[225] Wodrow, book i., chap. 2, § 4.
[226] Burnet says, “he gave no advantage to those that wished to have saved him, by the least step towards any submission, but much to the contrary. I saw him suffer. He was so far from showing any fear, that he rather expressed a contempt of death. He spoke an hour on the ladder with the composedness of one that was delivering a sermon, rather than his last words. He justified all that had been done, and exhorted all people to adhere to the Covenant, which he magnified highly.” Burnet, Hist. of his own Times.
[227] Wodrow, book i. chap. 2.
[228] Wodrow, book i. chap. 2.
[229] Last Days of Pompeii.
[230] Heber’s ‘Life of Bishop Taylor,’ the worthy descendant of this excellent man.
[231] By a singular specimen of ignorance, our ancestors, who held the Mahometans in pious abomination, chose to consider that sect, which holds images in abomination, as idolaters. Hence the word mawmet, or maumet, and maumetry, are continually used in our early writers for idol, and idolatry. “Unleful worschipping of mawmetis.”—Wiclif, 1 Pet. iv. 3. “When the Byshop Amphiarax sodeynly fell down into hell,” according to Lydgate, Story of Thebes, it was the
“Mede of ydolatrie,
Of rightes olde, and false mammentrye.”—Caxton’s edition.
[232] The principal question argued in this letter is the marriage of priests. The following extract, which is of Taylor’s own writing, gives a good notion of the way in which such examinations might be carried on:—