Brachy-Martyrologia Or, A Brewery of all the greatest Persecutions Which have befallen the Saints and People of God From the Creation to our present Times: Paraphras'd, By Nicholas Billingsly |
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SECT. IV. The Persecution of the English Church under the Papacy.
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 | Brachy-Martyrologia |  |
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SECT. IV. The Persecution of the English Church under the Papacy.
Although Religion from the time this IsleEmbrac'd grace first, retain'd not all this while
Its Prim'tive splendour, but grew more obscure,
More superstitious, and no less impure;
Yet in those Pristine dayes, the peoples crimes
Were not equivalent to after-times.
The Church now being in the desarts hid,
Affraid to shew her face, th' Almighty did
Raise Bernard up, and many more beside,
T'unmask and check the Antichristian pride;
And superstitious disordred orders
Too too luxuriant in the British borders.
At which the Pope and his adherents urg'd,
They were imprison'd, hang'd, and burnt, and scourg'd
About the streets, or branded in the forehead,
With an Heret'cal character: O horrid!
Yet many did most readily embrace
Their Doctrine, as the onely meanes of grace:
That man of sin, that offspring of perdition
Renounc'd, and all the wayes of superstition.
God still preserv'd a Church unto his name,
From Christs time, till the time that Luther came.
John Patrick Engina, when Alfred reign'd,
The first Reader in Oxford was ordein'd:
He wrote a book about the Sacrament,
For which a Martyrs death he underwent.
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Divines at Oxford, who declam'd 'gainst Rome.
One Arnold there they butcher'd, who decry'd
Against the Priests lewd lives, and Prelates pride.
In Henry's reign the second of that name,
Thirty Waldenses into England came,
Gerard their Pastor; and without all pity,
Were whipped publickly through Oxford City;
They singing all the while, Blessed are yee,
When you shall hated, and misused be, &c.
With want and cold, they dy'd; none might afford
Them any comfort, nor at bed nor board.
Gualdo who 'gainst the priests invectives wrote,
And also Doctor Gilbert Foliot,
Who oft blam'd Thomas Becket to his face,
Were persecuted much: to them a grace.
Sylvester Gyrald by his writings rears
Such Hornets up, as fall about his ears.
One Alexander, for his bitter stile
Banish'd by Langton, died in exile.
Ashton fellow of Merton colledge went
Into perpetual imprisonment.
One William Sawtre, Thorp, and Swinderby,
With sundry more Divines condemn'd, did die
Under the Christian Banner, and their spirits
Pass'd into glory through Christ Jesus merits.
And now because my Muse finds nothing new
But onely Martyrs names, she dids adieu
At present, Reader, but intends to meet
Thy serious eye within another sheet.
| Brachy-Martyrologia | |