ANTHONY: This is well said, cousin, but yet could he not escape
you so. For the dispensation of God's common precept, which
dispensation he must say that he hath by his private revelation,
is a thing of such sort as showeth itself naught and false. For it
never hath any example like, since the world began until now, that
ever man hath read or heard of, among faithful people commended.
First, as for Abraham, concerning the death of his son: God
intended it not, but only tempted the towardness of the father's
obedience. As for Sampson, all men make not the matter very sure
whether he be saved or not, but yet therein some matter and cause
appeareth. For the Philistines being enemies of God and using
Sampson for their mocking-stock in scorn of God, it is well likely
that God gave him the mind to bestow his own life upon the
revenging of the displeasure that those blasphemous Philistines
did unto God. And that appeareth clear enough by this: that though
his strength failed him when he lacked his hair, yet had he not,
it seemeth, that strength evermore at hand while he had his hair,
but only at such times as it pleased God to give it to him. This
thing appeareth by these words, that the scripture in some place
of that matter saith, "The power or might of God rushed into
Sampson.
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