Christi sanctissimae virgini attributo."--Foxe, vol.
viii. Editor's note.]

{p.283} But Pole did not live to see the retribution. Convinced, if
ever there was a sincere conviction in any man, that the course which
he was pursuing was precisely that which God required of him, he
laboured on in his dark vocation. Through the spring and summer the
persecution, under the new commission, raged with redoubled fury.

The subject is one to which it will not be necessary to return, except
with some brief details. In this place, therefore, shall be given an
extract from a tract in circulation among the Protestants who were
expecting death; and it may be judged, from the sentiments with which
these noble-natured men faced the prospect of their terrible trial,
with what justice Pole called them brambles and briars only fit to be
burnt--criminals worse than thieves, or murderers, or adulterers.[596]

[Footnote 596: An excellent epistle, translated
from French into English by Thomas Pownell, with a
preface, A.D. 1556. The copy from which I make my
extract is in the Bodleian Library at Oxford; it is
marked in the margin in various places with a
finger [Symbol: Hand] apparently almost as old as
the printing; and this finger was perhaps drawn by
some one whom the words were consoling or
inspiriting in the hour of his own trial.]

"The cross of persecution, if we will put childishness apart, and
visibly weigh the worthiness thereof, is that sovereign, tried
medicine that quencheth the daily digested poison of self-love,
worldly pleasure, fleshly felicity. It is the only worthy poison of
ambition, covetousness, extortion, uncleanness, licentiousness, wrath,
strife, sedition, sects, malice, and such other wayward worms: it is
the hard hammer that breaketh off the rust from the anchor of a
Christian faith. O profitable instrument! O excellent exercise, that
cannot be spared in a Christian life! with what alacrity of mind, with
what desirous affection, with what earnest zeal, ought we to embrace
this incomparable jewel, this sovereign medicine, this comfortable cup
of tribulation.

"When a piece of ground is limited and bounded, it doth not only
signify that it goeth no further, but also it tendeth and stretcheth
to the bound. It is no