(82) What is the meaning of the verse, Enoch pleased God after he begat Methuselah, two hundred years? (#Ge 5:22). God appointed by the law the fountains of all good things to be under the principles of generation itself. And what I mean is something of this sort. A little while before he appointed mercy and pardon to exist, now again he decrees that penitence shall exist, not in any degree mocking or reproaching these men, who are believed to have offended, and at the same time giving the soul an opportunity to mount up from wickedness to virtue, like the conversion of those who are proceeding towards a snare. For behold, the man being made a husband and a father together with his birth, makes a beginning of honesty. And he is said to please God, for although he does not persevere in piety from the moment that he is born, nevertheless, all that remaining period is counted to him as having been spent in a praiseworthy mode of life, because he pleased God for so many years. And these things are said, not because it perhaps was, but it might perhaps have seemed different; but he approves of the order of things, for indulgence having been exemplified, in this case of Cain, after no long interval of time, he introduces this statement, that Enoch practised repentance, warning us by it that repentance alone can procure indulgence.
(83) Why Enoch, who cultivated repentance, is said to have lived before his repentance a hundred and sixty-five years, but two hundred after his repentance? (#Ge 5:22).{8}{this is at variance with the statement in the Bible, which says he lived sixty-five years before the birth of Methuselah, and walked with God three hundred years.} This number of a hundred and sixty-five is combined of the singular addition of ten numbers from the unit to ten; as one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, the total of which is fiftyfive. And again, from that by the addition of ten numbers, which, removing the unit proceed upwards by twos, and two, four, six, eight, ten, twelve, fourteen, sixteen, eighteen, twenty, which make a hundred and ten; the combination of which, with the numbers first mentioned, produces a hundred and sixty-five; and in this addition the even numbers amount to twice as much as the odd numbers; for the woman is more violent than the man, in the preposterous manner in which the wicked man rules over the virtuous man, the outward sense over the mind, the body over the outward sense, and matter over its cause. But the number two hundred, in which repentance was practised, is combined of two numbers of one hundred, the first hundred of which intimates a purification from injustice, but the other indicates the plenitude of perfect virtue. In truth, before anything else is done, the first thing is to cut off from a sick body every diseased part, and after that means of cure are to be applied to it, for this is the first step, and the other the second. Moreover, the number two hundred consists of fours, for it is produced as from seed, from four triangular numbers, and from four tetragons, and from four pentagons, and from four hexagons, and from four heptagons; and, as one may say, it fixes its step on the number seven. Now the four triangles are these, one, three, six, ten, which make twenty; the four tetragons are one, four, nine, sixteen, which make thirty; from the four pentagons, one, five, twelve, twenty-two, is made the number forty. Moreover, the four hexagons, one, six, fifteen, twenty-eight, make fifty; and the four heptagons, one, seven, eighteen, thirty-four, make sixty; and all these numbers put together make two hundred.
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