For God gave the command, not through desire to see the flowing
of the blood, but to give you a specimen of steady purpose, to make
known throughout the world this worthy man, and to instruct all in
coming time that it is necessary to prefer the command of God before
children and nature, before all things, and even life itself. And so
Abraham descended from the Mount, bringing alive the martyr Isaac. How
can we be pardoned then, tell me, or what apology can we have, if we see
that noble man obeying God with so much promptness and submitting to Him
in all things, and yet we murmur at His dispensations? Tell me not of
grief, nor of the intolerable nature of your calamity; rather consider
how in the midst of bitter sorrow you may yet rise superior to it. That
which was commanded to Abraham was enough to stagger his reason, to
throw him into perplexity, and to undermine his faith in the past. For
who would not have then thought that the promise which had been made him
of a numerous posterity was all a deception? But not so Abraham. And not
less ought we to admire Job's wisdom in calamity; and particularly, that
after so much virtue, after his alms and various acts of kindness to
men, and tho aware of no wrong either in himself or his children, yet
experiencing so much affliction, affliction so singular, such as had
never happened even to the most desperately wicked, still he was not
affected by it as most men would have been, nor did he regard his virtue
as profitless, nor form any ill-advised opinion concerning the past.
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