XXXV. (186) Abraham therefore believed in God; but he believed as a man; that you may be aware of the peculiar attribute of mortals, and may learn that his fall did not happen to him in any other way than in consequence of the ordinances of nature. And if it was of short duration and only momentary, it is a thing to be thankful for: for many other men have been so overturned by the violence and impetuosity of error, and by its irresistible force, that they have been utterly destroyed for ever. (187) For know, my good man, that, according to the most holy Moses, virtue is not perfect in the human body, but it suffers something like torpor, and is often ever so little lame. For says the scripture, “The broader part of his thigh became torpid, on which he was Lame.”{64}{genesis 32:25.} (188) And perhaps some man of an over-confident disposition may come forward and say that this is not the language of one who disbelieves, but of one praying, so that if that most excellent of all the happy feelings were about to be produced, it would not be brought forth according to any other number than that of ninety years, that so the perfect good might arrive at its production according to perfect numbers. (189) But the aforesaid numbers are perfect, and especially according to the sacred scriptures. And let us consider each of them: now first of all there is the son of the just Noah and the ancestor of the seeing race, and he is said to have been a hundred years old when he begat Arphaxad, {65}{#ge 11:10.} and the meaning of the name of Arphaxad is, “he disturbed sorrow.” At all events it is a good thing that the offspring of the soul should confuse, and disorder, and destroy that miserable thing iniquity, so full of evils. (190) But Abraham also planted a field, {66}{#ge 21:33.} using the ratio of an hundred for the measurement of the ground: and Isaac found some barley yielding a hundred Fold.{67}{#ge 26:12.} And Moses also made the vestibule of the sacred tabernacle in a hundred arches, {68}{#ex 27:9.} measuring out the distance towards the east and towards the west. (191) Moreover the ratio of a hundred is the first fruit of the first fruit which the Levites assign to those who are consecrated to the priesthood; {69}{#nu 18:28.} for after they have taken the tenth from the nation they are enjoined to give unto the priests a sacred tenth of the whole share, as if from their own possessions. (192) And if a person were to consider, he might find many other instances to the praise of the aforesaid number brought forward in the law of Moses, but for the present what have been enumerated are sufficient. But if from the hundred you set aside the tenth part as a sacred first fruit to God who produces, and increases, and brings to perfection the fruit of the soul–for how can it be anything but perfect, inasmuch as it is on the confines between the first and the tenth, in the same manner in which the Holy of Holies is separated by the veil in the middle. […]{70}{there is an hiatus in the text here.} by which those things which are of the same genus are divided according to the differences in species?
Page 123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930313233343536373839404142
