Wesley’s Christian Library Vol 2

Vol 2 Contents

The Life of Mr. John Fox
Introduction
The History of the Waldenses
The History of John Wickliff
The History of William Swinderby
The History of Walter Brute
The History of William Sautre
The History of John Badby
The History of William Thorp
The History of the Lord Cobham
The History of John Hus
The History of Jerome, Of Prague
The Martyrdom of John Browne
The Martyrdom of John Stilman & Thomas Man
A Brief Account of Dr Colet
The History of Martin Luther
The Martyrdom of Henry Voes & John Esch
The Martyrdom of Henry Sutphen
The Martyrdom of George Carpenter
The Martyrdom of Giles Tilleman
The Martyrdom of Aymond De Lavoy
The Martyrdoms of Thomas Sanpaulin, Philbert Hamlin, Nicholas Clinet, Taurin Gravelle, Philippa De Luns, And Peter Gabart
The Martyrdoms of Frederick Danville, And Francis Rebezies
The Martyrdom of Bennet Romain
The Martyrdom of Francis Sanromane
The Persecutions of N. Encenas & F. Encenas
The Martyrdom of Faninus, Of Faventia
The Martyrdom of Galeazius Trecius
The Martyrdom of Dr. John Mollius
The Martyrdom of Mrs. Smith and Seven Others
The Martyrdom of Thomas Bilney
The Martyrdom of Richard Bayfield
The Martyrdom of James Bainham
The Martyrdom of John Frith and Andrew Hewet
The Martyrdom of Thomas Benet
The Martyrdom of William Tyndale
The History of the Worthy Martyr of God, John Lambert
The Life and Death of Thomas Cromwel, Earl of Essex
The History of Robert Barnes, Thomas Garret, And William Jerome
The Martyrdom of John Porter
The Martyrdom of Robert Testwood, Henry Filmer, And Anthony Pearson, With the Persecution of John Marbeck
The Martyrdom of Mr. Kerby & Roger Clark
The Martyrdoms of Mrs. Anne Askew, Nicholas Belenian, John Adams and John Lacels

Description & Discussion

I haven’t read or studied the ACL volumes that contain Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, Clark’s updates to Fox, or the Sundry Lives of Eminent Christians. Altogether, these biographical materials constitute probably about 8 volumes of A Christian Library –especially if we take into account the periodic biographical introductions to authors scattered across the series. Obviously the genre of “exemplary life” was something Wesley put a high value on. Wesley’s A Christian Library is probably one-fourth biographies! I suspect that if we don’t take this into account, or if we consider it filler material, we are missing the point. Even when the lives blur into each other, or fall into conventional forms beginning with conversion and ending on the deathbed, we are seeing a display of something important to Wesley’s view of practical divinity.

In my initial setup of this resource site, I’m roughing these pages in and not providing analysis. That’s purely a matter of expedience, to get the project established.

See chapter four of Devorah Greenberg’s dissertation “Reflexive Foxe: The Book of Martyrs Transformed, ‘Foxe’ Reinterpreted–Sixteenth through Twenty-first Centuries,” Simon Fraser University, 2002.