RIDLEY'S FAREWELL,

Which he wrote at his last Farewell to all his true and faithful Friends in God a little before he suffered with a sharp Admonition, by the way, to the Papists, the Enemies of Truth.

AT the name of Jesus, let every knee bow, both of things in heaven and things in earth, and things under the earth, and let every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is the Lord, unto the glory of God the Father. Amen.

As a man, minding to take a far journey and to depart from his familiar friends, commonly and naturally hath a desire to bid his friends farewell before his departure; so likewise, now I, looking daily when I should be called for to depart hence from you (O! all ye, my dearly beloved brethren and sisters in our Saviour Christ, that dwell here in this world), having a like mind towards you all, and also, blessed be God for this, such time and leisure, whereof right heartily I thank his heavenly goodness: do bid you all, my dear brethren and sisters (I say) in Christ that dwell upon the earth, after such manner as I can, farewell.

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 reoice 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 associate 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 66 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 wherefore 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 commonwealth, 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