Ver. 1. And Saul, &c.] It is all one to hold the sack and to fill it, to do evil or to consent to it. And Saul was consenting to his death] Gr. αναιρεσει, “to his murder”; for it was no better, Acts 12:2 5:33. Damnari, dissecari, suspendi, decollari, piis cum impiis sunt communia. Varia sunt hominum iudicia: ille faelix qui iudice Deo absolvitur, saith Erasmus concerning Berquin, the martyr, burnt in Germany. Dorotheus witnesseth, that when Stephen was stoned, there were 2000 other believers put to death the same day. Certain it is, that after Mr Rogers had broken the ice here under Queen Mary, there suffered in like sort, one archbishop, four bishops, 21 divines, eight gentlemen, 84 craftsmen, 100 farmers, servants, and labourers, 26 wives, 20 widows, nine virgins, two boys, and two infants; in all 277. Some say a great many more. And they were all scattered] To the Church’s great advantage, which, like the sea, what ground it loseth in one place, it getteth in another. So at Melda in France (10 miles from Paris), Brissonet, the bishop thereof, desirous of a reformation, put away the monks and called in the help of various godly ministers. But being persecuted by the Sorbonists, he soon fell off from the profession of the truth; and those good ministers (Faber, Farelhs, Ruffus, and others) were driven into various other places of France, where they planted various churches; the destruction of one being the edification of many. Farellus, one of those afore mentioned ministers, was God’s instrument of gaining the inhabitants of Geneva, Lausanne, Novocoma, &c. Unius Ecclesiae destructio multarum fuit aedificatio. Scultet. Annal.
Ver. 2. Carried Stephen] συνεκομισαν, On their shoulders, lamenting, with knocking their breasts, &c., as the word κοπετον imports: no whit afraid of those mad murderers. So the primitive Christians would not be kep t from visiting the confessors in prison, Tamet si multis terroribus minis, et periculis interdictum erat, as Chrysostom witnesseth in his oration of the two martyrs. So certain good people took up and buried the bodies of Ursula and Mary, two noble virgins, burnt at Delden in Lower Germany, which the executioner could in no wise consume with fire, but left them lying on the ground. And the like is reported touching the hearts of Zuinglius and Cranmer.
Ver. 3. Made havoc of the church] Being (as some think) that ravening wolf of the tribe of Benjamin, prophesied of by Jacob, Genesis 49:27.
Ver. 4. [See Trapp on “Ac 8:1”] Trucidabantur et multiplicabantur, saith Austin. They were never the fewer for being slain. Plures efficimur quoties metimur, saith Tertullian. Ecclesia totum mundum sanguine et oratione convertit, saith Luther; the Church converts the whole world by her sufferings and prayers.
Ver. 5. Then Philip] Not Philip the apostle (for they all abode at Jerusalem, Acts 8:1), but Philip the deacon. He that is faithful in a little shall be made master of more.
Ver. 6. And the people, &c.] A corrupt place, and bewitched by the sorceries of Simon Magus; yet even there God had a people. Justin Martyr was of this city.
Ver. 7. Crying with a loud voice] To show that they went out perforce, and with a very ill will.
Ver. 8. And there was great joy] So there was at Berne; for when the reformation was first received they pardoned (for joy) two condemned persons and called home all their banished. So there was at Geneva; the inhabitants whereof, upon the like occasion, stamped new money with this inscription, Post tenebras lux. After the night, daybreak. So also there was among the Helvetians, who caused the day and year when reformation began among them to be engraved in a pillar, in letters of gold, for a perpetual memory to all posterity, A. D. 1528.
Ver. 9. Which beforetime, &c.] Or, which was master of the magicians, προυπηρχεν. Sed quae traduntur de modo disceptationis Petri cum Simone Mago δραματικα potius quam ιστορικα esse videntur. Bewitched the people] Gr. εξιστων. Carried them out of themselves, as in an ecstasy, so that they were more his than their own. Some great thing] Such a blab the devil had blown up there, as a small wind may blow up a bubble.
Ver. 10. This man is the great power of God] Epiphanius saith that this varlot (knave) called himself God the Father and the Son, and his harlot Helena (a horrible thing to be spoken) the Holy Ghost. Justin Martyr witnesseth, that he had near unto Rome a statue erected, with this inscription, Simoni Deo sancto, To Simon the holy God. Prodigious boldness and baseness!
Ver. 11. He had bewitched them with sorcery] It happened in the year of grace 434, that a certain seducer, who called himself Moses, persuaded the Jews in Crete that he was sent from heaven with commission to repossess them of the Promised Land. Him therefore they gladly followed (a great sort of them) with their wives and children to the seaside; where he bade them to cast themselves after him from a steep rock into the sea. This they did, and there perished many of them; and many more had done, but that (by a providence) sundry were caught up by Christian fishermen there present at that time, and carried safe to land. These, after they were recovered, carried notice to their fellows, how fearfully they had been deluded by the devil, who had impersonated Moses; and various of them, moved by their late calamity, became Christians. In the year 759, certain Persian magicians persuaded themselves and many others, that if they sold all they had and cast themselves naked from the town wall, they should fly up to heaven immediately; perierunt hac insania permulti, saith the historian. Many perished by believing this senseless lie. (Funccius in Chronol.)