8. For what is so illustrious and sublime, as by a robust devotion to preserve all the vigour of faith in the midst of so many weapons of executioners? What so great and honourable, as in the midst of so many swords of the surrounding guards, again and again to profess in repeated words the Lord of one’s liberty and the author of one’s salvation?—and especially if you set before your eyes that there is nothing more detestable than dishonour, nothing baser than slavery, that now you ought to seek nothing else, to ask for nothing else, than that you should be snatched from the slaughters of the world, be delivered from the ills of the world, and be engaged only as an alien from the contagion of earth, among the ruins of a globe that is speedily to perish? For what have you to do with this light, if you have the promise of an eternal light? What interest have you in this commerce of life and nature, if the amplitude of heaven is awaiting you? Doubtless let that lust of life keep hold, but let it be of those whom for unatoned sin the raging fire will torture with eternal vengeance for their crimes. Let that lust of life keep hold, but let it be of those to whom it is both a punishment to die, and a torment to endure (after death). But to you both the world itself is subjected, and the earth yields, if, when all are dying, you are reserved for this fate of being a martyr. Do we not behold daily dyings? We behold new kinds of death of the body long worn out with raging diseases, the miserable results of some plague hitherto unexperienced; and we behold the destruction of wasted cities, and hence we may acknowledge how great is to be considered the dignity of martyrdom, to the attainment of the glory of which even the pestilence is beginning to compel us.8    [The heathen attributed this pestilence to the “atheism” of Christians, and hence persecuted them the more fiercely; and, as it was better to die by martyrdom than by the pestilence, he thus speaks. Death an advantage. Shaks., Hen. V., act. iv. sc. 1.]

VIII Quid enim tam eximium atque sublime est, quam inter tot instrumenta carnificum devotione robusta cunctam fidei reservare virtutem ? Quid tam magnum atque pulcherrimum, quam inter tot 0792A circumstantium gladios libertatis suae Dominum ac salutis auctorem repetita saepius voce profiteri? et maxime si ante oculos tuos ponas nihil detestabilius esse dedecore, nihil foedius servitute, nihil aliud te debere jam petere, aliud optare quam eripiendum esse cladibus saeculi, exuendum malis mundi, et inter ruinas orbis jam jamque perituri alienum a terrena contagione versari? Quid enim tibi cum hac luce, cui lux aeterna promissa est? Quid cum hoc vitae naturaeque commercio quem coeli amplitudo deposcit? Sane teneat cupiditas ista vivendi, sed quos inexpiabili malo saeviens ignis aeterna scelerum ultione torquebit. Teneat cupiditas ista vivendi, sed quibus et mori poena est et durare tormentum. Tibi jam et mundus ipse succumbit et terra cedit, qui 0792B morientibus cunctis ad hoc reservatus es ut martyr esse potuisses. An non quotidiana cernimus funera, cernimus novos exitus corporis diu tracti , saevientibus morbis inexpertae cujusdam cladis exitia, ac stragem populatarum urbium intuemur, unde possimus agnoscere quanta martyrii habenda sit dignitas, ad cujus gloriam nos cogere etiam lues coepit.