mystery, God himself, whom all our sacred mysteries here respect. And therefore cease to make us any more offers and promises of little things, which are nothing worth. We love not those shameful honours which we shall get by denying God. We were not bred to make such unthrifty bargains, and cannot traffic with thee on such base and ignoble terms: and therefore cease also to threaten us; or we can return more dreadful threatenings, which will reprove thy weakness. For know that we have a fire, into which to throw our persecutors. Dost thou think thou hast to do with gentile people? Those, it is true, thou hast overcome: they have yielded to thy threatenings and power: and no wonder; for they did not fight for such glorious things as we. They only defended their cities and goods; but we defend the law of the Most High. Thou opposest thyself now against the tables writ with the finger of God; against the most holy and divine service; against the rites of our country, which reason and time have made honourable; against seven brethren, who are linked together by one soul; whom it is no such mighty business to overcome, but to be worsted by them will be most shameful. And, be assured, we will set up seven monuments of thy disgrace; for we are the progeny and disciples of those who were led by a pillar of fire and a cloud; to whom the sea parted itself, and the sun stood still, and bread rained down from heaven; and who triumphed over mighty kings by prayer and lifting up their hands to heaven. And to say something that comes within the compass of thy knowledge, we are bred up under Eleazar, whose fortitude and courage thou art not ignorant of. The father led the way; the sons follow him to the like combat. Therefore it is to no purpose to add any more threatenings: we can suffer greater things than those thou speakest of. Οὐδὲν ἰσχυρότερον τῶν πάντα παθεῖν ἑτοίμων· There are none more valiant than they that are ready to endure all things.' Why do you delay to begin your cruelty? what do you stay for, or expect? Do you think we may change our minds, and recant? No; we protest again and again, we will never eat impure flesh: we will never break the law of our God. Thou shalt sooner turn to our religion than we to thine. Let hotter fires be kindled; let more ravenous beasts be brought forth; let more exquisite torments

be invented in short, either devise some new punishment, or know that we despise these that are before us.

"These," saith he, "were their words to the tyrant; in the relation of which I am wonderfully delighted. And then embracing and kissing one another, with no less cheerfulness than if they had been come to receive their reward, Let us go, said they with a loud voice, let us go to meet these dangers. Let us make haste, while the tyrant is hot and chafes, lest he be cool again, and we lose the salvation. What though it cost us our lives? must not we leave them some time or other? must we not pay the debt we owe to nature? Let us convert then a necessity into our choice and a glory. Let us deceive the grave; and make that peculiar which is common. By death let us make a purchase of life. Let none of us faint in our undertaking, nor be desirous to live here any longer. Let us make the tyrant despair of moving others, by seeing our constancy. Let him appoint our sufferings, we will put an end to them. Let us make it appear that as we are brethren by birth, so we are in all things else, not excepting death."

Such was the resolution, saith he, of these men; who did not serve pleasure, nor suffered themselves to be governed by their passions, but purified their bodies and their spirits, and in this manner were translated εἰς τὴν ἀπαθῆ ζωὴν, ' to that life which is incapable of any passion,' and free from all the troubles and miseries to which here we are exposed. It would be too long to relate the speech of the mother; who likewise gave an illustrious testimony of her faith in God, and hath left a rare example to all posterity of constancy and patience under the greatest sufferings. The apostle himself hath perpetuated their memory in his Epistle to the Hebrews, and made it sacred to all generations: where it will stand to our great confusion if we should not learn of those who had so great a faith under so a dark revelation. What would not these persons have done, saith the forenamed father, if they had lived in our times, who were so courageous before the sufferings of Christ, and the glory (I may add) that followed after? If without example they behaved themselves so undauntedly, what rare souls would they have been with one, especially with the example of Christ Jesus! Such we ought to strive to be, not only as they were, but as we conceive they would have been

under our Master: strengthened, I mean, as St. Paul speaks, with all might according to his glorious power, unto all patience and long-suffering with joyfulness; giving thanks unto the Father, which hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in lightm. And so we shall, if the same spirit of faith be in us that was in them. For it tells us how Jesus went this way to heaven; and that if we overcome, we shall shine with him in his glory, and sit down with him in his throne, and inherit all things.

There need no more be said to encourage even those Christians who have been most delicately bred, or that are of the tenderer sex, to wade through the greatest difficulties. Let them but look up unto Jesus, and he will inflame them with such ardent love, that they will be glad to follow him to his cross, if they must go that way to come where he is. This moved Dorotheus and divers other courtiers, (who, as Eusebius" reports, were ẞaσiλikol naîdes, of the emperor's bedchamber, and in such high favour, that they were no less beloved than if they had been the emperor's own children,) to prefer the reproaches and pains of piety, and the new-devised deaths they were to suffer for its sake, before all the glory and delights wherein they lived. And St. Peter, we are told by Clemens Alexandrinus, seeing his own wife led to death, rejoiced at the grace to which she was called, thinking now she was upon her return home. And cheerfully exhorting her to proceed to the execution, he called her by her name, saying only these few words, Μεμνήσθω τοῦ Κυρίου· ‘Remember the Lord.' That was sufficient, he knew, to make her constant and courageous: it being a faithful saying, (an undoubted principle of Christianity, on which we may ever safely build,) For if we be dead with him, we shall also live with him: if we suffer with him, we shall also reign with him P. And it was no less steadfastly believed, that they who suffered with him should also reign with him in a greater glory than others; as we heard before from St. Paul, who saith, their afflictions would work for them a most ponderous crown of glory. Nay, they gave the like encouragement to all those who did any

m Col. i. 11, 12. n Lib. viii. Eccles. Histor. c. 6. [p. 382.] • Lib. vii. Stromat. p. 756. [p. 869. ed. Potter.] P 2 Tim. ii. 11, [2.

eminent service to our blessed Lord. They that laboured hard, for instance, in the word and doctrine, St. Paul saith, were worthy of double honour, or reward in this world. Which few receiving, (but quite contrary, they were least esteemed, as he himself found by experience, who took the most pains,) there was the greater reason to hope to find it in another life; when the chief Shepherd appearing, they were sure to receive an excellent crown of glory'. To every saint our Lord promises a crown of glory: (as those crowns were wont to be called that they used in times of greatest joy :) the word ȧμapávτivov added to it (which is never used in any other place of Scripture, and is that whereby some of the crowns given to persons of desert in other nations are called) denotes, I think, something extraordinary in the glory of those good shepherds, who fed the flock of God according to the directions the apostle had been giving them.

The martyrs, we are sure, expected it; who building on this foundation, that they who suffer with him shall reign with him, gave God thanks when they received the sentence of death; and went to the execution singing, and expired with hymns in their mouths, and exhorted others, in the midst of their torments, to the like cheerful constancy. Of all which I could produce instances out of the ecclesiastical story; but I shall only set down that of Liberatus and his monks who, defending the Christian faith against the heresy of Arius, when they were condemned to be thrown bound into a ship full of faggots, and there to be burnt in the midst of the sea, sang aloud this hymn: Glory be to God in the highest. Behold, now is the acceptable time: behold, now is the day of salvation in which we suffer punishment for the faith of our Gods.'

And why should not this faith much more easily comfort us against the death of our dearest friends, when we can reasonably hope they depart from us to go into the eternal happiness of a better world? Their gain is so great which they have made by the exchange, that we ought not so heavily, as we are wont, to take our own loss. This Photius represents

ri Pet. v. 4.

1 Tim. v. 17. Victor Uticensis, Vandal. Persec. [lib. v. tom. viii. p. 698 D. Max. Bibl. Vet. Patr.]

very handsomely to his brother Tarasius; after he had said a great many other things, to stop the tears that he shed immoderately for a daughter who was dead. "Suppose," saith he, "thy daughter should appear to thee, and, taking thee by the hand, should kiss it with a cheerful and smiling countenance, saying, My father, why dost thou afflict thyself in this manner? why dost thou bemoan me, as if I was gone to an evil condition? My lot is fallen unto me in Paradise; a place most sweet to behold, and far sweeter to enjoy: peito dè miotews àлáσηs neîра, but the experiment exceeds all belief.' Into this the crooked serpent cannot wind himself, as he did into that of our forefathers; nor so much as whisper any of his deceitful temptations. There is none among us but whose mind is impregnable, and cannot be overcome by any artifice; nor can we desire to be gratified with any greater good. For we are all of us wise with the divine and heavenly wisdom; and our whole life is a continued magnificent festival, in the enjoyment of infinite and unspeakable goods. Splendidly clothed, we see God in a splendid manner, (as far as man can see him;) and ravished with his inexplicable, inconceivable beauty, we rejoice alway, and are never weary. Which abundant pleasure is the very perfection of love; and the power of enjoying accompanying love begets that ineffable joy and exultation of spirit. So that now, while I converse with thee, a most mighty love to those things draws me away, and suffers me not to expound the least part of them. Thou and my dear mother shall one day come thither, and then confess I have said but very little of such great goods; but accuse thyself very much for bewailing me, who happily enjoy them. Therefore, my dearest father, let me go away with joy, and do not detain me any longer, lest thou suffer a greater loss, and for that be more bitterly afflicted.

"If thy daughter, I say, could after this or the like sort speak to thee, wouldst thou not be ashamed to continue thy lamentations? and choose rather with joy to let her go away rejoicing? Consider then, if upon a child's saying such things, we should presently grow better, and be of good comfort; shall we, when our common Creator and Lord cries, He that believeth in me, though he die, yet shall he live; and, God hath prepared for them that love him such things as eye hath not