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(13) Wherefore also Moses says, " Show Thyself to me," - intimating most clearly that God is not capable of being taught by man, or expressed in speech, but to be known only by His own power. For inquiry was obscure and dim; but the grace of knowledge is from Him by the Son. Most clearly Solomon shall testify to us, speaking thus: "The prudence of man is not in me: but God giveth me wisdom, and I know holy things." Now Moses, describing allegorically the divine prudence, called it the tree of life planted in Paradise; which Paradise may be the world in which all things proceeding from creation grow. In it also the Word blossomed and bore fruit, being "made flesh," and gave life to those "who had tasted of His graciousness;" since it was not without the wood of the tree that He came to our knowledge. For our life was hung on it, in order that we might believe. And Solomon again says: "She is a tree of immortality to those who take hold of her." "Behold, I set before thy face life and death, to love the Lord thy God, and to walk in His ways, and hear His voice, and trust in life. But if ye transgress the statutes and the judgments which I have given you, ye shall be destroyed with destruction. For this is life, and the length of thy days, to love the Lord thy God."

(10) For Moses writes thus: And God said, let the Earth send forth Grass and Herbs that yield a Seed, and the Fruit-tree yielding or bearing Fruit after its Kind, and which has its own Seed in itself upon the Earth, and it was so done. And the Earth sent forth Grass, and the Herb that yields Seed, each after its Kind, and the Tree yielding Fruit, and which has [Gen. 1. 11, 12, 13.] its Seed in itself, every one according to its Kind; and God saw that it was good. And so out of Evening and Morning the Third Day came to be.

(10) This glory, which Shone forth on the face of Moses, the people could not look on. Wherefore he took a veil for the glory, to those who looked cam ally. For those, who demand toll, detain those who bring in any worldly things, who are burdened with their own passions. But him that is free of all things which are subject to duty, and is full of knowledge, and of the righteousness of works, they pass on with their good wishes, blessing the man with his work. "And his life shall not fall away" - the leaf of the living tree that is nourished "by the water-courses." Now the righteous is likened to fruit-bearing trees, and not only to such as are of the nature of tall-growing ones. And in the sacrificial oblations, according to the law, there were those who looked for blemishes in the sacrifices. They who are skilled in such matters distinguish propension (orexis) from lust (epiqumia); and assign the latter, as being irrational, to pleasures and licentiousness; and propension, as being a rational movement, they assign to the necessities of nature.

(24) Not that the Fruits of the Earth are thereupon wholly in the Wrath of God; for the one only incorporated or compacted Word, which is immortal and incorruptible, which was from Eternity in the Salitter of the Earth, sprung up again in the Body of Death, and brought forth Fruit out of the dead Body of the Earth; but the Earth comprehended not the Word, but the Word comprehended the Earth.

(123) But this I must needs say, that Moses has wrote very right, but the true Understanding or Meaning, out of what the Earth proceeded, remained hidden to Moses, and them that have come after him in the Letter, and the Spirit has kept it hidden to this very Time.