A treatise on comforting afflicted consciences - The Digital Puritan

AFFLICTED CONSCIENCES. 49and acquired manhood of a mere moral puritan. Manysuch moral martyrs have been found amongst the more generousand well-bred heathen. It is related of a brave andvaliant captain, who had long manfully and with incrediblecourage withstood Dionysius the l.lder, in defence ofa city, that he sustained with strange patience and heightof spirit the merciless fury of the tyrant and all his barbarouscruelties, most unworthy of him that suffered them,but most worthy him that inflicted the same. " First, thetyrant told him that the day before he had caused his sonand all his kinsfolks to be drowned. To whom the captainstoutly facing him answered nothing, but that they weremore happy than himself by the space of one day. Afterwardhe caused him to be stripped, and by his executionersto be taken and dragged through the city most ignorainiously,cruelly whipping him, and charging him besideswith outrageous and contumelious speeches. Notwithstandingall which, as one no whit dismayed, he ever showeda constant and resolute heart: and with a cheerful andbold countenance went on, still loudly recounting the honourableand glorious cause of his death, which was, thathe would never consent to yield his country into the handsof a cruel tyrant." U ith such stoutness did even meremoral virtue steel the ancient Roman spirits, that in worthydefence of their liberty, for preservation of their country,or other such noble ends, they indifferently contemned gold,silver, death, torture, and whatsoever else miserable worldlingshold either dear or dismal.3. In some, from an extreme hardness of heart, whichmakes thern senseless and fearless of shame, misery, or anyterrible thing. This we may sometimes observe in notoriousmalefactors. A long, rebellious, and remorseless continuanceand custom in sin, raging infections from theirroaring companions, a furious pursuit of outrages andblood ; Satan's hot iron searing their consciences, and God'sjust curse upon their fearful and forlorn courses ; so fillthem with fool-hardiness, and with such a deadly disposition,that they are desperately hardened against allaffronts and disasters : so that though such savage-mindedand marble-hearted men be to pass through the streets asspectacles of abhorredness and scorn, as hateful monstersand the reproach of mankind ; to be thrown into a dungeonof darkness and discomfort, and there to be laden with coldirons, coldness, and want ; from thence to be hurried to thatloathed place of execution, and there to die a dog's death ;and finally to fall imn-'.ediately and irrecoveiably into alake of fire ;yet, I say, for all this, out of a desperate hardF