PHIL. IUD. DE ABRAHAMO. §. 13. 14. 17

§. 13. Let these things be said in common about the three as a necessary preface. Next, we must speak of what each contributed individually, beginning with the first. He, therefore, having become a zealot for eusebeia piety, the highest and greatest of virtues, was eager to follow God and to be obedient to the commands given by Him. He considered the commands to be not only those signaled to him through voice and deeds, but also those declared through nature by clearer signs, which the most truthful of the senses the intellect grasps before the sense of hearing, which is untrustworthy and uncertain. For one who observes the order in nature and the constitution government which the world employs—a constitution greater than any speech—is taught, while nothing is spoken, to practice a lawful and peaceful life, looking toward the assimilation of good things. The most evident proofs of piety are those which the scriptures contain. And one must speak of the first, which is also placed first.

§. 14. Having been struck by a divine utterance or oracle to leave his fatherland, his kinship, and his father's house and to migrate—as if returning from a foreign land to his own, rather than intending to depart from his own to a foreign one—he made haste, thinking that to finish what was commanded quickly is of equal value to completing it. And yet, who else is likely to have become so unwavering and unturnable as not to be swayed and succumb to the allurements of kinsmen and fatherland? The longing for these has been, in a way, born and grown with everyone, and is ingrained more, or at least no less, than one's own united parts. Witnesses to this are the legislators who have established the secondary punishment of death against those caught in the greatest crimes: exile. It is not secondary, as it seems to me in the eyes of true justice, but much more grievous, if indeed death is the end of misfortunes, but exile is the beginning—not the end—of newer calamities, instead of one that is free from pains, bringing ten thousand deaths with perception.