The martyrs' bold reply and the ruler's freezing sentence

He held out to them blows, and deaths, and the trial of incurable punishments. And what did the martyrs do in response? “Why do you bait us, fighter against God,” they said, “to abandon the living God and serve destructive demons by offering us your goods? Why do you give as much as you are eager to take away? I hate a gift that procures loss. I do not accept honor that is the mother of dishonor. You give money that remains behind, glory that fades. You make us known to the emperor, but you alienate us from the true King. Why do you offer us the little things of the world in such a stingy way? We have despised the whole world. The things that are seen are not worth the hope we long for. Do you see this heaven, how beautiful to see, and how great? And the earth, how vast? And the wonders in it? None of these equals the blessedness of the righteous. For these things pass away, but what is ours remains. I long for one gift: the crown of righteousness (2 Timothy 4:8). I am in a flutter about one glory: the glory in the kingdom of heaven. I am ambitious for the honor above. I fear the punishment in hell. That fire is fearful to me, but the fire threatened by you is a fellow-servant. It knows how to show reverence to those who despise idols. I count your blows as arrows of infants. For you strike the body; if it holds out longer, it is crowned more brightly, but if it gives up sooner, it departs, freed from such violent judges—you who, having received the service of bodies, still strive to rule over souls as well. And even though you are not preferred to our God, you are angry, as if you had been grossly insulted by us, and you hold out these fearful punishments, bringing against us the charge of devotion. But indeed you will not encounter cowardly men, nor life-loving men, nor easily terrified men, when it comes to love for God. We are ready to be racked, and tortured, and burned, and to accept every kind of torment. When that arrogant barbarian heard these things, he could not bear the men’s boldness. Boiling over with rage, he considered what device he might devise to make their death both long and bitter at the same time. He found a plan—and see how cruel it was. He examined the nature of the region, that it was freezing, and the season of the year, that it was winter. He watched for a night when the cold was at its worst, and when the north wind was blowing upon it. Then he commanded them all to be stripped naked and to die freezing under the open sky in the middle of the city. You all know, who have experienced winter, how unbearable this kind of torture is. It is not possible to describe it to others except to those who already have examples of what is said from their own experience. For a body that has fallen into cold is first all livid, as the blood freezes. Then it shudders and seethes, teeth chattering, fibers convulsing, and the whole mass involuntarily contracting. A sharp pain and unspeakable suffering reaches to the very marrow, and makes the sensation most distressing for those who are freezing. Then the extremities are destroyed, as if by fire, as the ends burn. For the heat is driven away from the extremities of the body and flees together to the depths. It leaves dead the parts from which it has departed, and gives pain to the parts into which it is crowded, as death approaches little by little through the freezing.