ABSTRACT
Firth believed that Haller had virtually invented an "apocalyptic nationalism" which she nowhere found in John Foxe or in any of his near contemporaries, or that he had read it back from the mid-seventeenth century where, as a Milton scholar, he was more at home. If Haller had read Foxe's huge commentary on the Book of Revelation, the Eicasmi, he would have found that Foxe explicitly denied that the Church belonged to any single nation, but was to be found wherever true religion and piety were found. Olsen rightly insists that Foxe's Book of Martyrs is about that Church, not about the nation. However, Foxe, in 1563, does use the words "specially in this Realme of England and Scotland", his book "framed chiefly of the English Church". Foxe addressed himself separately to "All the Professed Friends and Followers of the Pope's Proceedings", "pretending the name of Catholics, commonly termed Papists, wheresoever abiding in the realm of England".
