Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

S. Austin Allibone, comp. Prose Quotations from Socrates to Macaulay. 1880.

Martyrs

The first martyr for Christianity was encouraged in his last moments by a vision of that divine person for whom he suffered.

Though I have here only chosen this single link of martyrs, I might find out others among those names which are still extant, that delivered down this account of our Saviour in a successive tradition.

Justin Martyr, Tertullian, Lactantius, and Arnobius tell us that this martyrdom first of all made them seriously inquisitive into that religion which could endue the mind with so much strength, and overcome the fear of death, nay, raise an earnest desire of it, though it appeared in all its terrors.

God discovers the martyr and confessor without the trial of flames and tortures, and will hereafter entitle many to the reward of actions which they had never the opportunity of performing.

The martyrs to vice far exceed the martyrs to virtue, both in endurance and in number.

He who writes himself martyr by his own inscription is like an ill painter, who, by writing on a shapeless picture which he hath drawn, is fain to tell passengers what shape it is, which else no man could imagine.

The witnessing of the truth was then so generally attended with this event [martyrdom] that martyrdom now signifieth not only to witness, but to witness to death.