The words too of a famous teacher like Cyprian, who himself in the end suffered martyrdom, were treasured up. Some of them are contained in the Vision of S. Flavian before he suffered: "I saw in a dream the martyr Bishop of Carthage, and I said to him: 'Cyprian, is the death stroke very agonizing?' He replied: 'When the soul is in a state of heavenly rapture the suffering flesh is no longer ours; the body is quite insensible to pain when the spirit is with God."
This conception of the insensibility to pain on the part of the martyr was a very general one. Tertullian repeats it almost in identical words. S. Felicitas, quoted in the Passion of S. Perpetua above referred to, said: "When I am in the amphitheatre the Lord will be there and will suffer for me."
S. Perpetua in the same well-known "Passion," after having been tossed and gored by a wild and maddened beast, woke up from the ecstacy into which she had been plunged and asked the official standing near her when she was to be exposed to the infuriated animal. S. Blandina in another cruel scene of martyrdom was equally insensible to pain—her soul was far away speaking with or praying to the Lord.
But of all the various "Manuals of Martyrdom" which were put into the hands of those who desired to receive a special training against the day of trial, none seemed to have been efficacious, easy of comprehension, persuasive—like the words of S. Matthew's Gospel. These were evidently committed to memory and murmured again and again in the sore hour of trial.
Such sayings as these—they were the Lord's own words, the sufferer knew: "Blessed are they that are persecuted for righteousness' sake; for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." "How[1] strait is the gate and narrow is the way which leadeth unto life." "Fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul; but rather fear Him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell."
"Whosoever, therefore, shall confess Me before men, him
- ↑ A very ancient and probably an authoritative reading. When in the text the language of didactic calmness passes suddenly into the language of emotion: "How strait is the gate," etc.—S. Matt. vii. 13, 14.
