XXXII. (172) The mind, then, which is devoted to pleasure, having entertained these hopes, does not think that it is sufficient to attract the younger men, and those who are as yet only attending the school of temperance, by its allurements; but it looks upon it as a terrible thing, if it cannot also bring over the elder reasoning, the more impetuous passions of which have now passed their prime; (173) for in a subsequent passage Joseph says to them, proposing injuries to them as though they were benefits, “Now, therefore, bringing with you your father and all your possessions, come hither to Me;”{57}{#ge 45:18.} speaking in this way of Egypt and of that terrible king who drags back all our paternal inheritance and the good things which really belong to us and which have advanced beyond the body (for by nature they are free), endeavoring by force to surrender them to a very bitter prison, having, as the holy scripture tells us, “appointed as guardian of the prison Pentaphres, the eunuch and chief Cook,”{58}{#ge 39:1.} who was a man in great want of all that is good, and who had been deprived of the generative parts of the soul; and who was also unable to sow and to plant any of those things which bear upon instruction; but who like a cook slew the living animals, and cut them up and divided them in different portions limb by limb, and who wallowed about in dead and lifeless bodies and things equally, and who, by his superfluous preparations and refinements, excited and stirred up the appetites of the profitless passions, while it was natural to expect that those who were able to tame them should mollify. (174) And he also says, “I will give unto you all the good things of Egypt, and you shall eat of the marrow of the Earth.”{59}{#ge 45:18.} But we will say unto him, We who keep our eyes fixed on the good things of the soul do not desire those of the body. For that most delicious desire of the former things, when once implanted in the mind, is well calculated to engender a forgetfulness of all those things which are dear to the flesh.
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