Meanwhile, the issue of her afflictions has always been fortunate.  At all events, God has caused that tho she has been prest by many calamities, she has never been completely crusht; as it is said (Psalm vii., 15), “The wicked with all their efforts have not succeeded in that at which they aimed.”  St. Paul glories in the fact, and shows that this is the course which God in mercy always takes.  He says (I Cor. iv., 12) that we endure tribulations, but we are not in agony; we are impoverished, but not left destitute; we are persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but we perish not; bearing everywhere in our body the mortification of the Lord Jesus, in order that His life may be manifested in our mortal bodies.  Such being, as we see, the issue which God has at all times given to the persecutions of His Church, we ought to take courage, knowing that our forefathers, who were frail men like ourselves, always had the victory over their enemies by remaining firm in endurance.

I only touch upon this article briefly to come to the second, which is more to our purpose, viz., that we ought to take advantage of the particular examples of the martyrs who have gone before us.  These are not confined to two or three, but are, as the apostle says (Heb. xii., 1), “So great a cloud of witnesses.”  By this expression he intimates that the number is so great that it ought, as it were, completely to engross our sight.  Not to be tedious, I will only mention the Jews, who were persecuted for the true religion, as well under the tyranny of King Antiochus as a little after his death.  We can not allege that the number of sufferers was small, for it formed, as it were, a large army of martyrs.  We can not say that it consisted of prophets whom God had set apart from common people, for women and young children formed part of the band.  We can not say that they got off at a cheap rate, for they were tortured as cruelly as it was possible to be.  Accordingly, we hear what the apostle says (Heb. xi., 35), that some were stretched out like drums, not caring to be delivered, that they might obtain a better resurrection; others were proved by mockery and blows, or bonds and prisons; others were stoned or sawn asunder; others traveled up and down, wandering among mountains and caves.

Let us now compare their case with ours.  If they so endured for the truth which was at that time so obscure, what ought we to do in the clear light which is now shining?  God speaks to us with open mouth; the great gate of the kingdom of heaven has been opened, and Jesus Christ calls us to Himself, after having come down to us that we might have him, as it were, present to our eyes.  What a reproach would it be to us to have less zeal in suffering for the gospel than those who had only hailed the promises afar off—­who had only a little wicket opened whereby to come to the kingdom of God, and who had only some memorial and type of Jesus Christ?  These things can not be exprest in a word, as they deserve, and therefore I leave each to ponder them for himself.