V. I pass over for the moment, the motive of glory. All these same conflicts of cruelty and torture even mere display ⁴⁶ among men, and a sort of disease of the mind, hath ere now trampled on. How many idlers doth a display of feats hire to the service of the sword! Verily they go down even to the beasts from display, and seem to themselves more comely |p157 from their bites and their scars. Some also have ere now hired themselves to the flames, to run over a certain space of ground in a burning shirt ⁴⁷. Others have walked with most enduring shoulders amidst the lashes of the hunters. These things, blessed men, the Lord hath suffered to come into the world, not without a cause: but both for our encouragement now ⁴⁸, and for our confusion in that Day⁴⁹, if we shall be afraid to suffer for the Truth's sake unto salvation those things, which others have made a display of suffering for vanity's sake unto perdition.

But let us pass over these examples of constancy arising from mere display. Let us turn to the actual contemplation of the condition of man, that those things too may instruct us, whatever they be, which, accustomed to befall men even against their will, must be endured with constancy. For how often have the flames burned men alive ! How often have wild beasts, both in their own woods and in the middle of cities, having escaped from their dens, devoured men! How many have been slain by robbers with the sword, and by their enemies even on the cross, having first been tortured, yea and having received, in full, every sort of indignity! There is no one who may not suffer even for the sake of man, what he scrupleth to suffer in the cause of God. For this let even the present times be a proof to us, how many persons, and of what quality, meet with deaths not to be expected either from their birth, or their rank, or their persons, or their age, for the sake of man ⁵⁰, either from himself, if they act against him, or from his enemies, if they take part with him.