1 Blessed therefore and noble are all the martyrdoms which have taken place according to the will of God (for it behoveth us to be very scrupulous and to assign to God the power over all things). (MPO) 2 For who could fail to admire their nobleness and patient endurance and loyalty to the Master? seeing that when they were so torn by lashes that the mechanism of their flesh was visible even as far as the inward veins and arteries, they endured patiently, so that the very bystanders had pity and wept; while they themselves reached such a pitch of bravery that none of them uttered a cry or a groan, thus showing to us all that at that hour the martyrs of Christ being tortured were absent from the flesh, or rather that the Lord was standing by and conversing with them. (MPO)
Martyrdom of Polycarp 2:1–2
Semantically similar passages
4 Maccabees 18:2–4
2 knowing that religious reasoning is lord of the emotions, and those not only inward but outward. (WEB) 3 Therefore those people who gave up their bodies to pains for the sake of religion were not only admired by men, but were deemed worthy of a divine portion. (WEB) 4 The nati… (WEB)
4 Maccabees 1:10–12
10 For their virtues, then, it is right that I should commend those men who died with their mother at this time on behalf of nobility and goodness; and for their honors, I may count them blessed. (WEB) 11 For they, winning admiration not only from men in general, but even… (WEB)
4 Maccabees 17:9–11
9 “Here an aged priest, an aged woman, and seven sons, are buried through the violence of a tyrant, who wished to destroy the society of the Hebrews. (WEB) 10 These also avenged their nation, looking to God, and enduring torments to death.” (WEB) 11 For it was truly a divine conte… (WEB)
Martyrdom of Polycarp 17:2–3
2 So he put forward Nicetes, the father of Herod and brother of Alce, to plead with the magistrate not to give up his body, 'lest,' so it was said, 'they should abandon the crucified one and begin to worship this man'--this being done at the instigation and urg… (MPO)
4 Maccabees 12:13–15
13 Weren’t you ashamed, man as you are, yet most savage, to cut out the tongues of men of like feeling and origin, and having thus abused to torture them? (WEB) 14 But they, bravely dying, fulfilled their religion toward God. (WEB) 15 But you will groan as you deserve for having sl… (WEB)
2 Maccabees 6:29–31
29 When they changed the good will they bore toward him a little before into ill will because these words of his were, as they thought, sheer madness, (WEB) 30 and when he was at the point to die with the blows, he groaned aloud and said, “To the Lord, who has the holy kn… (WEB)
1 Clement 6:1–2
1 Unto these men of holy lives was gathered a vast multitude of the elect, who through many indignities and tortures, being the victims of jealousy, set a brave example among ourselves. (1CL) 2 By reason of jealousy women being persecuted, after that they had suffered c… (1CL)
Book of Enoch 108:7–9
7 For some of them are written and inscribed above in the heaven, in order that the angels may read them and know that which shall befall the sinners, and the spirits of the humble, and of those who have afflicted their bodies, and been recompensed by God; and… (ENO) 8 … (ENO)
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