In the soul it is boastfulness, love of money, thirst for honor, rivalry, and malice;

Thus, as soon as one adopts a way of life in accordance with the law, even though a lover of money, one is forced to act contrary to natural ways and to lend without interest to those who plead for assistance and to cancel the debt when the seventh year arrives.

It overrules love for one’s wife so that one rebukes her when she breaks the law.

It overrules love for children so that one punishes them for misdeeds.

Since they had been educated by the same law and trained in the same virtues and brought up together in right living, they loved one another all the more.

because they could make their brotherly love more fervent with the aid of piety.

Furthermore, they encouraged them to face the torture so that they not only despised their agonies but also mastered the passions of brotherly love.

Observe how complex is a mother’s love for her children, which draws everything toward a sympathy felt in her inmost parts.

Even unreasoning animals, as well as humans, have a sympathy and parental love for their offspring.

If they are not able to keep the intruder away, they do what they can to help their young by flying in circles around them in the anguish of love, warning them with their own calls.

She loved piety more, the piety that preserves them for eternal life according to God’s promise.

In what manner might I express the passions of parents who love their children? We impress upon the character of a small child a wondrous likeness both of mind and of form. Especially is this true of mothers, who because of their birth pangs have a deeper sympathy toward their offspring than do the fathers.

The mother of the seven boys, more than any other mother, loved her children. In seven pregnancies she had implanted in herself tender love toward them,

For they were just and self-controlled and courageous and magnanimous and loved their brothers and their mother so that they obeyed her even to death in keeping the ordinances.

Nevertheless, though so many factors influenced the mother to suffer with them out of love for her children, in the case of none of them were the various tortures strong enough to pervert her reason.

O sacred nature, parental affection, tender love toward offspring, nursing, and indomitable maternal passions!

But pious reason, giving her heart a man’s courage in the very midst of her passions, strengthened her to disregard, for the time, her parental love.

For as in the council chamber of her own soul she saw mighty advocates—nature, family, parental love, and the instruments of torture awaiting her children—

The lions surrounding Daniel were not so savage nor was the raging fiery furnace of Mishael so intensely hot as was her innate parental love consuming her as she saw her seven sons tortured in such varied ways.