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| This exceptional fact must be tested by experience. Let those who doubt it become Christians.
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§28. This exceptional fact must be
tested by experience. Let those who doubt it become Christians.
Is this, then, a slight proof of the weakness of
death? or is it a slight demonstration of the victory won over him by
the Saviour, when the youths and young maidens that are in Christ
despise this life and practise to die? 2. For man is by nature afraid
of death and of the dissolution of the body; but there is this most
startling fact, that he who has put on the faith of the Cross despises
even what is naturally fearful, and for Christ’s sake is not
afraid of death. 3. And just as, whereas fire has the natural property
of burning, if some one said there was a substance which did not fear
its burning, but on the contrary proved it weak—as the asbestos
among the Indians is said to do—then one who did not believe the
story, if he wished to put it to the test, is at any rate, after
putting on the fireproof material and touching the fire, thereupon
assured of the weakness attributed279
| 279 κατὰ τοῦ
πυρός κατὰ appears to have
the predicative force so common in Aristotle. The Bened. translation
‘the weakness of fire against the asbestos’ is based on a
needless conjecture. | to the fire: 4.
or if any one wished to see the tyrant bound, at any rate by going into
the country and domain of his conqueror he may see the man, a terror to
others, reduced to weakness; so if a man is incredulous even still
after so many proofs and after so many who have become martyrs in
Christ, and after the scorn shewn for death every day by those who are
illustrious in Christ, still, if his mind be even yet doubtful as to
whether death has been brought to nought and had an end, he does well
to wonder at so great a thing, only let him not prove obstinate in
incredulity, nor case-hardened in the face of what is so plain. 5. But
just as he who has got the asbestos knows that fire has no burning
power over it, and as he who would see the tyrant bound goes over to
the empire of his conqueror, so too let him who is incredulous about
the victory over death receive the faith of Christ, and pass over to
His teaching, and he shall see the weakness of death, and the triumph
over it. For many who were formerly incredulous and scoffers have
afterwards believed and so despised death as even to become martyrs for
Christ Himself.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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