4 Maccabees 7

1 Like the best of pilots, the reason of our father Eleazar steered the ship of devoutness through the open sea of the passions, 2 and though it was battered by the ruler’s threats and swamped under wave after wave of tortures, 3 it never once turned the tiller of devoutness aside, until it sailed into the harbor of immortal victory.

4 No city under siege ever held out against so many and such varied engines as that man did, holy through and through. His holy soul was set on fire with beatings and rackings, and still he beat the men besieging him, because reason held its shield over his devoutness. 5 Father Eleazar put out his own mind like a headland dropping sheer into the sea, and broke the maddened surf of the passions all around it.

6 Priest worthy of the priesthood! You did not defile your holy teeth. You did not make common with defiled food the belly that had room for reverence for God and for cleanness. [a] 7 You sounded in tune with the law; you were a philosopher of the divine life! 8 This is what men must be who do the work of the law with their own blood and with noble sweat, holding a shield over it through sufferings that go as far as death. 9 Father, by everything you endured you made our good order under the law sure and gave it glory; you spoke of our holiness with dignity and did not pull it down; and by your deeds you made the words of your divine philosophy trustworthy.

10 Eleazar — old man stronger than tortures, elder tougher than fire, greatest king over the passions! 11 For as father Aaron, armed with a censer, ran through the crowd of the people and beat the fire-bringing messenger, [b] 12 so Eleazar, of Aaron’s line, melting away in the fire, never turned his reason aside.

13 And here is the most astonishing thing. He was an old man. The strength of his body was already loosened, his flesh hung slack, his sinews were worn through — and he grew young again 14 in spirit, by reason; and with the reason of Isaac he made the many-headed rack count for nothing. 15 Blessed old age! Gray head worth honoring! Life lived by the law, which the faithful seal of death made complete!

16 If, then, an old man thought nothing of tortures that went as far as death, and did it for devoutness, then devout reason is leader of the passions, and no one can argue against it. 17 Someone might say, “Not everyone masters the passions, because not everyone has reason with good sense in it.”

18 But all who take thought for devoutness with their whole heart — they alone can master the passions of the flesh, 19 because they trust that to God they do not die, any more than our forefathers Abraham and Isaac and Jacob died to him, but they live to God. 20 So it is no argument against this that some are plainly mastered by their passions because their reason is weak.

21 For who is there who lives by philosophy under its whole standard, and trusts God, 22 and knows that it is a blessed thing to endure every hardship for the sake of virtue, and would not master the passions out of reverence for God? 23 For only the man who is wise and brave is master of the passions. [d]