[175] Thus so profitable a thing is affliction of one sort, that even its most humiliating form, slavery, is reckoned a great blessing. Such slavery we read of in the holy scriptures as invoked by a father on his son, by the most excellent Isaac on the foolish Esau. There is a place where he says,
[176] “Thou shalt live on thy sword and shalt be a slave to thy brother” (Gen. 27:40). He judges it most profitable for him who chooses war instead of peace, who by reason of his inward tumult and rebellion is armed as it were with the weapons of war, that he should become a subject and a slave and obey all the orders that the lover of self-control may impose.
[177] Therefore, I think, did one of Moses’ disciples, who is named a man of peace, which is in our ancestral tongue Solomon, say as follows: “My son, despise not the discipline of God, nor faint when thou art rebuked by Him, for whom the Lord loveth He rebukes and scourges every son whom He receiveth” (Prov. 3:11, 12). So we see that reproaching and admonition are counted so excellent a thing, that they turn our acknowledgment of God into kinship with Him, for what relation can be closer than that of a father to a son, or a son to a father?
[178] But lest the series of argument following argument should seem tedious and prolix, I will add but one proof, and that the clearest, to those here given, to shew that affliction or ill-usage of a kind is a work of virtue. There is a law in the following terms: “Ye shall not evil-entreat any widow or orphan, but if ye evil-entreat them with evil” (Ex. 22:22). What does he mean? Is it that one can be evil-entreated by some other thing than evil? For if evil-treatments are the work of evil and nothing else, it is superfluous to add what is a matter of agreement and will be admitted even without any further words.
[179] No doubt he means to say, “I know that one may be rebuked by virtue and disciplined by wisdom, and therefore I do not hold all afflicting or evil-entreating to be blameworthy.” When it is the work of justice and the power of the law which chastens by reproof I am filled with admiration. When it is the work of folly and vice and therefore harmful, I turn away from it and call it by the evil names that are its due.
[180] When, then, you hear of Hagar as afflicted or evil-entreated by Sarah, do not suppose that you have here one of the usual accompaniments of women’s jealousy. It is not women that are spoken of here; it is minds—on the one hand the mind which exercises itself in the preliminary learning, on the other, the mind which strives to win the palm of virtue and ceases not till it is won.