two which came after bring to pass; Claudius Nero, who reigned
thirteen years with no little cruelty; but especially the third of
these Neros, called Domitius Nero, which, sueceeding after Claudius,
reigned fourteen years with such fury and tyranny, that he slew the
most part of the senators, and destroyed the whole order of
knighthood in Rome. So prodigious a monster of nature was he, more
like a beast, yea, rather a devil, than a man, that he seemed to be
born to the destruction of men. Such was his monstrous uncleanness,
that he abstained not from his own mother, his natural sister, nor
from any degree of kindred. Such was his wretched cruelty, that he
caused to be put to death his mother, his brother-in-law, his sister,
his wife great with child, all his instructors, Seneca and Lucan,
with divers more of his own kindred and consanguinity. Moreover, he
commanded Rome to be set on fire in twelve places, and so continued
it five days and seven nights in burning, while that he, to see the
example how Troy burned, sung the verses of Homer. And to avoid the
infamy thereof, he laid the fault upon the Christian men, and caused
them to be persecuted. And so continued this miserable emperor in his
reign fourteen years, till at last the senate proclaiming him a
public enemy unto mankind, condemned him to be drawn through the
city, and to be whipped to death. For the fear whereof, he, flying
the hands of his enemies, in the night fled to a manor of his
servant's in the country, where he was forced to slay himself, 
complaining that he had then neither friend nor enemy left that would
do so much for him. In the latter end of this Domitius Nero Peter and
Paul were put to death for the testimony and faith of Christ.
[Footnote: Some chronologists place the martyrdom of St. Peter and
St. Paul two years later, and some even four.]

Thus ye see, which is worthy to be marked, how the just scourge and
heavy indignation of God from time to time ever followeth there, and
how all things there go to ruin, neither doth any thing well prosper,
where Christ Jesus, the Son of God, is contemned and not received, as
by these examples may appear, both of Romans, which not only were
thus consumed and plagued by their own emperors, but also by civil
wars, whereof three happened in two years at Rome, after the death of
Nero, anno 69, and other casualties, (as in Sueton. is testified,) so
that in the days of Tiberius aforesaid five thousand Romans were hurt
and slain at one time by the fall of a theatre. And also most
especially by the destruction of the Jews, which about this same
time, in the year threescore and ten, and nearly forty years after
the passion of Christ, and the third year after the suffering of St.
Peter and Paul, were destroyed by Titus and Vespasian his father (who
succeeded after Nero in the empire) to the number of eleven hundred
thousand, besides them which Vespasian slew in subduing the country
of Galilee, over and beside them also which were sold and sent into
Egypt and other provinces to vile slavery, to the number of seventeen
thousand. Two thousand were brought with Titus in his triumph; of
which, part he gave to be devoured of the wild beasts, part otherwise
most cruelly were slain. By whose case all nations and realms may
take example, what it is to reject the visitation of God's verity
being sent, and much more to persecute them which be sent of God for
their salvation.

And as this wrathful vengeance of God thus hath been showed upon this
rebellious people, both of the Jews and of the Romans, for their
contempt of Christ, whom God so punished by their own emperors; so
neither the emperors themselves, for persecuting Christ in his
members, escaped without their just reward. For among so many
emperors which put so many Christian martyrs to death, during the
space of these first three hundred years, few or none of them scaped
either not slain themselves, or by some miserable end or other
worthily revenged. First, of the poisoning of Tiberius, and of the
slaughter of the other three Neros after him, sufficiently is
declared before. After Nero, Domitius Galba within seven months was
slain by Otho. And so did Otho afterward slay himself, being overcome
by Vitellus. And was not Vitellus shortly after drawn through the
city of Rome, and after he was tormented was thrown into Tiber?
Titus, a good emperor, is thought to be poisoned of Domitian, his
brother. The said Domitian, after he had been a persecutor of the
Christians, was slain in his chamber, not without the consent of his
wife. Likewise Commodus was murdered of Narcissus. The like end was
of Pertinax and Julianus. Moreover, after that Severus was slain here
in England, (and lieth at York,) did not his son Bassianus slay his
brother Geta, and he after slain of Martialis? Macrinus with his son
Diadumenus were both slain of their own soldiers. After whom
Heliogabalus, that monstrous belly-paunch, was of his own people
slain, and drawn through the city and cast into Tiber. Alexander
Severus, that worthy and learned emperor, which said he would not
feed his servants doing nothing with the bowels of the commonwealth,
although in life and virtues he was much unlike other emperors, yet
proved the like end, being slain at Mentz, with his godly mother
Mammea, by Maximinus, whom the emperor before of a muleteer had
advanced to great dignities. The which Maximinus also after three
years was slain himself of his soldiers. What should I speak of
Maximus and Balbinus in like sort both slain in Rome? of Gordian
slain by Philip? ofPhilip, the first christened emperor, slain, or
rather martyred, for the same cause? of wicked Decius drowned, and
his son slain the same time in battle? of Gallus and Volusianus his
son, emperors after Decius, both slain by conspiracy of Æmilianus,
who rose against them both in war, and within three months after was
slain himself? Next to Æmilianus succeeded Valerianus, and Galienus
his son; of whom Valerianus (who was a persecutor of the Christians)
was taken prisoner of the Persians, and there made a riding fool of
Sapores their king, who used him for a stool to leap upon his horse;
while his son Galienus, sleeping at Rome, either would not or could
not once proffer to revenge his father's ignominy. For after the
taking of Valerian, so many emperors rose up as were provinces in the
Roman monarchy. At length Galienus also was killed by Aureolus which
warred against him. It were too long here to speak of Aurelianus,
another persecutor, slain of his secretary; of Tacitus and Florinus
his brother, of whom the first reigned five months, and was slain at
Pontus; the other reigned two months, and was murdered at Tarsis: of
Probus, who, although a good civil emperor, yet was he destroyed by
his soldiers. After whom Carus, the next emperor, was slain by
lightning. Next to Carus followed the impious and wicked persecutor
Dioclesian, with his fellows Maximian, Valerius, Maximinus,
Maxentius, and Licinius, under whom, all at one time, (during the
time of Dioclesian,) the greatest and most grievous persecution was
moved against the Christians ten years together. After which,
Dioclesian and Maximian deposed themselves from the empire. Galerius,
the chiefest minister of the persecution, after his terrible
persecutions, fell into a wonderful sickness, having such a sore
risen in the nether part of his body, which consumed his members, and
so did swarm with worms, that being curable neither by surgery nor
physic, he confessed that it happened for his cruelty towards the
Christians, and so called in his proclamations against them.
Notwithstanding, he not able to sustain (as some say) his sore, slew
himself. Maximinus in his war, being tormented with pain in his guts,
there died, Maxentius was vanquished by Constantine, and drowned in
Tiber. Licinius likewise, being overcome by the said Constantine the
Great, was deposed from his empire, and afterward slain of his
soldiers. But, on the other side, after the time of Constantine,
whenas the faith of Christ was received into the imperial seat, we
read of no emperor after the like sort destroyed or molested, except
it were Julianus, or Basilius, (which expelled one Zeno, and was
afterward expelled himself,) or Valens. Beside these we read of no
emperor to come to ruin and decay, as the others before mentioned.

And thus have we in brief sum collected out of the chronicles the
unquiet and miserable state of the emperors of Rome, until the time
of Christian Constantine, with the examples, no less terrible than
manifest, of God's severe justice upon them for their contemptuous
refusing and persecuting the faith and name of Christ their Lord.

Moreover, in much like sort and condition, if leisure of time or
haste of matter would suffer me a little to digress unto more lower
times, and to come more near home, the like examples I could also
infer of this our country of England, concerning the terrible plagues
of God against the churlish and unthankful refusing or abusing the
benefit of his truth. First, we read how that God stirred up Gildas
to preach to the old Britons, and to exhort them unto repentance and
amendment of life, and afore to warn them of plagues to come if they
repented not. What availed it? Gildas was laughed to scorn, and taken
for a false prophet and a malicious preacher. The Britons, with lusty
courages, shameless faces, and unrepentant hearts, went forth to sin
and to offend the Lord their God. What followed? God sent in their
enemies on every side and destroyed them, and gave the land to other
nations, Not many years past, God seeing idolatry, superstition,
hypocrisy, and wicked living used in this realm, raised up that godly
learned man John Wickliffe to preach unto our fathers repentance, and
to exhort them to amend their lives, to forsake their papistry and
idolatry, their hypocrisy and superstition, and to walk in the fear
of God. His exhortations were not regarded, he with his sermons was
despised, his books and he himself after his death were burnt. What
followed? They slew their right king, and set up three wrong kings on
a row; under whom all the noble blood was slain up, and half the
commons thereto, what in France, and with their own sword in fighting
among themselves for the crown; and the cities and towns were
decayed, and the land brought half to a wilderness, in respect of
that it was before. Oh extreme plagues of God's vengeance! Since that
time, even of late years, God, once again having pity of this realm
of England, raised up his prophets, namely, William Tindall, Thomas
Bilney, John Frith, Doctor Barnes, Jerome Garret, Anthony Person,
with divers others, which both with their writings and sermons
earnestly laboured to call us unto repentance, that by this means the
fierce wrath of God might be turned away from us. But how were they
entreated? how, were their painful labours regarded? They themselves
were condemned and burnt as heretics, and their books condemned and
burnt as heretical. The time shall come, saith Christ, that whosoever
killeth you, will think that he doth God high good service, John xvi.
2. Whether any thing since that time hath chanced to this realm
worthy the name of a plague, let the godly wise judge. If God hath
deferred his punishment, or forgiven us these our wicked deeds, as I
trust he hath, let us not therefore be proud and high-minded, but
most humbly thank him for his tender mercies, and beware of the like 
ungodly enterprises hereafter. Neither is it here any need to speak
of these our lower and later times, which have been in king Henry's
and king Edward's days, seeing the memory thereof is yet fresh and
cannot be forgotten. But let this pass; of this I am sure, that God
yet once again is come on visitation to this church of England, yea,
and that more lovingly and beneficially than ever he did before. For
in this visitation he hath redressed many abuses, and cleansed his
church of much ungodliness and superstition, and made it a glorious
church, if it be compared to the old form and state. And now how
grateful receivers we be, with what heart, study, and reverence we
embrace that which he hath given, that I refer either to them that
see our fruits, or to the sequel, which peradventure will declare it.



2. THE EARLY PERSECUTION OF THE APOSTLES
But this by the way of digression. Now to regress again to the
state of the first former times. It remaineth, that as I have set
forth the justice of God upon these Roman persecutors, so now we
declare their persecutions raised up against the people and servants
of Christ, within the space of three hundred years after Christ.
Which persecutions in number commonly are counted to be ten, besides
their persecutions first moved by the Jews in Jerusalem and other
places against the apostles. In the which, first St. Stephen the
deacon was put to death, with divers others more, in the same rage of
time either slain or cast into prison. At the doing whereof Saul the
same time played the doughty Pharisee, being not yet converted to the
faith of Christ, whereof the history is plain in the Acts of the
Apostles, set forth at large by St. Luke.
(Illustration: The martyrdom of St. Stephen )

After the martyrdom of this blessed Stephen, suffered next James the
holy apostle of Christ, and brother of John. Of which James mention
is made in the Acts of the Apostles, the twelfth chapter; where is
declared, how that not long after the stoning of Stephen, king Herod
stretched forth his hand to take and afflict certain of the
congregation; among whom James was one, whom he slew with the sword,
&c. Of this James Eusebius also inferreth mention, alleging Clement
thus writing a memorable story of him. This James, (saith Clement,)
when he was brought to the tribunal seat, he that brought him, (and
was the cause of his trouble,) seeing him to be condemned, and that
he should suffer death, as he went to the execution, he being moved
therewith in heart and conscience. confessed himself also of his own
accord to be a Christian. And so were they led forth together, where
in the way he desired of James to forgive him that he had done. After
that James had a little paused with himself upon the matter, turning
to him, Peace (saith he) be to thee, brother, and kissed him, and
both were beheaded together, in the year of our Lord thirty and six.

Dorotheus in his book named Synopsis testifieth, that Nicanor, one of
the seven deacons, with two thousand others, which believed in
Christ, suffered also the same day whereon Stephen did suffer.

The said Dorotheus witnesseth also that Simon, another of the
deacons, bishop afterward of Bostrum in Arabia, was there burned.
Parmenas also, another of the deacons, suffered.

Thomas preached to the Parthians, Medes, and Persians; also to the
Germans, Hiraconies, Bactries, and Magies. He suffered in Calamina, a
city of Judah, being slain with a dart.

Simon Zelotes preached at Mauritania, and in the countries of Africa,
and in Britain; he was likewise crucified.

Judas, brother of James, called also Thaddeus and Lebbeus, preached
to the Edessenes, and to all Mesopotamia: he was slain under Augarus,
king of the Edessenes, in Berito.

Simon called Cananeus, which was brother to Jude above mentioned, and
to James the younger, which all were the sons of Mary Cleophas, and
of Alpheus, was bishop of Jerusalem after James, and was crucified in
a city of Egypt in the time of Trajanus the emperor, as Dorotheus
recordeth, But Abdias writeth, that he with his brother Jude were
both slain by a tumult of the people in Suanir, a city of Parsidis.

Mark the evangelist, and first bishop of Alexandria, preached the
gospel in Egypt, and there, drawn with ropes unto the fire, was
burned, and afterward buried in a place called there Bucolus, under
the reign of Trajanus the emperor.

Bartholomeus is said also to preach to the Indians, and to have
converted the Gospel of St. Matthew into their tongue, where he
continued a great space doing many miracles. At last in Albania, a
city of Greater Armenia, after divers persecutions, he was beaten
down with staves, then crucified, and after being excoriate, he was
at length beheaded.

Of Andrew the apostle and brother to Peter thus writeth Hieroni in
his Catalogue of ecclesiastical Writers. Andrew the brother of Peter
(in the time and reign of Vespasianus, as our ancestors have
reported) did preach in the eightieth year after our Lord Jesus
Christ to the Scythians, Sogdians, to the Saxons, and in a city which
is called Angustia, where theethiopians do now inhabit. He was buried
in Patnis, a city of Achaia, being crucified of Egeas the governor of
the Edessenes. Hitherto writeth Hierom, although in the number of
years he seemeth a little to miss; for Vespasianus reached not to the
eightieth year after Christ. But Bernard in his second sermon, and
St. Cyprian, do make mention of the confession and martyrdom of this
blessed apostle; whereof partly out of these, partly out of other
credible writers, we have collected after this manner: that whenas
Andrew, being conversant in a city of Achaia called Patris, through
his diligent preaching had brought many to the faith of Christ, Egeas
the governor knowing this, resorted thither, to the intent he might
constrain as many as did believe Christ to be God, by the whole
consent of the senate, to do sacrifice unto the idols, and so give
divine honour unto them. Andrew thinking good at the beginning to
resist the wicked counsel and the doings of Egeas, went unto him,
saying to this effect unto him: That it behoved him which was judge
of men, first to know his Judge which dwelleth in heaven, and then to
worship him being known, and so in worshipping the true God, to
revoke his mind from false gods and blind idols. These words spake
Andrew to the consul.

But he, greatly therewith discontented, demanded of him whether he
was the same Andrew that did overthrow the temple of the gods, and
persuaded men of that superstitious sect, which the Romans of late
had commanded to be abolished and rejected. Andrew did plainly
affirm, that the princes of the Romans did not understand the truth,
and that the Son of God, coming from heaven into the world for man's
sake, hath taught and declared how those idols, whom they so honoured
as gods, were not only not gods, but also most cruel devils, enemies
to mankind, teaching the people nothing else but that wherewith God
is offended, and being offended, turneth away and regardeth them not;
and so by the wicked service of the devil they do fall head long into
all wickedness, and after their departing nothing remaineth unto them
but their evil deeds.

But the proconsul esteeming these things to be as vain especially
seeing the Jews (as he said) had crucified Christ before, therefore
charged and commanded Andrew not to teach and preach such things any
more; or if he did, that he should be fastened to the cross with all
speed.

Andrew abiding in his former mind very constant, answered thus
concerning the punishment which he threatened: He would not have
preached the honour and glory of the cross, if he had feared the
death of the cross. Whereupon sentence of condemnation was
pronounced, that Andrew, teaching and enterprising a new sect, and
taking away the religion of their gods, ought to be crucified. Andrew
coming to the place, and seeing afar off the cross prepared, did
change neither countenance nor colour, as the imbecility of mortal
men is wont to do, neither did his blood shrink, neither did he fail
in his speech; his body fainted not, neither was his mind molested;
his understanding did not fail him, as it is the manner of men to do,
but out of the abundance of his heart his mouth did speak; and
fervent charity did appear in his words as kindled sparks: he said, O
cross, most welcome and long looked for; with a willing mind joyfully
and desirously I come to thee, being the scholar of Him which did
hang on thee; because I have been always thy lover, and have coveted
to embrace thee. So being crucified, he yielded up the ghost and fell
on sleep, the day before the kalends of December.
(Illustration: the martyrdom of St. Andrew )

Matthew, otherwise named Levi, first of a publican made an apostle,
wrote his Gospel to the Jews in the Hebrew tongue, according to
Eusebius and Irenæus.

Matthias, after he had preached to the Jews, at length was stoned and
beheaded. Some others record that he died inethiopia.

Philippus the holy apostle, after he had much laboured among the
barbarous nations in preaching the word of salvation to them, at
length suffered as the other apostles did, in Hierapolis, a city of
Phrygia, being there crucified and stoned to death, where also he was
buried, and his daughters also with him.

After that Festus had sent the apostle Paul to Rome after his
appellation made at Cesarea, and that the Jews by the means thereof
had left their hope of performing their malicious vow against him
conceived, they fell upon James the brother of our Lord, who was
bishop at Jerusalem, against whom they, being bent with like malice,
brought him forth before them, and required him to deny before all
the people the faith of Christ. But he, otherwise than they all
looked for, freely and with a greater constancy before all the
multitude confessed Jesus to be the Son of God, our Saviour, and our
Lord. Whereupon, they not being able to abide the tes timony of this
man any longer, because he was thought to be the justest among them
all, for the highness of Divine wisdom and godliness which in living
he declared, they killed him, finding the more opportunity to 
accomplish their mischief, because the kingdom the same time was
vacant. For Festus being dead in Jewry, the administration of that
province was destitute of a ruler and a deputy. But after what manner
James was killed the words of Clement do declare, which writeth that
he was cast down from the pinnacle of the temple, and, being smittcn
with the instrument of a fuller, was slain; but Egesippus, which
lived in the time next after the apostles, described the cause
diligently in his fifth commentary, after this manner as followeth.

James the brother of our Lord took in hand to govern the church after
the apostles, being counted of all men from the time of our Lord to
be a just and perfect man. Many and divers other Jameses there were
beside him, but this was born holy from his mother's womb; he drunk
no wine, nor any strong drink; neither did he eat any living
creature; the razor never came up on his head; he was not anointed
with oil, neither did he use bath; to him only was it lawful to enter
into the holy place; neither was he clothed with woollen cloth, but
with silk; and he only entered into the temple, falling upon his
knees, asking remission for the people; so that his knees by oft
kneeling lost the sense of feeling, being benumbed and hardened like
the knees of a camel. He was (for worshipping God and craving
forgiveness for the people) called just, and for the excellency of
his just life named Oblias, which (if you do interpret it) is the
safeguard and justice of the people, as the prophets declare of him:
therefore whenas many of the heretics which were among the people
asked him what manner of gift Jesus should be, he answered that he
was the Saviour. Whereof some do believe him to be Jesus Christ; but
the aforesaid heretics neither believe the resurrection, neither that
any shall come which shall render unto every man according to his
works, but as many as believe, they believed for James's cause.
Whenas many therefore of the princes did believe, there was a tumult
made of the scribes, Jews, and Pharisees, saying, It is dangerous,
lest that all the people do look for this Jesus as for Christ.
Therefore they gathered themselves together, and said to James, We
beseech thee, restrain the people, for they believe in Jesus as
though he were Christ; we pray thee, persuade them all which come
unto the feast of the passover of Jesus; for we are all obedient unto
thee, and all the people do testify of thee that thou art just,
neither that thou dost accept the person of any man; therefore
persuade the people that they be not deceived in Jesus, and all the
people and we will obey thee: therefore stand upon the pillar of the
temple, that thou mayst be seen from above, and that thy words may be
perceived of all the people, for to this pass over all the tribes do
come with all the country. And thus the forenamed scribes and
Pharisees did set James upon the battlements of the church, and they
cried unto him and said, Thou just man, whom all we ought to obey,
because this people is led after Jesus, which is crucified, tell what
is the gift of Jesus crucified. And he answered with a great voice,
What do you ask me of Jesus the Son of man, seeing that he sitteth on
the right hand of God in heaven, and shall come in the clouds of the
sky? But when many were persuaded of this, they glorified God upon
the witness of James, and said, Hosanna in the highest to the Son of
David. Then the scribes and the Pharisees said among themselves, We
have done evil that we have caused such a testimony of Jesus, but let
us go up, and let us take him, that they, being compelled with fear,
may deny that faith. And they cried out, saying, Oh, oh, this just
man also is seduced. Therefore they went up to throw down the just
man, and said among themselves, Let us stone this just man James; and
they took him to smite him with stones, for he was not yet dead when
he was cast down. But he turning, fell down upon his knees, saying, O
Lord God, Father, I beseech thee to forgive them, for they know not
what they do.

But when they had smitten him with stones, one of the priests of the
children of Rechas, the son of Charobim, spake to them the testimony
which is in Jeremiah the prophet: Leave off; what do ye? The just man
prayeth for you. And one of those which were present took a fuller's
instrument, wherewith they did use to beat and purge cloth, and smote
the just man on his head; and so he finished his martyrdom, and they
buried him in the same place, and his pillar abideth still by the
temple. He was a true testimony to the Jews and the Gentiles. And
shortly after Vespasianus the emperor, destroying the land of Jewry,
brought them into captivity. These things being thus written at large
of Egesippus, do well agree to those which Clement did write of him.
This James was so notable a man, that for his justice, he was had in
honour of all men, insomuch that the wise men of the Jews, shortly
after his martyrdom, did impute the cause of the besieging of
Jerusalem, and other calamities which happened unto them, to no other
cause, but unto the violence and injury done to this man. Also
Josephus hath not left this out of his history, where he speaketh of
him after this manner: These things so chanced unto the Jews for a
vengeance, because of that just man James, which was the brother of
Jesus, whom they called Christ; for the Jews killed him, although he
was a righteous man.

The same Josephus declareth his death in the same book and chapter,
saying, Cæsar hearing of the death of Festus, sent Albinus the
lieutenant into Jewry; but Ananus the younger being bishop, and of
the sect of the Sadducees, trusting that he had obtained a convenient
time, seeing that Festus was dead, and Albinus entered on his
journey, he called a council, and calling many unto him, among whom
was James, by name, the brother of Jesus which is called Christ, he
stoned them, accusing them as breakers of the law.

Whereby it appeareth that many other besides James also at the same
time were martyred and put to death among the Jews, for the faith of
Christ.
THESE things being thus declared for the martyrdom of the
apostles, and the persecution of the Jews; now let us (by the grace
of Christ our Lord) comprehend, with like brevity, the persecutions
raised by the Romans against the Christians in the primitive age of
the church during the space of three hundred years, till the coming
of godly Constantine:
which persecutions are reckoned of Eusebius, and by the most part of
writers, to the number of ten most specia1.

Wherein marvellous it is to see and read the numbers incredible of
Christian innocents that were slain and tormented, some one way, some
another, is Rabanus saith, and saith truly. Some slain with sword;
some burnt with fire; some with whips scourged; some stabbed with
forks of iron; some fastened to the cross or gibbet; some drowned in
the sea; some their skins plucked off; some their tongues cut off;
some stoned to death; some killed with cold; some starved with
hunger: some their hands cut off, or otherwise dismembered, have been
so left naked to the open shame of the world, &c. Their kinds of
punishments, although they were divers, yet the manner of constancy
in all these martyrs was one. And yet notwithstanding the sharpness
of these so many and sundry torments, and like cruelties of the
tormentors, yet such was the number of these constant saints that
suffered, or rather such was the power of the Lord in his saints,
that there is no day in the whole year unto which the number of five
thousand martyrs cannot be ascribed, except only the first day of
January.



3. THE FIRST PERSECUTION UNDER NERO


The first of these ten persecutions was stirred up by Nero Domitius,
the sixth emperor before mentioned, about the year of our Lord
threescore and seven. The tyrannous rage of which emperor was so
fierce against the Christians, as Eusebius recordeth, that a man
might then see cities lie full of men's bodies, the old there lying
together with the young, and the dead bodies of women cast out naked,
without all reverence of that sex, in the open streets, &c. Likewise
Orosius, writing of the said Nero, saith, that he was the first which
in Rome did raise up persecution against the Christians; and not only
in Rome, but also through all the provinces thereof; thinking to
abolish and to destroy the whole name of Christians in all places,
&c. Whereunto accordeth moreover the testimony of Hierom upon Daniel,
saying, that many there were of the Christians in those days, which,
seeing the filthy abominations and intolerable cruelty of Nero,
thought that he should be antichrist.
(Illustration: The Martyrdom of St. Peter )

In this persecution, among many other saints, the blessed apostle
Peter was condemned to death, and crucified, as some do write, at
Rome; albeit other some, and not without cause, do doubt thereof;
concerning whose life and history, because it is sufficiently
described in the text of the Gospel, and in the Acts of the Apostles,
I need not here to make any great repetition thereof. As touching the
cause and maimer of his death, divers there be which make relation,
as Hierom, Egesippus, Eusebius, Abdias, and others, although they do
not all precisely agree in the time. The words of Hierom be these:
Simon Peter, the son of Jona, of the province of Galilee, and of the
town of Bethsaida, the brother of Andrew, &c., after he had been
bishop of the church of Antioch, and had preached to the dispersion
of them that believed, of the circumcision, in Pontus, Galatia,
Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, in the second year of Claudius the
emperor, (which was the year of our Lord forty and four,) came to
Rome to withstand Simon Magus, and there kept the priestly chair the
space of five and twenty years, until the last year of the aforesaid
Nero, which was the fourteenth year of his reign, of whom he was
crucified, his head being down, and his feet upward; himself so
requiring, because he was (he said) unworthy to be crucified after
the same form and manner as the Lord was, &c. Egesippus prosecuting
this matter something more at large, and Abdias also, (if any 
authority is to be given to his book, who following not only the
sense, but also the very form of words of Egesippus in this history,
seemeth to be extracted out of him, and of other authors,) saith,
that Simon Magus being then a great man with Nero, and his president
and keeper of his life, was required upon a time to be present at the
raising up of a certain noble young man in Rome, of Nero's kindred,
lately departed; whereas Peter also was desired to come to the re
viving of the said personage. But when Magus, in the presence of
Peter, could not do it, then Peter, calling upon the name of the Lord
Jesus, did raise him up, and restored him to his mother; Whereby the
estimation of Simon Magus began greatly to decay, and to be detested 
in Rome. Not long after the said Magus threatened the Romans that he
would leave the city, and in their sight fly away from them into
heaven. So the day being appointed, Magus taking his wings in the
mount Capitolinus, began to fly in the air; but Peter, by the power
of the Lord Jesus, brought him down with his wings headlong to the
ground, by the which fall his legs and joints were broken, and he
thereupon died. Then Nero, sorrowing for the death of him, sought
matter against Peter to put him to death. Which, when the people
perceived, they entreated Peter with much ado that he would fly the
city. Peter, through their importunity at length persuaded, prepared
himself to avoid. But coming to the gate, he saw the Lord Christ come
to meet him, to whom he, worshipping, said, Lord, whither dost thou
go? To whom he answered and said, I am come again to be crucified. By
this Peter, perceiving his suffering to be understood, returned back
into the city again, and so was he crucified in manner as is before
declared. And this out of Egesippus.

Eusebius, moreover, writing of the death, not only of Peter, but also
of his wife, affirmeth that Peter, seeing his wife going to her
martyrdom, (belike as he was yet hanging upon the cross,) was greatly
joyous and glad thereof, who, crying unto her with a loud voice, and
calling her by her name, bade her remember the Lord Jesus. Such was
then, (saith Eusebius,) the blessed bond of marriage among the saints
of God. And thus much of Peter.

Paul the apostle, which before was called Saul, after his great
travail and unspeakable labours in promoting the gospel of Christ,
suffered also in this first persecution under Nero, and was beheaded.

Among his other manifold labours and travails in spreading the
doctrine of Christ, he won Sergius Paulus, the proconsul of Cyprus,
to the faith of Christ: whereupon he took his name, as some suppose,
turned from Saulus to Paulus. After he had passed through divers
places and countries in his laborious peregrinations, he took to him
Barnabas, and went up to Jerusalem to Peter, James, and John, where
he was ordained and sent out with Barnabas to preach unto the
Gentiles.

And because it is in the Acts of the Apostles sufficiently
comprehended, concerning the admirable conversion and conversation of
this most worthy apostle, that which remaineth of the rest of his
history, I will here add, how the said apostle Paul, Acts xxviii.,
the five and twentieth year after the passion of the Lord, in the
second year of Nero, at what time Festus ruled in Jewry, was sent up
in bonds to Rome, where he, remaining in his own lodgings two years
together, disputed daily against the Jews, proving Christ to be come.
And here is to be noted, that after his first answer or purgation
there made at Rome, the emperor Nero, not yet fully confirmed in his
empire, and yet not bursting out into those mischiefs which histories
report of him, he was at that time by Nero discharged and dismissed
to preach the gospel in the west parts, and about the coasts of
Italy, as he himself writing unto Timothy afterward, in his second
apprehension, in his Second Epistle, chap. iv. 16, 17, witnesseth:
"At my first answer no man stood with rue, but all men forsook me. I
pray God that it may not be laid to their charge. Notwithstanding the
Lord stood with me, and strengthened me; and I was delivered out of
the mouth of the lion." In which place, by the lion, he plainly
meaneth Nero. And afterwards, likewise, he saith, I was delivered
from the mouth of the lion, &c. And again, The Lord hath delivered me
out from all evil works, and hath saved me unto his heavenly kingdom,
&c.; speaking this, because he perceived then the time of his
martyrdom to be near at hand. For in the same Epistle before, he
saith, I am now offered up, and the time of my dissolution draweth
on.

Thus, then, this worthy preacher and messenger of the Lord, in the
fourteenth year of Nero, and the same day in which Peter was
crucified, (although not in the same year, as some write, but in the
next year following,) was beheaded at Rome for the testimony of
Christ, and was buried in the way of Ostia, the seven and thirtieth
year after the passion of the Lord. He wrote nine Epistles to seven
churches: to the Romans, one; to the Corinthians, two; to the
Galatians, one; to the Ephesians, one; to the Philippians, one; to
the Colossians, one; to the Thessalonians, two. Moreover, he wrote to
his disciples: to Timothy, two; to Titus, one; to Philemon, one; to
the Hebrews, one.

As touching the time and order of the death and martyrdom of Saint
Paul, as Eusebius, Hierom, Maximus, and other authors do but briefly
pass it over; so Abdias, (if his book be of any substantial
authority,) speaking more largely of the same, doth say, that after
the crucifying of Peter, and the ruin of Simon Magus, Paul yet
remaining in free custody, was dismissed and delivered at that time
from martyrdom by God's permission, that all the Gentiles might be
replenished with preaching of the gospel by him.

And the same Abdias proceeding in his story, declareth moreover, that
as Paul was thus occupied at Rome, he was accused to the emperor, not
only for teaching new doctrine, but also for stirring up sedition
against the empire. For this he being called before Nero, and
demanded to show the order and manner of his doctrine, there declared
what his doctrine was: To teach all men peace and charity, how to
love one another, how to prevent one another in honour; rich men not
to be puffed up in pride, nor to put their trust in their treasures,
but in the living God; mean men to be contented with food and
raiment, and with their present state; poor men to rejoice in their
poverty with hope; fathers to bring up their children in the fear of
God; children to obey their parents; husbands to love their wives;
wives to be subject to their husbands; citizens and subjects to give
their tribute unto Cæsar, and to be subject to their magistrates;
masters to be courteous, not churlish, to their servants; servants to
deal faithfully with their masters: and this to be the sum of his
teaching. Which his doctrine he received not of men, nor by men, but
by Jesus Christ, and the Father of glory, which spake to him from
heaven; the Lord Jesus saying to him, that he should go and preach
his name, and that he would be with him, and would be the Spirit of
life to all tha