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4 Maccabees 7
4 Maccabees 7
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1
The reasoning of our father Eleazar, like a first-rate pilot, steering the vessel of piety in the sea of emotions,
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and flouted by the threats of the tyrant, and overwhelmed with the breakers of torture,
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in no way shifted the rudder of piety until it sailed into the harbor of victory over death.
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No beseiged city has ever held out against many and various war machines as that holy man did when his pious soul was tried with the fiery trial of tortures and rackings and moved his besiegers through the religious reasoning that shielded him.
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For father Eleazar, projecting his disposition, broke the raging waves of the emotions as with a jutting cliff.
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O priest worthy of the priesthood! You didn’t pollute your sacred teeth, nor make your appetite, which had always embraced the clean and lawful, a partaker of profanity.
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O harmonizer with the law, and sage devoted to a divine life!
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Of such a character ought those to be who perform the duties of the law at the risk of their own blood, and defend it with generous sweat by sufferings even to death.
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You, father, have gloriously established our right government by your endurance; and making of much account our past service, prevented its destruction, and by your deeds, have made credible the words of philosophy.
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O aged man of more power than tortures, elder more vigorous than fire, greatest king over the emotions, Eleazar!
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For as father Aaron, armed with a censer, hastening through the consuming fire, vanquished the flame-bearing angel,
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so, Eleazar, the descendant of Aaron, wasted away by the fire, didn’t give up his reasoning.
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What is most wonderful is that though he was an old man, though the labors of his body were now spent, his muscles were relaxed, and his sinews worn out, he recovered youth.
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By the spirit of reasoning, and the reasoning of Isaac, he rendered powerless the many-headed rack.
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O blessed old age, and reverend hoar head, and life obedient to the law, which the faithful seal of death perfected.
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If, then, an old man, through religion, despised tortures even to death, then certainly religious reasoning is ruler of the emotions.
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But perhaps some might say, “It is not all who conquer emotions, as not all possess wise reasoning.”
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But those who have meditated upon religion with their whole heart, these alone can master the emotions of the flesh:
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they who believe that to God they don’t die; for, as our forefathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, they live to God.
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This circumstance, then, is by no means an objection, that some who have weak reasoning are governed by their emotions,
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since what person, walking religiously by the whole rule of philosophy, and believing in God,
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and knowing that it is a blessed thing to endure all kinds of hardships for virtue, would not, for the sake of religion, master his emotion?
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For only the wise and brave man is lord over his emotions.
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This is why even boys, trained with the philosophy of religious reasoning, have conquered still more bitter tortures;
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for when the tyrant was manifestly vanquished in his first attempt, in being unable to force the old man to eat the unclean thing,
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