Foxe's+Book+of+Martyrs

Back to Christian Biographies and Autobiographies This is a book that will never die -- one of the great English classics. //Foxe's Book of Martyrs// brings to life the days when "a noble army, men and boys, the matron and the maid," "climbed the steep ascent of heaven, 'mid peril, toil, and pain." After the Bible itself, no book so profoundly influenced early Protestant sentiment as the Book of Martyrs. Even in our time it is still a living force. It is more than a record of persecution. It is an arsenal of controversy, a storehouse of true devotion, as well as a source of edification.
 * [[image:220px-John_Foxe_from_NPG_cleaned.jpg width="184" height="241"]] || **Foxe's Book of Martyrs** Author John Foxe

John Foxe or Fox (1518-1587), a staunchly Protestant divine, wrote his book as this story seen from the Protestant point of view. //The Acts and Monuments of the Christian Church//, better known as Foxe's Book of Martyrs, was first published in English in 1563. In this enormously long history of the Church from the death of Christ to the accession of Queen Elizabeth I, he is anxious to prove firstly the complete hatefulness, evil and corruption of the Catholic church, the papacy and the monastic orders, and secondly to assert the right of the monarch to appoint bishops and clergy, and to dispose of church property and income at will.

When he gets closer to his own times, however, his accounts are in most cases taken from eye-witness evidence or official documents and must be accepted as basically factual. There is no doubt that Protestants were savagely persecuted by Henry VIII and especially by Mary I and that this contributed to the fear and hatred which animates the book. The gruesome and enormously detailed accounts of the martyrdoms of Cranmer, Ridley, Latimer and all the other victims of Bloody Mary's tyranny are sober fact.

Not only did //The Book of Martyrs// identify the Roman Catholic Church with tyranny, it associated the English with valour. Any citizen could enter almost any church and discover for themselves the ruthlessness of foreign powers. They learned at the same time of the unbending courage of the English casualties. The effect of the book was not merely to dignify English Protestantism and demonize Roman Catholicism, but to believe the idea of themselves as a people alone. Being embattled had a moral purpose.

Click here to read or download the pdf of the book: __http://www.chucknorris.com/Christian/Christian/ebooks/foxes_book_of_martyrs.pdf__   || References:

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