It is also established by experience that, when a strong habit is formed, the mere decisions of the will are not sufficient for an immediate remedy. In this life, it requires a period of long and painful efforts of the will to rectify an established habit. Every human being is conscious how difficult it is to force the mental and bodily faculties to obey its decisions when contrary to the stream of a long-indulged habit. There are few who have not either experienced or witnessed the anguish of spirit that has followed the violations of solemn resolutions, those firmest decisions of the will, in the contest between habit and conscience. Another principle of mind is this, that when selfishness and crime have been long indulged, the natural constitution of mind seems changed, so that inflicting evil on others is sought as an enjoyment. In illustration of this, it is related of Antiochus Epiphanes that, in his wars with the Jews, after all opposition had ceased, and all danger and cause of fear was removed, he destroyed thousands for the mere pleasure of seeing them butchered. An anecdote is related of him, too horrible to record in all its particulars, where he sat and feasted his eyes on the sufferings of a mother and her seven sons, when the parent was doomed to witness the infliction of the most excruciating and protracted tortures on each of her seven children, and then was tortured to death herself. It is recorded of Mustapha, one of the Turkish sultans, that by honorable capitulations he gained the person of a brave Venetian commander called Bragadino, who was defending his country from the cruelty of invaders. After having promised him honorable protection, he ordered him, bound hand and foot, to behold the massacre of his soldiers, then caused his person to be cut and mutilated in the most horrible manner, and then taunted him as a worshiper of Christ, who could not save his servants. When recovered of his wounds, he obliged him to carry loaded buckets of earth before the army, and kiss the ground whenever he passed his barbarous tormentor. He then had him hung in a cage, to be tormented by his own soldiers, who were chained as galley-slaves, that they might be agonized by the indignities and sufferings of their venerated commander. After the most protracted sufferings and indignities in the public place, at the sound of music he was flayed alive. The history of some of the Roman emperors, even of some who, in early childhood and youth, were gentle, amiable, and kind, presents the same horrible picture. Nero set fire to Rome, and dressed the Christians in garments of flaming pitch, to run about his garden for his amusement. Tiberius tormented his subjects, and murdered them in cruel pangs, to gratify his love of suffering, while Caligula butchered his people for amusement with his own hand.