"The Gospel having spread itself into Persia, the pagan priests, who worshipped the sun, were greatly alarmed, and dreaded the loss of that influence they had hitherto maintained over the people's minds and properties"
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Foxe doesn’t describe a religious dispute so much as a turf war with liturgy attached. The moment the Gospel enters Persia, the “pagan priests” aren’t portrayed as thinkers defending a cosmology; they’re managers of a lucrative social technology. “Greatly alarmed” and “dreaded” turn belief into self-preservation, and the sentence’s real punch lands in its final pairing: “minds and properties.” Foxe is telling you exactly what’s at stake in conversion narratives as he wants you to read them - not metaphysical truth but governance, revenue, and the right to narrate reality.
The intent is polemical and Protestant. Writing in Reformation England, Foxe’s larger project (most famously in Acts and Monuments) was to cast the true church as perpetually embattled and to frame opposition as predictable corruption. By locating the same pattern in distant Persia, he universalizes the Protestant story: wherever the Gospel advances, entrenched priesthoods panic because their power depends on controlling conscience and extracting material support. “Influence” is the keyword - faith becomes a contest over who gets to author the public mind.
The subtext also works as a domestic warning. In 16th-century England, “priests” and “properties” evokes the Catholic Church’s wealth, tithes, and institutional reach. Foxe can’t accuse every opponent of bad doctrine and expect it to stick; accusing them of protecting a business model is harder to defend against. Even the choice of “sun” worship is strategic: it paints the rival clergy as both primitive and theatrical, a bright spectacle masking a darker motive.
The intent is polemical and Protestant. Writing in Reformation England, Foxe’s larger project (most famously in Acts and Monuments) was to cast the true church as perpetually embattled and to frame opposition as predictable corruption. By locating the same pattern in distant Persia, he universalizes the Protestant story: wherever the Gospel advances, entrenched priesthoods panic because their power depends on controlling conscience and extracting material support. “Influence” is the keyword - faith becomes a contest over who gets to author the public mind.
The subtext also works as a domestic warning. In 16th-century England, “priests” and “properties” evokes the Catholic Church’s wealth, tithes, and institutional reach. Foxe can’t accuse every opponent of bad doctrine and expect it to stick; accusing them of protecting a business model is harder to defend against. Even the choice of “sun” worship is strategic: it paints the rival clergy as both primitive and theatrical, a bright spectacle masking a darker motive.
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| Topic | Bible |
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