[268] Faith in God, then, is the one sure and infallible good, consolation of life, fulfillment of bright hopes, dearth of ills, harvest of goods, inacquaintance with misery, acquaintance with piety, heritage of happiness, all-round betterment of the soul which is firmly stayed on Him Who is the cause of all things and can do all things yet only wills the best.
[269] For, just as those who walk on a slippery road are tripped up and fall, while others on a dry highway tread without stumbling, so those who set the soul travelling along the path of the bodily and the external are but learning it to fall, so slippery and utterly insecure are all such things; while those who press onward to God along the doctrines of virtue walk straight upon a path which is safe and unshaken, so that we may say with all truth that belief in the former things is disbelief in God, and disbelief in them belief in God.
[270] But not only do the oracles attest his possession of the queen of virtues, faith in the existent, but he is also the first whom they speak of as elder, though those who lived before him tripled or many times multiplied his years. Yet of none of them do we hear that he was held worthy of the title and rightly, for the true elder is shown as such not by his length of days but by a laudable and perfect life.
[271] Those who have passed a long span of years in the existence of the body without goodness or beauty of life must be called long-lived children who have never been schooled in the learning worthy of grey hairs; but he who is enamoured of sound sense and wisdom and faith in God may be justly called elder, a name of like significance to “first.”
[272] For indeed the wise man is the first of the human race, as a pilot in a ship or a ruler in a city or a general in war, or again as a soul in a body and a mind in a soul, or once more heaven in the world or God in heaven.
[273] That God marvelling at Abraham’s faith in Him repaid him with faithfulness by confirming with an oath the gifts which He had promised, and here He no longer talked with him as God with man but as a friend with a familiar. For He, with Whom a word is an oath, yet says “By Myself have I sworn,” so that his mind might be established more securely and firmly even than it was before.
[274] So, then, the man of worth is elder and first, and so must he be called; but younger and last is every fool who pursues the ways which belong to rebellious youth and stand lowest in the list.
[275] So much for all this, but to these praises of the Sage, so many and so great, Moses adds this crowning saying “that this man did the divine law and the divine commands.” He did them, not taught by written words, but unwritten nature gave him the zeal to follow where wholesome and untainted impulse led him. And when they have God’s promises before them what should men do but trust in them most firmly?
[276] Such was the life of the first, the founder of the nation, one who obeyed the law, some will say, but rather, as our discourse has shown, himself a law and an unwritten statute.