# Preface to Second Part. · Page 2 of 11

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They were endowed with such strength that even
cruel and inhuman torture could not extort from
them the names of their fellow brethren, so that,
filled with divine and brotherly love, they sacrificed
their bodies for their fellow believers. The brotherhood
in general was thereby so enkindled with zeal
and love, that each, despising the earthly and regarding
the heavenly, prepared his heart for the
sufferings to which his brethren were subjected, and
by which he himself was daily threatened. They
shunned no danger, in the way of sheltering their
fellow believers, visiting them in prison, calling
boldly to them in the place of execution, and comforting
and strengthening them with words of
Scripture. The tyrants found themselves deceived
in their design; they thought they could cause these
Christians to apostatize; they put them into assurance
of their salvation; they supposed they could
destroy and extirpate those who opposed them,
but, on the contrary, they raised up more opponents;
for many of the spectators, at the said spectacle
of killing people, who were harmless and of
good name and report, yea, who would rather die
than do ought by which they supposed to offend
God, were thereby brought to reflection, and thus
to investigation, and ultimately to conversion.

Besides these noble examples of love, patience
and constancy, we find in their writings many devout
lessons, edifying teachings and comforting admonitions,
written in dark prisons, hurried and negligently
indeed, and on account of inconvenience
and with poor materials, but sealed with the most
glorious mark, their own blood. Then the words
have power and weight, when their truth is confirmed
and attested by the deed. Seneca, in his epistles,
censures philosophising with words, and not with
life, as something shameful. Here you find words
which devotion has penned, which the pressure of
suffering has extorted from the inmost of the heart;
words which have not been warped or bent by
worldly considerations or carnal passions; but which
were sincerely and unfeignedly spoken to their
friends, at the end of life, as a last will, and confirmed
with death. Husbands in tribulation consoled
their wives, admonished them to godliness, and incited
them to steadfastness. Parents gave useful instructions
to their children, presented to them the
changeableness, vanity and perishableness of visible
things; they taught, counseled and commanded
them to forsake the world and the lusts thereof, and
to cleave to and alone serve God, the supreme and
only good. You perceive here how they were sometimes
assaulted with many temptations and enticements,
not only of wicked men, but of the devil;
how the enemy of souls, bringing them upon the
pinnacle of the temple, as it were, showed them the
splendor and glory of this world, in order to entice
them to worship this; Matt. 4:5,8. How he sometimes,
with the terror of impending suffering, assailed
the soul with fearfulness, and how, by false
imaginations, he endeavored to bring the minds to
apostasy, despondency and despair; which these
pious heroes, arming themselves with watching and
constant prayer to God, valiantly overcame, fighting
manfully through all temptations, promises and
threats, even unto death, and gaining the victory.



## Original source

[Read this passage on Project Gutenberg](https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/65855/pg65855-images.html#Page_344)

[Edition details](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/65855)

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