PHILO JUDÆUS.

As they urged these arguments to the king, he retreated to the neighboring country of Arabia, where it was safe to abide. He entreated God that He would deliver his countrymen from inextricable calamities, and would worthily punish their oppressors who omitted no circumstance of insolence and tyranny, and would double his joy by allowing him to behold the accomplishment of both these prayers. And God heard his prayers, looking favorably on his disposition, which was so devoted to what is good and so hostile to what is evil. Not long after, He pronounced His decision upon the affairs of that land as became a God. But while He was preparing to display the decision He was about to pronounce, Moses was devoting himself to all the labors of virtue. He had a teacher within himself—virtuous reason—by whom he had been trained to the most virtuous pursuits of life. He had learned to apply himself to the contemplation and practice of virtue and to the continual study of the doctrines of philosophy, which he easily and thoroughly comprehended in his soul and committed to memory in such a manner as never to forget them. Moreover, he made all his own actions, which were intrinsically praiseworthy, harmonize with them, desiring not to seem wise and good, but in truth and reality to be so, because he made the right reason of nature his only aim; which is, in fact, the only first principle and fountain of all the virtues.

Anyone else, perhaps, fleeing from the implacable fury of the king, and coming now for the first time into a foreign land, would have been desirous to enjoy tranquility and to live in obscurity, escaping the notice of men in general, since he had not yet associated with or learned the customs of the natives and did not know with any accuracy the objects in which they delighted or which they regarded with aversion. Or, if he had wished to come forward in public, he would have endeavored by all means to propitiate the powerful men and those in the highest authority in the country by constant attentions, as men from whom some advantage or assistance might be expected if any pursuers should come after him and endeavor to drag him away by force. But this man proceeded by the path that was the exact opposite of that which was the probable one for him to take, following the healthy impulses of his soul, and not allowing any one of them to be impeded in its progress. On which account, at times, with the fervor of