^ Within the first three hundred years after Christ, all that made a profession of the apostles' doctrine were cruelly murdered.
" Non potest qui pati timet, ejus esse qui passiis est — He that is afraid to suffer, can- not be his disciple who suffered so much. — TerluUian.
HeB. XII. 14.] AND BEAUTY OF HOLINESS. 263
way to heaven but by the gates of hell, there is no way to a glorious exaltation but through a sea of tribulation. i They do but dream and deceive their own souls who think to go to heaven upon beds of down, or in a soft and delicate way, or that think to be attended to glory with mirth and music, or with singing or dancing. The way to happi- ness is not strewed with roses, but full of thorns and briers, as those of whom this world was not worthy have experienced. Ecclesiastical histories tells us that all the apostles died violent deaths. Peter was crucified with his heels upward — Christ was crucified with his head up- wards, but Peter thought this was too great an honour for him to be crucified as his Lord, and therefore he chose to be crucified with his heels upward ; and Andrew was crucified by Egeus king of Edessa ; and James the son of Zebedee was slain by Herod with the sword. Acts xii. 2 ; and Philip was crucified at Hierapolis in Asia ; and while Bartholomew was preaching the glad tidings of salvation, multitudes fell upon him and beat him down with staves, and then crucified him, and after all this, his skin was flayed off, and he beheaded ; Thomas was slain with a dart at Calumina in India ; 2 and Matthew was slain with a spear, say some, others say he was run through with a sword ; and James the son of Alpheus, who was called the Just, was thrown down from off a pinnacle of the temple, and yet having some life left in him, he was brained with a fuller's club ; Lebbeus was slain by Agbarus king of Edessa ; and Paul was beheaded at Kome under Nero ; and Simon the Canaanite was crucified in Egypt, say some, others say that he and Jude was slain in a tumult of the people ; and Matthias was stoned to death ; and John was banished into Patmos, Kev. i. 9, and afterwards, as some histories tells us, he was by that cruel tyrant Domitian cast into a tun of scalding lead, and yet delivered by a miracle. Thus all these precious servants of God, except John, died violent deaths, and so through sufferings entered into glory ; they found in their own ex- perience the truth of what Christ had foretold concerning their suffer- ings and persecutions. About the year 1626, a book formerly printed, and intituled, A Preparation to the Cross of Christ, composed by John Frith, martyr, was brought in the belly of a fish to the market in Cam- bridge, and that a little before the commencement-time ; when there was a confluence of much people from all places of the land, which was construed by them that feared the Lord to be no less than a heavenly warning to all the people of England to prepare for the cross. 3 But, ah, since that year, who can recount the heavy crosses that has generally attended the people of this nation ? Most have walked cross to God, and cross to one another, and God has walked as cross to them. You have crossed the commands of God, and the truths of God, and the ways of God, and the works of God, and the designs of God, and God has crossed you in your hopes, desires, prayers, and endeavours, and God gave you warning of this beforehand by a fish, by a miracle, to provide for the cross, but you would not, and therefore it is that the cross lies so heavy upon you this day. When Mr
^ Loddela Corda computeth forty-four several kinds of torments wherewith the pri- mitive Christians were tried. — Adv. Sacr. cap. 128. [Query — Maurice de la Corde, the Huguenot scholar and physician ? — G.]
" Sic ; cf . Butler's ' Lives of the Saints.' Dec. 21.— G.
> Mr Jer. Dyke, in a Fast Sermon at Westminster.
264 THE NECESSITY, EXCELLENCY, RARITY, [HeB. XII. 14.