1Since, then, the seven brothers despised sufferings even unto death, everyone must concede that pious reason is sovereign over the passions.
2For if they had been slaves to their passions and had eaten defiling food, we would say that they had been conquered by these passions.
3But in fact it was not so. Instead, by reason, which is praised before God, they prevailed over their passions.
4The supremacy of the mind over these cannot be overlooked, for the brothers mastered both passions and pains.
5 of the furnace.
10Let us not be cowardly in the demonstration of our piety.”
11While one said, “Courage, brother,” another said, “Bear up nobly,”
12 and let us use our bodies as a bulwark for the law.
14Let us not fear him who thinks he is killing us,
15 Abraham and Isaac and Jacob will welcome us, and all the fathers will praise us.”
18Those who were left behind said to each of the brothers who were being dragged away, “Do not put us to shame, brother, or betray the brothers who have died before us.”
19 2 Macc 7.22 You are not ignorant of the affection of family ties, which the divine and all-wise Providence has bequeathed through the fathers to their descendants and which was implanted in the mother’s womb.
20There the brothers spent the same length of time and were shaped during the same period of time, and growing from the same blood and through the same life, they were brought to the light of day.
21When they were born after an equal time of gestation, they drank milk from the same fountains. From such embraces brotherly loving souls are nourished,
22and they grow stronger from this common nurture and daily companionship and from both general education and our discipline in the law of God.
23Therefore, when sympathy and brotherly affection had been so established, the seven brothers were the more sympathetic to one another.
24Since they had been educated by the same law and trained in the same virtues and brought up together in right living, they loved one another all the more.
25A common zeal for nobility strengthened their goodwill toward one another and their concord,
26because they could make their brotherly love more fervent with the aid of piety.
27But although nature and companionship and virtuous habits had augmented the affection of family ties, those who were left endured for the sake of piety, watching their brothers being maltreated and tortured to death.
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