על אברהם ג׳On Abraham 3
א׳
1[15] No more need be said about the subject of hope, set by nature as a door-keeper at the portals of the royal virtues within, to which access cannot be gained unless we have first paid our respects to her.
ב׳
2[16] Great indeed are the efforts expended both by lawgivers and by laws in every nation in filling the souls of free men with comfortable hopes; but he who gains this virtue of hopefulness without being led to it by exhortation or command has been educated into it by a law which nature has laid down, a law unwritten yet intuitively learnt.
ג׳
3[17] The second place after hope is given to repentance for sins and to improvement, and, therefore, Moses mentions next in order him who changed from the worse life to the better, called by the Hebrews Enoch but in our language “recipient of grace.” We are told of him that he proved “to be pleasing to God and was not found because God transferred him, ”
ד׳
4[18] for transference implies turning and changing, and the change is to the better because it is brought about by the forethought of God. For all that is done with God’s help is excellent and truly profitable, as also all that has not His directing care is unprofitable.
ה׳
5[19] And the expression used of the transferred person, that he was not found, is well said, either because the old reprehensible life is blotted out and disappears and is no more found, as though it had never been at all, or because he who is thus transferred and takes his place in the better class is naturally hard to find. For evil is widely spread and therefore known to many, while virtue is rare, so that even the few cannot comprehend it.
ו׳
6[20] Besides, the worthless man whose life is one long restlessness haunts market-places, theatres, law-courts, council-halls, assemblies, and every group and gathering of men; his tongue he lets loose for unmeasured, endless, indiscriminate talk, bringing chaos and confusion into everything, mixing true with false, fit with unfit, public with private, holy with profane, sensible with absurd, because he has not been trained to that silence which in season is most excellent.
ז׳
7[21] His ears he keeps alert in meddlesome curiosity, ever eager to learn his neighbour’s affairs, whether good or bad, and ready with envy for the former and joy at the latter; for the worthless man is a creature naturally malicious, a hater of good and lover of evil.