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The English martyrology abridged from Fox
The English martyrology abridged from Fox Author:John Foxe Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II. WICKLIFF—SAUTM—BADBY—IX-OFFICIO 8TATDT1—LOUD COBHAM. We now arrive at the first bright Star in our English galaxy, John Wickliff. He appeared a... more »bout the year 1371, and 44th of Edward III. when darkness covered the earth, and gross ignorance of God's truth prevailed among the people: when the great doctrines of faith, consolation, the use of the law, the person and office of Christ, and of the Holy Ghost, human corruption, the strength of sin, and impotency of man in resisting it, free grace, justification by faith, and Christian liberty, were scarcely ever spoken of among nominal Christians: their hope being exclusively fixed on outward ceremonies, their faith resting on human traditions, and on the supposed omnipotence of the church. The people then, in the strong language of Fox, " were taught to worship no other thing but that which they did see; and did see almost nothing which they did not worship." Christian faith was held to consist in a knowledge that Christ once suffered on the cross; which the devils also knew: and Christian zeal was devoted to no other end than recovering the city of Jerusalem from the Turks; because that wooden cross on which the Lord suffered, was absurdly believed to be there; and was still more absurdly considered a meet object for all Christendom to worship. Without the possession of the material cross, the faith and hope of the gospel were counted for nothing. When the pope wished to separate a refractory king or emperor from his subjects, he had only to command him forth at the head of an army, to retake the holy cross and sepulchre; and this, as the Turk was too powerful and resolute to be easily vanquished, was so sure a way of crippling the strength, and draining the revenues of a state, that Rome had little to fear from occas...« less