A treatise on comforting afflicted consciences - The Digital Puritan

342 INSTRUCTIONS FOR COMFORTINGtions or apprehensions of impossibility to escape, or to betempted at any time above their power and patience. Andmany are the means and methods by which he is wont toease and mitigate their many p .inful miseries, especiallythat extremest one of martyrdom. 1. Sometimes he rescuesthem by his own mighty and immediate arm out of themouth of lions, and pulls them by a strong hand from beiM-eenthe teeth of bloody persecuting wolves (2 Tim. iv, 17).2. Sometimes he takes away or lessens the sting and fury ofthe torment and torturers*. The fire had no force at allover the bodies of those blessed men in Uan. iii, 27. Andno doubt in Queen Mary's days, of most abhorred memory,he many times mollified and sweetened the rage and bitternessof those merciless flames for our martyrs' sakes. 3. Sometimeshe supports and supplies them with supernaturalvigour and extraordinary courage over the smart and rigourof the most terrible and intolerable tortures. The heart ofthat holy protomartyr, Stephen, was furnished and filledwith those heavenly infusions of spiritual strength and joy,when " the heavens opening, he saw the glory of God, and.lesus standing on his right hand " (Acts vii, 55, 56), whichwere gloriously transcending and triumphant over the utmostof all corporeal pain and Jewish cruelty. And so graciouslydealt he with many other martyrs in succeeding ages, as wemay read in ecclesiastical history. 4. He may sometimesalso, out of his merciful wisdom, put into their hearts som\ich of heaven beforehand, and ravishing comforts of theworld to come, that the excess thereof doth swallow up anddevour, as it were, the bitterness of all bodily inflictionsand sufferings of sense. Thus mercifully dealt he with thatworthy martyr, Robert Glover, even v/hen he was goingtowards the stake. He poured into his soul upon the suddensuch overflowing rivers of spiritual joys, that no doubt theymightily abated and quenched the raging fury of thosepopish flames wherein he was sacrificed for the profession ofthe gospel of Christ and God's everlasting truth. Andassuredly that comfortable sunshine of inexpressible joy,which by the good hand of God was shed into Mr. Peacock'ssorrowful heart in the depth of his darkness anddesertion a little before the resignation of his happy soulinto the hands of God, did make the pangs of death andthat dreadful passage a great deal less painful and sensible,if not very lightsome and pleasant. Now in both these men* Let no Christian, then, afflict his soul with any corroding or vexingforethought of fiery times. Assure thyself, if God call thee to suffer inthat kind, he will graciously give unto thee a martyr's faith, a martyr'spatience, and a crown of martyrdom.