Different Effects of Suffering on Heathens and Christians.

Chapter XI.—Different Effects of Suffering on Heathens and Christians.

Peter, hearing this, shed tears of sympathy, and said to his friends who were present:  “If any man who is a worshipper of God had endured what this man’s father has endured, immediately men would assign his religion as the cause of his calamities; but when these things happen to miserable Gentiles, they charge their misfortunes upon fate.  I call them miserable, because they are both vexed with errors here, and are deprived of future hope; whereas, when the worshippers of God suffer these things, their patient endurance of them contributes to their cleansing from sin.”