Chapter Simple to Sinner Saved of S by Brewer's Readers Handbook

others, and twisted the cords till the pain went to the brains; others they kept in dungeons with adders and snakes. Some they tore in pieces by fastening them to two trees; and some they placed in a crucet house, i.e. a chest short and narrow, in which were spikes: the victims being forced into the chest, all their limbs were crushed and broken.”—Ingram: Saxon Chronicle.

Sinner Saved (A). Cyra daughter of Proterius of Cappadocia was on the point of taking the veil with Emmelia’s sisterhood, but just before the day of renunciation, Eleemon, her father’s freed slave, who loved her, sold himself to the devil, on condition of obtaining her for his wife. Eleemon signed the bond with a drop of his heart’s blood, and carried about with him a little red spot on his breast, as a perpetual reminder of the compact. The devil now sent a dream to Cyra, and another to her father, which caused them to change their plans; and on the very day that Cyra was to have taken the veil, she was given by St. Basil in marriage to Eleemon, with whom she lived happily for many years, and had a large family. One night, while her husband was asleep, Cyra saw the blood-red spot; she knew what it meant, and next day Eleemon told her the whole story. Cyra now bestirred herself to annul the compact, and went with her husband to St. Basil, to whom a free and full confession was made. Eleemon was shut up for a night in a cell, and Satan would have carried him off, but he clung to the foot of a crucifix. Next day, Satan met St. Basil in the cathedral, and demanded his bond. St. Basil assured him the bond was illegal and invalid. The devil was foiled, the red mark vanished from the skin of Eleemon, a sinner was saved, and St. Basil came off victorious.—Amphilochius: Life of St. Basil. (See Rosweyde: Vitœ Patrum, 156–8.)

(Southey has converted this legend into a ballad of nine lays, 1829.)

Theophilus signed away his body and soul, but repented, and the Virgin Mary snatched him from perdition in the nick of time.

The Sinner Saved. So William Huntingdon signed himself (1744–1813). The Rev. J. Newton (1725–1807), of Olney and St. Mary Woolnoth, is also said to have done the same.