shewed both to me, and also to all your own kinsfolk and mine. Good cousin, as God hath set you in that our stock and kindred, not for any respect of your person, but of his abundant grace and goodness, to be, as it were, the belwether, to order and conduct the rest, and hath also endued you with his manifold gifts of grace, both heavenly and worldly, above others: so I pray you, good cousin (as my trust and hope is in you), continue and increase in the maintenance of truth, honesty, righteousness, and all true godliness, and to the uttermost of your power, to withstand falsehood, untruth, unrighteousness, and all ungodliness, which is forbid and condemned by the word and laws of God.

Farewell, my young cousin Ralph Whitfield: oh! your time was very short with me: my mind was to have done you good, and yet you caught in that little time a loss; but I trust, it shall be recompensed as it shall please Almighty God.

Farewell, all my whole kindred and countrymen, farewell in Christ altogether. The Lord, which is the searcher of secrets, knoweth that according to my heart's desire, my hope was of late, that I should have come among you, and to have brought with me abundance of Christ's blessed gospel, according to the duty of that office and ministry, whereunto among you I was chosen, named, and appointed, by the mouth of that our late puissant prince, King Edward, and so also denounced openly in his court. by his privy council.

I warn you all, my well-beloved kinsfolk and countrymen, that ye be not amazed or astonished at the kind of my departure or dissolution: for I ensure you, I think it the most honour that ever I was called unto in all my life. And therefore I thank my Lord God heartily for it, that it hath

pleased him to call me of his great mercy unto this high honour, to suffer death willingly for his sake and in his cause: unto the which honour he called the holy prophets (and his dearly beloved apostles and his blessed chosen martyrs). For know ye, that I doubt no more, but that the causes, wherefore I am put to death, are God's causes and the causes of the truth, than I doubt that the gospel which John wrote is the gospel of Christ, or that Paul's epistles are the very word of God.

And to have a heart willing to abide and stand in God's cause and in Christ's quarrel even unto death, I ensure thee, O.! man, it is an inestimable and an honourable gift of God, given only to the true elect and dearly beloved children of God, and inheritors of the kingdom of heaven. For the holy Apostle, and also martyr in Christ's cause, St. Peter saith, "If ye suffer rebuke in the name of Christ (that is, in Christ's cause and for his truth's sake), then are ye happy and blessed: for the glory of the spirit of God resteth upon you." If for rebuke sake, suffered in Christ's name, a man is pronounced by the mouth of that holy Apostle, blessed and happy; how much more happy and blessed is he, that hath the grace to suffer death also. Wherefore, all ye, that be my true lovers and friends, rejoice, and rejoice with me again, and render with me hearty thanks to God, our heavenly Father, that for his Son's sake, my Saviour and Redeemer Christ, he hath vouchsafed to call me, being else, without his gracious goodness, in myself, but a sinful and vile wretch; to call me, I say, unto this high dignity of his true prophets, of his faithful apostles, and of his holy elect and chosen martyrs, that is, to die and to spend this temporal life in the defence and maintenance of his eternal and everlasting truth.

Ye know, that be my countrymen dwelling upon

the borders, where (alas!) the true man suffereth oftentimes much wrong at the thieves hand, if it chance a man to be slain of a thief (as it oft chanceth there) which went out with his neighbour to help him to rescue his goods again, that the more cruelly he be slain, and the more stedfastly he stuck by his neighbour in the fight against the face of the thief, the more favour and friendship shall all his posterity have for the slain man's sake, of all them that be true, as long as the memory of this fact and his posterity doth endure. Even so, ye, that be my kinsfolk and countrymen, know ye, howsoever the blind, ignorant, and wicked world hereafter shall rail upon my death, which thing they cannot do worse than their fathers did of the death of Christ, our Saviour, of his holy prophets, apostles, and martyrs; know ye, I say, that both before God, and all them, that be godly, and that truly know and follow the laws of God, ye have and shall have, by God's grace, ever cause to rejoice, and to thank God highly, and to think good of it, and in God to rejoice of me, your flesh and blood, whom God of his gracious goodness, hath vouchsafed to associatę unto the blessed company of his holy martyrs in heaven. And I doubt not in the infinite goodness of my Lord God, nor in the faithful fellowship of his elect and chosen people, but at both their hands in my cause, ye shall rather find the more favour and grace. For the Lord saith, that he will be both to them and theirs that love him the more loving again in a thousand generations. The Lord is so full of mercy to them, I say, and theirs, which do love him indeed. And Christ saith again, that "no man can shew more love, than to give his life for his friend."

Now also, know ye, all my true lovers in God, · my kinsfolk and countrymen, that the cause, where

fore I am put to death, is even after the same sort and condition, but touching more near God's cause and in more weighty matters, but in the general kind all one: for both is God's cause, both is in the maintenance of right, and both for the common wealth, and both for the weal also of the Christian brother: although yet there is in these two no small difference, both concerning the enemies, the goods stolen, and the manner of the fight.

For, know ye all, that like as there, when the poor true man is robbed by the thief of his own goods truly gotten, whereupon he and his household should live, he is greatly wronged, and the thief, in stealing and robbing with violence the poor man's goods, doth offend God, doth transgress his laws, and is injurious both to the poor man and to the commonwealth: so, I say, know ye all, that even here, in the cause of my death, it is with the church of England, I mean the congregation of the true chosen children of God in this realm of England, which I acknowledge not only to be my neighbours, but rather the congregations of my spiritual brethren and sisters in Christ; yea members of one body, wherein by God's grace I am and have been grafted in Christ.

This church of England had of late, of the infinite goodness and abundant grace of Almighty God, great substance, great riches of heavenly treasure, great plenty of God's true and sincere word, the true and wholesome administration of Christ's holy sacraments, the whole profession of Christ's religion, truly and plainly set forth in baptism, the plain declaration and understanding of the same, taught in the holy catechism, to have been learned of all true Christians.

. This church had also a true and sincere form and manner of the Lord's Supper, wherein, according to

Jesus Christ's own ordinance and institution, Christ's commandments were executed and done. For upon the bread and wine set upon the Lord's table, thanks were given; the commemoration of the Lord's death was had; the bread in the remembrance of Christ's body torn upon the cross, was broken; and the cup in the remembrance of Christ's blood shed was distributed; and both communicated unto all, that were present, and would receive them, and also they

were exhorted of the minister so to do.

All was done openly in the vulgar tongue, so that every thing might be most easily heard and plainly understood of all the people, to God's high glory, and the edification of the whole church.

This church had of late the whole divine service, all common and public prayers ordained to be said and heard in the common congregation, not only framed and fashioned to the true vein of holy Scripture, but also all things to set forth, according to the commandment of the Lord and St. Paul's doctrine for the people's edification in their vulgar tongue.

It had also holy and wholesome homilies in commendation of the principal virtues which are commended in Scripture, and likewise other homilies against the most pernicious and capital vices, which use (alas!) to reign in this realm of England.

This church had, in matters of controversy, articles so penned and framed after the holy Scripture, and grounded upon the true understanding of God's word, that in short time, if they had been universally received, they should have been able to have set in Christ's church, much concord and unity in Christ's true religion, and to have expelled many false errors and heresies, wherewith this church (alas!) was almost overgrown.