On Rewards and Punishments (56-60)

In the fourth place he received the high priesthood, by means of which he, prophesying in accordance with knowledge, worships the living God, and by which also he will bring before him in a propitiating manner, the thanksgivings of his subjects when they do well, and their prayers and supplications if at any time they are unfortunate; now since all these things belong to one class, they ought to be held together and united by mutual bonds, and to be perceived in the same man, since he who is deficient in any one of the four is imperfect in his authority, as he is consequently invested with but a crippled authority over the common interests.

We have now thus spoken at sufficient length concerning the rewards proposed for each individual man: but rewards are also offered to whole houses, and to very numerous families. When the nation was originally divided into twelve tribes, there were at once appointed patriarchs equal in number to the tribes, being not merely of one house or family, but connected by a still more genuine relationship: for they were all brothers having one and the same father; and the father and grandfather of these men were, with their father, the original founders of the whole nation.

Therefore the first man who forsook pride and came over to truth, and who despised the jugglery of the Chaldaic branches of learning, because of that more perfect vision which had been granted to him, after having seen which he was so

Again his son who had acquired spontaneous and self-taught wisdom had two sons, one a wild and untameable man, full of anger and desire, and one in short who raised up the irrational part of his soul as a fortification against the rational part; but the other a mild and gentle follower and worker of virtue, placed in the more excellent class of equality and simplicity, the very champion of reason and declared enemy of folly:

he is the third of the founders of his race, a man with many sons, and the only one truly happy in his children, being free from all injury in every part of his family, and like a fortunate husbandman seeing all his seed in a state of safety, and well cultivated, and bearing fruit.