Armatura Dei, or, A preparation for suffering in an evil day showing how Christians…Armatura Dei, or, A preparation for suffering in an evil day shewing how Christians…

3. Pious Sufferers do give an evident token to the Persecutor, that the wrath of God will come upon him. When the Emperor Commodus was worshipping Jupiter, Vincentius, Eusebius, Peregrinus, ¹and Potentianus, went about and exhorted the People, to depart from the Worship of Devils, and honour the One only true God, lest they perished with Commodus; and soon after they suffered Martyrdom for the same thing. Though all the Martyrs did not in words warn the Persecutors, that the Wrath of God would come upon them, yet they all by their patient Suffering gave them an evident token of it. St. Paul exhorts the Philippians to patient suffering upon this account; Stand fast, saith he, in one Spirit, with one mind, striving together for the Faith of the Gospel, and in nothing terrified by your adversaries, which is to them an evident token of Perdition, but to you of Salvation, and that of God, Phil. 1.27, 28. The Persecutor comes with his Torments and Engines of Cruelty, to terrify the Martyr, but the Martyr by his Christian Patience and Courage, gives the Persecutor and evident token, that the wrath of God will come down upon him at last: If bloody Persecutors, who look upon the suffering Martyrs, had but their Eyes open, they ⟨p. 140⟩would see cause enough to reflect upon themselves, and say, Surely these men have a patience more than humane, and therefore they suffer for God; and if so, we in persecuting them, fight against him, & may expect, that his wrath should come down upon us, as it hath upon former Persecutors. Herod Agrippa was eaten up of Worms; Nero with a trembling hand, cut his own throat; Trajan was thought to have poisoned himself; upon the Persecution in the time of Antoninus Verus, there followed Wars, Earthquakes, Inundations, Pestilences, as so many Tokens of Divine Vengeance; Decius was slain, together with his Children; Diocletian died of fearful and miserable Diseases; Julian in the Persian war was mortally wounded by an Arrow from Heaven, and threw up his blood thither with that horrible Blasphemy, Vicisti Galilaee; Valens in his war against the Goths, was wounded, and, flying into a Cottage, was burnt with it by the Enemy. The temporal Judgments, that have befallen former Persecutors, tell the after-ones what they may look for here in this World; or if they might escape here, eternal Vengeance will surely meet them hereafter.