The writings of John Bradford MA Author:John Bradford Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: UNTO THE CHRISTIAN READER, JOHN BRADFORD WISHETH THE TRUE KNOWLEDGE OF JESUS CHRIST. In this book following thou hast, good reader, a godly piece of work ... more »made by the godly learned man, Master Philip Melancthon, concerning prayer. The which as he lamenteth to be either too little or too corruptly spoken of among many writers ; even so do I lament the too little and too corruptly using of it in these days with many Englishmen, notwithstanding the same be very diligently and godly set forth by public authority, by private writings, by diligent preaching and exhortations. Whereunto, in that on all sides, spiritually and corporally, publicly and privately, these perilous days of necessity so nip us and provoke us to pray, and by prayer to fetch down help from above, that if now we will not with diligence use it, watching thereunto with all sobriety, surely we needs must feel that which we cannot be able to bear. For already God's anger is set on fire, as once it was against the Israelites, and hath begun to burn in the camp of God's Num. xvi. church in England : I mean it not so much concerning the body, as concerning the head, even concerning king Edward the sixth, our late lord and most dear king. So that I fear me, it will go on forwards: for we have few Moses' and Aarons, which stand as gaps between God and us. And when God's judgment beginneth at such dear children of God as our most precious pearl and king was, I cannot believe it will stay there. Though he was Adam's child, (for who may say, ' My heart is pure from sin?') yet am I per- proT.. suaded that it was not his but our sins which hath procured God to take him away from us, before he began to reform his commonweal, as graciously he had well begun and gone forwards in the reforming of the church, for that part wh...« less