Resolution 10

Resolved, when I feel pain, to think of the pains of martyrdom, and of hell.

I think that we would probably refer to this today as "keeping things in perspective." Edwards understood that the pain he felt was probably nothing in comparison to the pain the martyrs felt. For example, John Huss, as accounted in Foxe's Book of Martyrs:

Then was the fire kindled, and John Huss began to sing with a loud voice: "Jesus Christ! the Son of the living God! have mercy upon me." And when he began to say the same the third time, the wind drove the flame so upon his face, that it choked him. Yet, notwithstanding, he moved awhile after, by the space that a man might almost say three times the Lord's Prayer. When all the wood was consumed, the upper part of the body was left hanging in the chain, which they threw down stake and all, and making a new fire, burned it, the head being first cut in small gobbets, that it might the sooner consumed unto ashes. The heart, which was found amongst the bowels, being well beaten with staves and clubs, was at last prick upon a sharp stick, and roasted at a fire apart until it was consumed. Then, they cast them into the river Rhine, that the least remnant of that man should not be left upon the earth, whose memory, notwithstanding, cannot be abolished out of the minds of the godly, neigther by fire, neither by water, neither by any kind of torment.

This godly servant and martyr of Christ was burned at Constance, the sixth day of the month of July, A.D. 1415.

Edwards also knew that the temporary pain he felt here on Earth could be nothing in comparison to an eternity bearing the wrath of God.

To remember the martyrs and the torments of hell, when taken to its conclusion, will lead us back to the Cross of Christ and the knowledge that we have been freed from all pain and suffering. And that brings us joy.