A cloud of witnesses, or, The sufferers mirrour made up of the swanlike-songs, and other choice passages of several martyrs and confessors to the sixteenth century, in their treatises, speeches, letters, prayers, &c. in their prisons, or exiles, at the bar, or stake, &c. / collected out of the ecclesiastical histories of Eusebius, Fox, Fuller, Petrie, Scotland, and Mr. Samuel Ward's Life of faith in death, &c. and alphabetically disposed by T.M. ...

The learned and ingenious Author of the Preface to Mr. Frith's Treatises of prepa∣ration to the Cross (under the Title of Vox Pisces, or the Book-Fish) gives the fol∣lowing Testimony to several of the re∣markable passages in this Collection.

PErhaps unto some Palats no Liquor seemeth desi∣rable, but that which hath a delicious tang of the curiosity of these later Times, both for method and stile. For my part I say with the words in the Go∣spel, Luke 5.39. The old Wine is better. And ac∣cordingly contemplating and comparing the devout Dis∣courses written in our Language upon the breaking forth of the Light of Reformation, I am far more deeply ta∣ken with the solid simplicity and powerful Spirit, which methinks I find in the Writings of those Confessors and Martyrs, who watered the Garden of Reformation with their own blood in this Land, than with the more elabo∣rate and artificial composures, written more lately in the Times of our Peace. Who in reading the Letters and Ghostly Meditations of blessed Bradford, Taylor, Philpot, &c. yea even of other their Brethren less learned, that wrote and spake with that Hand, Heart, and Breath, which they were most ready to yield up for the testimony of the Truth, doth not therein perceive that lively warmth of holy zeal, which is able to awake even a dull and sleepy soul? Among which Martyrs, as this worthy Frith is one of the first for antiquity, so well may he be in the foremost rank for comfortable exhorta∣tion and soundness of Doctrine.