No child-sacrifice; false prophet dies; God tests love

gods, I will also do; you will not do thus to the Lord your God; for the abominations which the Lord hated they did to their gods, because they also burn their sons and their daughters in fire to their gods.’ Well does the lawgiver forbid altogether the imitation of the wanderers, and very well commands to stand off from the merciless slaughter of children. And he convicts as destroyers and ruiners of humanity the blood-loving and falsely-named gods, who even savagely dishonor the laws of necessary affection, for the sake of what seems good to them; ‘For God created the all unto being, and the generations of the world are saving, and there is not a kingdom of Hades upon earth. Yet by envy of a devil death entered into the world.’ And the divine will overturns death, and dissolves corruption; and hates that the things that are should not be; for he created the all unto being, according as it has been written. Yet those netted unto wandering by the demons’ greediness bring forward to Satan as it were seasonings, and of the most useful and sweet-smelling incense, the destruction of those come to be unto life, and the death of those created unto being. Most skillfully therefore he wished to show that the customs beside those ones are full of the last slander, and nature being wronged, and the ordinances of much-prayed-for love-of-children being trampled, very well hustling the noble and evil-hating mind of the hearers unto needing to honor and choose swiftly whatever he himself would wish and say. And these things were legislated of old unto overturning of the unholiness beside those ones. Yet he also defines death for the one wishing to persuade away the one who has been fixed, and who has received in a God-loving way the knowledge of the truth. For he said thus again: ‘And if a prophet should rise among you or a dreamer of a dream, and should give you a sign or wonder, and the sign or the wonder should come which he spoke toward you, saying: Let us go and serve other gods whom you have not known, you will not hear the words of that prophet or of that dreamer of that dream, because the Lord your God is testing you to know whether you love your God from your whole heart, and from your whole soul; behind the Lord your God you will go, and him you will fear, and his commandments you will keep, and his voice you will hear, and him you will serve, and to him you will be added. And that prophet or that dreamer of the dream will die; for he spoke to make you wander away from the Lord your God.’ How holy and fitting to God the law! For if indeed for murderers of bodies death must follow altogether and in every way according to laws, how would the one bringing the ruinous wandering upon a soul, and casting the better than body into pits of destruction, according to the Savior’s own voice, not reasonably be in danger? That the deceiver and buffoon must have the justice upon blood done, God judged right;