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APPENDIX.
to require judgment of death against him, he being fast in prison, and also
more than forty men had sworn each one to other that they would never
eat nor drink until they had slain Paul! A thing wonderful, that no
reason could have invented, or man could have looked for: God provided
Paul his own sister's son, a young man, that disappointed that conspiracy
and all their former conjuration. The manner how the thing came to
pass, thou mayest read in the twenty-third of the Acts; I will not be
tedious unto thee here with the rehearsal thereof.
"Now, to descend from the Apostles to the Martyrs that followed next
in Christ's church, and in them likewise to declare how gracious our good
God ever hath been to work wonderfully with them which in His cause
have been in extreme perils, it were a matter enough to write a long book.
I will here name but one man and woman, that is, Athanasias, the great
clerk and godly man, stoutly standing in Christ's cause against the Arians;
and that holy woman, Blandina, so constantly in all extreme pains, in the
simple confession of Christ. If thou wilt have examples of more, look
and thou shalt have both these and a hundred more in Ecclesiastica His-
toria of Eusebius, and in Tripartita Historia. But for all these examples,
both of holy Scriptures and of other histories, I fear me the weak man of
God, encumbered with the frailty and infirmity of the flesh, will have now
and then such thoughts and qualms (as they call them) to run over his
heart, and think thus: All these things which are rehearsed out of the
Scriptures I believe to be true, and of the rest truly I do think well, and
can believe them also to be true; but all these we must needs grant were
special miricles of God, which now in our hands are ceased, we see; and
to require them of God's hands, were it not to tempt God?
"Well-beloved brother, I grant such were great wonderful works of
God, and we have not seen many of such miricles in our time; either for
that our sight is not clear (for truly God worketh with us his part in all
times), or else because we have not the like faith of them for whose cause
God wrought such things, or because after that he had set forth the truth
of his doctrine by such miricles then sufficiently, the time of so many
miricles to be done was expired withal. Which of these is the most
special cause of all other, or whether there be any other, God knoweth;
I leave that to God. But know thou this, my well-beloved in God, that
God's hand is as strong as ever it was; he may do what His gracious
pleasure is, and He is as good and gracious as ever he was.
Man chang-
eth as the garment cloth; but God, our heavenly Father, is even the same
now that he was, and shall be for evermore.
"The world without doubt (this I do believe, and therefore say) draw-
eth toward an end, and in all ages God hath had his own manner, after
his secret unsearchable wisdom, to use his elect: sometimes to deliver
them, and to keep them safe; and sometimes to suffer them to drink of
Christ's cup, that is, to feel the smart, and to feel of the whip. And
though the flesh smarteth at the one, and feeleth ease in the other, is glad
of the one, and sore vexed in the other; yet the Lord is all one toward
them in both, and loveth them no less when he suffereth them to be
beaten, yea, and to be put to bodily death, than when he worketh won-
ders for their marvelous delivery. Nay, rather he doth more for them,
when in anguish of the torments he standeth by them, and strengtheneth
them in their faith, to suffer in the confession of the truth and his faith
the bitter pains of death, than when he openeth the prison doors and
letteth them go loose: for here he doth but respite them to another time,
