This will be shown still more clearly by the oracle which was given to Rebecca or Patience (Gen. 25:21 ff.). She had conceived the two contending natures of good and evil and considered earnestly, as wisdom bade her, the character of both, when she perceived them leaping and as in a skirmish preluding the war that should be between them. And therefore she besought God to show her what had befallen her, and how it might be remedied. He answered her question thus: “two nations are in thy womb.” That was what had befallen her—to bear both good and evil. But again “two peoples shall be separated from thy womb.” This is the remedy, that good and evil be separated and set apart from each other and no longer have the same habitation. So then when God added the good conviction Abel to the soul, he took away the foolish opinion Cain. So too, when Abraham left this mortal life, “he is added to the people of God” (Gen. 25:8), in that he inherited incorruption and became equal to the angels, for angels—those unbodied and blessed souls—are the host and people of God. In the same way again the Practiser Jacob, we read, is added to something better, when he left the worse (Gen. 49:33). Once more there is Isaac to whom was granted the higher gift of self-learnt knowledge. He too abandoned all such bodily elements as had been interwoven with the soul, and is added and allotted to another company; but not this time, with the others, to a people, but to a ‘race’ or ‘genus,’ as Moses says (Gen. 35:29). For genus is one, that which is above all, but people is a name for many. Those who have advanced to perfection as pupils under a teacher have their place among many others; for those who learn by hearing and instruction are no small number, and these he calls a people. But those who have dispensed with the instruction of men and have become apt pupils of God receive the free unlaboured knowledge and are translated into the genus of the imperishable and fully perfect. Theirs is a happier lot than the lot of the people, and in this sacred band Isaac stands confessed as a chorister.
On the Sacrifices of Abel and Cain 2
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