Proverbs

And in truth "blessed is the man who is afraid of all things through caution.

This very thing the wise Solomon enjoins, and sometimes brings before us the unashamed worker, the ant, and through it sketches for us the practical way;

The law of Moses too, for the sanction of capital punishments, gives reasons which operate no less with other nations, than with the Jewish people.

For if within the Lord that which was out of him and in him was not without beginning — namely his own Wisdom, born and founded thence, from the time when it began to be stirred in the mind of God for the disposing of the works of the world — much more is it impossible that anything which was outside the Lord was without beginning.

Or, if he stretched out the heaven thus alone, how do these heretics presume perversely, as though singular Wisdom were not admitted, who says, "When he prepared the heaven, I was present with him"?

Him whom they had not thoroughly admitted, they could neither know nor fear, nor thence be wise — straying, of course, from the beginning of wisdom, that is, the fear of God.

For in the Proverbs too of Solomon — which we call paroimiai — concerning the adulterer specifically, as nowhere expiable, he says, "But the adulterer, through want of senses, acquires the perdition of his own soul;