a more extended arena, and a longer racecourse, that thou mightest the more carefully observe his combatant.  A combatant he was indeed, contending not against a man, but against the force of nature.  What language can describe his fortitude?  He brought forward his son, bound him, placed him on the wood, seized the sacrificial knife, was just on the point of dealing the stroke.  In what manner to express myself properly, I know not; he only would know, who did these things.  For no language can describe how it happened that his hand did not become torpid, that the strength of his nerves did not relax, that the affecting sight of his son did not overpower him.

It is proper here, too, to admire Isaac.  For as the one obeyed God, so did the other obey his father; and as the one, at God’s bidding him to sacrifice, did not demand an account of the matter, so the other, when his father was binding him and leading him to the altar, did not say, “Why art thou doing this?”—­but surrendered himself to his father’s hand.  And then was to be seen a man uniting in his own person the father and the sacrificing priest; and a sacrifice offered without blood, a whole burnt offering without fire, an altar representing a type of death and the resurrection.  For he both sacrificed his son and he did not sacrifice him.  He did not sacrifice him with his hand, but in his purpose.  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.