Then follow grave warnings - generous towards others, you must be strict with yourselves; only the good can truly do good; hearers of these words must be doers also, if they would build on the rock and not on the sand.
Italy was and ever has been a land of cities; and, ever since the downfall of Rome and the decay of the municipal system, the bishops of the cities had really been at the head of the peaceful and industrial part of their population, and were a natural refuge for the oppressed, and sometimes for the mutinous and the evil doers, from the military and civil powers of the duke or count or judge, too often a rule of cruelty or fraud.
The word was early applied by the Protestants to the Romanists, with an allusion to the "congregation of evil doers" (Vulgate Ecclesiam malignantium) of Psalm xxvi.
Gathered and collected according to the true Copies and Wrytinges certificatorie as well of the Parties themselves that Suffered, as also out of the Bishop's Registers, which were the Doers thereof, by John Foxe, commonly known as the Book of Martyrs.
Have these hearers of the word become the doers of the word?
