That greatest father of the patriarchs of old (Gen. xxii), who, being commanded to offer his son to be sacrificed, manfully took it upon himself—holding that a man could not resist the divine majesty, and that a command of parricide did not befit the divine goodness. And yet, though he was ignorant of the outcome of the mystery, he laid his son upon the altar as though to slay him: holding one thing most surely, that if it had pleased God to keep an irrevocable sentence upon this victim, what obedience had committed would be no murder, but a sacrifice.