5
How then can one fail to confess the sovereignty of right reason over emotion in those who were not turned back by fiery agonies?
6
For just as towers jutting out over harbors hold back the threatening waves and make it calm for those who sail into the inner basin,
7
so the seven-towered right reason of the youths, by fortifying the harbor of religion, conquered the tempest of the emotions.
8
For they constituted a holy chorus of religion and encouraged one another, saying,
9
"Brothers, let us die like brothers for the sake of the law; let us imitate the three youths in Assyria who despised the same ordeal of the furnace.
Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1952 [2nd edition, 1971] by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.