[9] The banishment on which they enter will be for ever, for the sentence of expulsion is confirmed by God when he bids the wise man hearken to the words of Sarah, who charges him expressly to cast forth the bondwoman and her son (Gen. 21:10). It is well to listen to the voice of virtue, above all when she sets before us such a doctrine as this, because the most perfect types of being and the secondary acquirements are worlds apart, and wisdom has no kinship with the sophist’s culture. For the latter has for the fruits of all its labour only those persuasions which tend to establish the false opinion, which destroys the soul; but wisdom studies truth and thus obtains that great source of profit to the mind, knowledge of right reason.
[10] Since then the sophist, who is ever sophist, and his mother, the instruction in the preliminary learning, are expelled and banished by God from the presence of wisdom and the wise, on whom he confers the titles of Sarah and Abraham, can we wonder that he has cast forth Adam, that is the mind, which is sick with the incurable sickness of folly, from the dwelling-place of virtue for ever and permits him not to return?