We continue to brew on John Foxe’s “Acts and Monuments.” Foxe was an ordained Anglican cleric (1560, by Mr. (bp.) Edmund Grindal, London) but he refused church appointments and preferrments due to scruples with the Elizabeth Settlement. The student of martyrs himself was not going to be one yielding to state and ecclesiastical force and tyranny. He quietly refused to yield to “imposed and detailed adiaphora” (an oxymoron). He was quiet, patient, kind, but determined. Like Miles Coverdale and others. He lived in Marian and Elizabethan England. He lived in a European context when the religious views of the Kings shaped the countries’ destinies.
Born in 1516, a graduate of Oxford, he died in England in 1587 after his 4th edition of the martyriology was produced.
He wrote in Middle English with odd words and long sentences (perhaps influenced by his strong language skills). Words like halberd, abscond, assoil, belike, betake, bethink, bruit, eftsoons, Smithfield, Fleet Prison, Henry VIII, and names of Popes and Kings were known to him but often are unknown to us. But, Foxe was something like a news reporter as he wrote of contemporaries. He frequently revised his records as corrections and new documents were discovered. He became a "cause celeb" in his own time and Queen Bess 1 called him “Our Father Foxe.”
Myriads of stories are recorded. Odd questions arise.
--Why did Emperor Sigismund promise, but refuse, the “safe conduct” for Jan Huss, burned at the stake?
--Why was William Tyndale so naïve in quickly befriending a man who—then—would so quickly betray him? Was he gullible? The Roman bishop of London was behind the plot. He too ended up at the Romanists’ stake.
--Why did the English inquisitors use their halberds to lift the Marian martyr, John Lambert, slightly above the flames so he would burn slowly?
--Or, how did King Henry of Navarre or Sir Francis Walsingham (Elizabeth 1’s Chief-Spymaster) escape the infamous massacre in Paris and the French countryside on St. Bartholomew’s Day, 1572?
There are more questions that inform, humble, encourage, and shape one’s doctrine, worship and piety.
Are we soft? Naïve? Self-serving? Self-absorbed?
I’ll refer you to a URL that details U.S. State Department reports on religious freedom, persecutions, and oppressions. Several years are accessible. See: http://www.state.gov/j/drl/
What happens in China, Asia, Afghanistan, Pakistan and other countries when one converts from Islam or Hinduism to Christianity? Or, as we’ve been following it, what happens to God-fearing Christian Churchmen, Churchwomen, and Church-children in Nigeria from the Islamo-fascistic Boko Haramists? For Anglican Churchmen, of a better sort, may we be reminded that 18 million Anglicans worship in Nigeria, well over 10 times what may be seen in the USA. Somehow, a Western hubris has a "high hang time" in the air.
Perhaps we have no nerves to see or sense these things. Like leprosy where the nerves die, little pain is felt, yet hands, arms and legs in time fall off.
May Foxe again renew the narrative that 1000s of saints across the ages, notably in England but also elsewhere, have suffered death for the Triune and Majestic God.
I suppose and expect that a careful review of Foxe’s work may bring mental and emotional exhaustion, but it also may bring courage, fidelity, honesty and commitment.
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