And this also is written among the hortatory precepts, for, says Moses, "Ye shall turn unto the Lord your God, and shall find him, when ye seek him with all your heart, and with all your soul." Deuteronomy iv. 29.

Having now spoken at sufficient length on this point also, let us proceed in regular order to consider the third head of our subject, in which the seeking existed, but the finding did not follow it. At all events Laban, who examined the entire spiritual house of the practiser of virtue, "did not," as Moses says, "find the images," Genesis xxxi. 33. for it was full of real things, and not of dreams and vain fantasies.

Nor did the inhabitants of Sodom, blind in their minds, who were insanely eager to defile the holy and unpolluted reasonings, "find the road which led to this" Genesis xix. 11. object; but, as the sacred scriptures tell us, they were wearied with their exertions to find the door, although they ran in a circle all round the house, and left no stone unturned for the accomplishment of their unnatural and impious desires.