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These represent the martyrdoms of saints and early Christians; and such a panorama of horror and butchery no man could imagine in his sleep, though he were to eat a whole pig raw, for supper.
The latest of the great religions has been “baptized in blood” more than its predecessors, and martyrdoms have continued down to the present day. With the prophets of science the same thing has happened. Giordano Bruno was burned as a heretic in 1600 A.D. for teaching, amongst other things, that the earth moved around the sun.
'If Christ doth own me, Rutherford wrote to the martyrs in the Castle, 'let me be laid in my grave in a bloody winding-sheet; let me go from the scaffold to the spikes in four quarters grave or no grave, as He pleases, if only He but owns me. And I seemed to see the crucified disciple's glorified Master appearing over his reversed cross and saying, 'Thou art Peter, and with this thy blood I will sow widespread my Church. Yes, my brethren, if Christ but owns us, that will far more than make up to us in a moment for all our imprisonments, and all our martyrdoms, and all our ebbing tides down here.
After each dance Miss Boke conducted him back to the maple-tree, aloof from the general throng, and William found the intermissions almost equal to his martyrdoms upon the platform.
Hypatia bit her lip, and was silent. 'Well, I do not wish to urge anything unpleasant to you.... If we could but contrive a few martyrdoms but I really fear we must wait a year or two longer, in the present state of public opinion, before we can attempt that. 'Wait? wait for ever!
Here, 'mid the bleak waves of our strife and care, Float the green 'Fortunate Isles, Where all thy hero-spirits dwell and share Our martyrdoms and toils. The present moves attended With all of brave and excellent and fair That made the old time splendid."
Persecution, cried the priest, was to be welcomed like salvation, prayed for, and grasped; but he feared that the authorities were too shrewd, and knew the antidote and the poison apart. There might be individual martyrdoms in fact there would be, and very many but they would be in spite of secular government, not because of it.
Given this belief, then her whole conduct is lifted to a plane of heroism, takes rank with the grand martyrdoms; and is not to be lightly condemned by any who remember the words, "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friend." The more Hetty thought over her plan, the simpler and more feasible it appeared.
When, therefore, in other instances, he states heavier persecutions, or actual martyrdoms, it is reasonable to believe that he states them because they were true, and not from any wish to aggravate, in his account, the sufferings which Christians sustained, or to extol, more than it deserved, their patience under them. Our history now pursues a narrower path.
Great gifts and rewards were offered him, as to a king's son, to the end he should deny Christ; and he, constant and firm in the faith, would have none of his gifts, but endured divers martyrdoms. In the end the said Decius caused him to be beheaded, where now stands the Church of S. Candida alla Croce at Gorgo; and many faithful followers of Christ received martyrdom in this place.
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