27 
One of this school (Lirrnepate) who states that he and his 
colleagues are trying to restore “the forgotten worship” [1.e. 
Romanism] in the Anglican church, in a pamphlet ‘‘on the 
Reformers,” speaks of Foxe as a “‘matchless liar.” We may 
estimate the worth of this statement from the general tenor of 
his book. He states that the leading Reformers left the chief 
men of the French Revolution “far behind, in cruelty, impiety, 
and licentious foulness;” that Larrmmer was a “coarse, profane, 
unscrupulous, persecuting bully,” and Cranmer a “thief” and a 
“liar.” He apologises for the doings of Queen Mary on the 
eround that she had reason to believe it her duty to purge the 
land of the “horde of licentious infidels” whom she burned to 
death.* This writer, after declaring that the reading of the 
Bible in the vulgar tongue led to a great increase of crime 
in the country—especially of “murder and adultery” goes on 
to speak of Foxn’s Martyrology thus: 
‘‘So much for the Bible reading, joined on, as we must remember to the 
encouraged perusal in the churches of that magazine of lying bigotry, Foxe’s 
Acts and Monuments, a book which no educated man now living, possessed 
of any self-respect or honesty, does otherwise than repudiate with contempt 
and aversion, but which was then put on a practical level with the scriptures.” 
There is something grotesque in thus first describing the 
Bible as so bad a book that reading it led to an increase of 
crime in the country: and in the next sentence implying that 
it is so good a book, that the putting a magazine of lying bigotry 
on a practical level with it was deserving of severe censure. 
Absurd however, as is Lirrirpatx’s inference, the fact to 
which he calls attention is one of great weight as a testimony 
to the general trustworthiness of Foxr. That fact is this: the 
council of Qurrn Exizasetu regarded the Acts and Monuments as 
so fair and unimpeachable that they ordered a copy of it to 
be placed for public perusal in the common halls of all Arch- 
bishops, Bishops, Deans, Archdeacons, Heads of Colleges, etc., 
* «* Once more, dwell as much as you will on Mary’s three hundred 
victims. She honestly thought (and she had a good deal to make her think) 
that she was saving the christian religion from a horde of licentious infidels.” 
Littledale on the Reformers, p. 20: 
