Abraham

From this it is shown that the wisdom which Abraham pursued is teachable — passing from the contemplation of heavenly things to faith and righteousness according to God.

Wisdom, then, who dwelt with the faithful man (and Abraham was reckoned faithful and just), was still barren and childless in that generation, having borne nothing virtuous to Abraham;

For this reason Abraham too, when Sarah was jealous of Hagar for outshining her — choosing, as it were, only the useful part of worldly philosophy — said, "Behold, the handmaid is in your hands;

Do not, barbarous heretic, set Abraham before the world.

teaching likewise that the two pleas concerning the sons of Abraham ran their course allegorically among the Galatians;

In this question, you who think that the angels of the Creator are to be set against us — as though they too acted in phantom, of seeming flesh, no doubt, with Abraham and Lot, and yet truly both met and were fed and did what had been commanded them — in the first place, you are not admitted to the examples of that God whom you are demolishing.

Yet with this difference that the Israelites alone were bound by the Mosaic Law, but the whole posterity of Abraham by the law of circumcision.

This interpretation is justified by the authority of Abraham, who, with a perfect knowledge of the law given to Noah, took arms against the four Kings, fully persuaded that he was doing nothing in violation of that law.

For when Abraham with his servants and confederates had gained a victory, by force of arms, over the four Kings, who had plundered Sodom, God approved of his act by the mouth of his priest Melchisedech, who said to him, “Blessed be the most high God, who hath delivered thine enemies into thine hand.

By such marvels, then, he brought them into a good land, which long before he had promised to give to the seed of that patriarch Abraham.

But a certain Abraham was found in that generation alone, having the senses of his soul in vigour, who through the contemplation of created things came to know the Creator.

and when they had been enslaved to the Egyptian nation and to a certain tyrant Pharaoh, he led them out from thence with signs and dreadful and extraordinary wonders through Moses and Aaron, holy men glorified with the grace of prophecy — through whom he both chastised the Egyptians worthily of their wickedness, and led the Israelites (for so that people, the descendants of Abraham, was called) th …

When did Abraham worship—was it not when he believed?

These things, however, are given by God to some for the sake of a dispensation, as to Abraham and to Job and such men;

but nevertheless a man, and he has died, as Adam, as Abel, as Noah, as Abraham, as Moses, as any you might name of those who shared the same nature.

So the rich man among the dead has a tongue, and the poor man a finger, and there is the bosom of Abraham.

Therefore, if the soul plucks beforehand any torment or any solace in the prison or lodging of the lower regions, in the fire or in the bosom of Abraham, the corporeality of the soul will be proved.

servants above their Lord, and disciples above their Master, scorning, it may be, to receive in the bosom of Abraham the solace of awaiting the resurrection.

from where was Abraham reckoned the friend of God, if not from the fairness and justice of the natural law?

In short, the patriarchs who followed were uncircumcised, as was Melchizedek, who, himself uncircumcised, offered bread and wine to Abraham — now already circumcised — as he returned from the battle.

Yet we have God himself as a worthy promiser and a faithful surety, who promised Abraham that in his seed all the nations of the earth would be blessed, and that from the womb of Rebecca two peoples and two nations would come forth — namely the Jews, that is Israel, and the nations, that is our own.

For the patriarchs are reported to have seen God, as Abraham and Jacob, and the prophets, as Isaiah, as Ezekiel, and yet they did not die.

For the rest, how can it be that that almighty God, the invisible, whom no man has seen nor can see, he who dwells in unapproachable light, he who dwells not in things made with hands, at whose sight the earth trembles, the mountains melt like wax, who grasps the whole world in his hand like a nest, to whom heaven is a throne and earth a footstool, in whom is every place, while he is himself not i …

" And when he subjoins, "Abraham saw my day, and rejoiced," surely he shows that the Son was formerly seen by Abraham, not the Father.

And yet even then, among those angels, the Lord himself appeared to Abraham without birth, but with flesh, on account of the same difference of cause.

You have read at some time, and believed, that the Creator's angels were changed into human form, and carried so great a reality of body that Abraham even washed their feet, and that Lot was rescued by their hands from the Sodomites, and that an angel even wrestled with a man so bodily, with the whole weight of his frame, that he begged to be let go, so was he held fast.

For, recounting the promise of the blessing of the nations in Abraham's name — "And in thy seed shall all nations be blessed" — "He said not," says he, "to seeds, as of many, but to seed, of one, which is Christ.

For asking of the sons of Heth a place for the burial of Sarah, "Give me, then," he says, "a possession of a sepulchre among you, and I will bury my dead" — the flesh, namely.

"and another of the stars" — that is, of the seed of Abraham.

Therefore the sons of Abraham shall not be raised up from stones, and the brood of vipers shall not bring forth the fruit of repentance, and the sons of wrath shall not become the sons of peace, if nature shall not be changeable?

For although comeliness is not to be accused, as the felicity of the body, as an accession of the divine modelling, as some good garment of the soul, yet it is to be feared, even on account of the injury and violence of its pursuers—which even Abraham, the father of faith, dreaded in the beauty of his wife, and Isaac, falsely calling Rebecca his sister, redeemed his safety by a humiliation.

So too Eleazar, having obtained refreshment in hell in the bosom of Abraham, while on the contrary the rich man was set in the torment of fire—they recompense the alternate turns of evils and goods by an emulous retribution.

Or if you follow the later Abraham as father, that is, the bigamist, receive the circumcised one too.

For God had bidden Abraham sacrifice his son, not for the sake of tempting his faith, but of proving it, that through him he might make an example for his own precept, by which he was presently to command that no man hold any pledges dearer than God.

So faith, illuminated by patience, when it was sown among the nations through the seed of Abraham, which is Christ, and brought grace in over the Law, set patience as its helper over the enlarging and fulfilling of the Law, since this alone had hitherto been wanting to the teaching of righteousness.

Well too that John, levelling the ways of the Lord, was a preacher of penitence no less to soldiers and publicans than to the sons of Abraham.