10 Ye know, beloved, ye know full well, the Holy Scriptures; and have thoroughly searched into the oracles of God: call them therefore to your remembrance.
11 For when Moses went up into the mount, and tarried there forty days and forty nights in fasting and humiliation; God said unto him, Arise, Moses, and get thee down quickly from hence, for thy people whom thou broughtest out of the land of Egypt, have committed wickedness: they have soon transgressed the way that I commanded them, and have made to themselves graven images.
12 And the Lord said unto him, I have spoken unto thee several times, saying, I have seen this people, and behold it is a stiff- necked people: let me therefore destroy them, and put out their name from under heaven. And I will make unto thee a great and a wonderful nation, that shall be much larger than this.
13 But Moses said, Not so, Lord: Forgive now this people their sin; or if thou wilt not, blot me also out of the book of the living. O admirable charity! O insuperable perfection! The servant speaks freely to his Lord: He beseeches him either to forgive the people, or to destroy him together with them.
14 Who is there among you that is generous? Who that is compassionate? Who that has any charity? Let him say, if this sedition, this contention, and these schisms, be upon my account, I am ready to depart; to go away whithersoever you please; and do whatsoever ye shall command me: Only let the flock of Christ be in peace, with the elders that are set over it.
15 He that shall do this, shall get to himself a very great honour in the Lord; and there is no place but what will be ready to receive him: For the earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof.
16 These things, they who have their conversation towards God not to be repented of, both have done, and will always be ready to do.
17 Nay and even the Gentiles themselves have given us examples of this kind.
18 For we read, How many kings and princes, in times of pestilence, being warned by their oracles, have given up themselves unto death; that by their own blood, they might deliver their country from destruction.
19 Others have forsaken their cities, so that they might put an end to the seditions of them.