Others, as in a furnace tried,

With strength of passive grace endued,

Tortures and deaths, through faith, defied;

Through faith resisted unto blood.

Earth they beheld with generous scorn,

On all its proffer’d goods look’d down;

High on a fiery chariot borne,

They lost their life to keep their crown.

Secure a better life to find,

The path of varied death they trod,

Their souls triumphantly resign’d,

And died into the arms of God.

The prelude of contempt they found,

A spectacle to fiends and men;

Cruelly mock’d, and scourged, and bound,

Till death shut up the bloody scene.

Or stoned, they glorified their Lord;

Or joy’d, asunder sawn, to expire;

Or rush’d to meet the slaughtering sword;

Or triumph’d in the torturing fire.