spoken

And Balchîrâ said to Isaiah: 'Say: "I have lied in all that I have spoken, and likewise the ways of Manasseh are good and right.

And he said unto me: 'Hast thou rejoiced because I have spoken courteously to thee?' And he said: 'And thou wilt see how a greater also than I am will speak courteously and peaceably with thee.'

These things Isaiah saw and told unto all that stood before him, and they praised. And he spake to Hezekiah the King and said: 'I have spoken these things.'

The king bestowed praise on the man and said to another--'Since you are the tenth to answer, when you have spoken, we will devote ourselves to the banquet.' And then he put the question, how can I avoid doing anything unworthy of myself?

The king said that he had spoken well and then asked another, how he could be patriotic?

And he replied, 'By noticing carefully the speaker, the thing spoken, and the subject under discussion, and by putting the same questions again after an interval in different forms. But to possess an alert mind and to be able to form a sound judgement in every case is one of the good gifts of God, and you possess it, O King.'

The king said that this man, too, had spoken well, and asked the next, Whom ought we to appoint as governors?

The king, pleased with the words which had just been spoken, said to the ninth man, how ought a man to conduct himself at banquets?

For had not Reason possessed the power to restrain their anger he would not have spoken thus.

Thou, O father, didst fortify our fidelity to the Law through thy steadfastness unto glory; and having spoken in honour of holiness thou didst not belie thy speech, and didst confirm the words of divine philosophy by thy deeds, O aged man that wast more forceful than the tortures.

We now shudder when we hear of the suffering of those youths; but they, not only seeing it with their eyes, nor merely hearing the spoken, imminent threat, but actually feeling the pang, endured it through; and that in the torture by fire, than which what greater agony can be found?

For there is this also to consider, that had the woman been weak of spirit, despite her motherhood, she might have wept over them, and perchance spoken thus: