But think you indeed that nothing but encouragement and advantage to followers, arose from the trials of those that went before? Alas, there were sometimes the greatest damps and discouragements imaginable; the zeal of those that followed hath often been inflamed by the faintings of those that were tried before them. In the Seventh Persecution under Decius, 1there were standing before the Tribunal, certain of the Warriors or Knights, viz. Ammon, Zenon, Ptolomeus, Ingenuus, and a certain aged man called Theophilus, who all standing by as Spectators when a certain Christian was examined, and there seeing him for fear, ready to decline, and fall away, did almost burst for sorrow within themselves; they made signs to him with their hands, and all gestures of the body to be constant; this being noted be all the standers by, they were ready to lay hold upon them; but they preventing the matter, pressed up of their own accord, before the bench of the Judge, professing themselves to be Christians, insomuch that both the President and the Benchers were all astonished, and the Christians which were judged, the more encouraged. Such damping spectacles the Christians of former ages had frequently set them before them.
But think you indeed that nothing but encouragement and advantage to followers, arose from the trials of those that went before? Alas, there were sometimes the greatest damps and discouragements imaginable; the zeal of those that followed hath often been inflamed by the faintings of those that were tried before them. In the Seventh Persecution under Decius, 1there were standing before the Tribunal, certain of the Warriours or Knights, viz. Ammon, Zenon, Ptolomeus, Ingenuus, and a certain aged man called Theophilus, who all standing by as Spectators when a certain Christian was examined, and there seeing him for fear, ready to decline, and fall away, did almost burst for sorrow within themselves; they made signs to him with their hands, and all gestures of the body to be constant; this being noted be all the standers by, they were ready to lay hold upon them; but they preventing the matter, pressed up of their own accord, before the bench of the Judge, professing themselves to be Christians, insomuch that both the President and the Benchers were all astonished, and the Christians which were judged, the more encouraged. Such damping spectacles the Christians of former ages had frequently set them before them.
- 1Anno 250.
