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THE OLD TESTAMENT
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against the King. Now the King had a garden: and the blind man called out from a distance to the lame man and said, "How much would the breaking of our bread have been (What would have been the extra cost of entertaining us) with the multitudes that are invited to the merry-making? Come then, and as he hath done to us, let us requite him." The other asked, "In what way?" and he said, "Let us go into his garden and destroy the things there." But he said, "And how can I, who am lame and cannot walk?" and the blind man said, "What can I myself do, who cannot see whither I am going? but let us devise means." (Then the lame man) plucked the grass that was near him and plaited a rope and threw it to the blind man and said, "Catch hold of it and come along the rope hither to me." And when he had done as he was told and was come to the place, the lame man said, "Come, be feet to me and carry me, and I will be eyes to thee from above and guide thee to the right hand and the left." And so they did, and went down to the garden. Then, for the rest, whether they spoiled it or not, at all events their tracks were to be seen in the garden. And when the feasters dispersed from the marriage, they went into the garden and were enraged at finding the tracks there, and reported it to the King, saying, "We are all soldiers in thy kingdom, and there is no paganus. Whence, then, are the track of pagani in the garden?" And he marvelled. And as the parable—that of the apocryphal book, I mean—puts it, it applies to a man, but God is not ignorant of anything. But the story says that the King sent for the lame and the blind man, and asked the blind man, "Didst thou go down into the garden?" And he said, "Alas, Lord! thou seest our infirmity: thou knowest that I cannot see where I walk." Then he came to the lame man and asked him, "Didst thou go down into my garden?" and he answered and said, "O Lord, wouldest thou afflict my soul in respect of my infirmity?" And then the judgment was at a standstill. What, then, does the just judge do? Having