fire-purified

Updated: May 10, 2025

The All-knower has no need of satisfying his eyes by seeing what we will do, when he knows before what we will do. Methinks we might be condemned before commission. And as to where an untried child goes, whether to join the assembly of its elders who have borne the heat of the day, fire-purified martyrs and torment-sifted confessors, what know we?

Charles Lamb - The Best Letters of Charles Lamb

I was thinking of that old figment of his being lost in the Bay of Spezzia, and washed ashore near Via Reggio, and burned to ashes on a funeral pyre, with wine, and spices, and frankincense; while Byron stood on the beach and beheld a flame of marvellous beauty rise heavenward from the dead poet's heart, and that his fire-purified relics were finally buried near his child in Roman earth.

Nathaniel Hawthorne - P.'s Correspondence (From "Mosses from an Old Manse")