Chapter XLIX.—God’s Precepts Despised.

“If,” said the old man, “even the righteous are tormented on account of the iniquities of others, God ought, as foreseeing this, to have commanded men not to do those things from which it should be necessary that the righteous be afflicted with the unrighteous; or if they did them, He ought to have applied some correction or purification to the world.”⁸²³⁸²³    This rendering is according to a marginal reading.  “God,” said Aquila, “did so command, and gave precepts by the prophets how men ought to live; but even these precepts they despised:  yea, if any desired to observe them, them they afflicted with various injuries, until they drove them from their purposed observance, and turned them to the rabble of infidelity, and made them like unto themselves.