PHIL. IUD. DE ABRAHAMO. §. 6. 7.

...having driven away the untamed and maddened passions and the most beast-like vices of the soul. As a sign, after the word "man," he adds "righteous," saying, "A righteous man," as if there were no man who is unrighteous—or, to speak more accurately, as if an unrighteous man were merely a beast in human form—and that only he who is a zealot for justice is a man. He also says that he became "perfect," by this indicating that he did not acquire one virtue, but all of them, and having acquired them, he persisted in using each one as was fitting. And crowning him as an athlete who has won well, he adorns him further with a most brilliant proclamation, saying that he was well-pleasing to God—for what could be better than this in nature?—as a most clear proof of his nobility. For if those who displease God are wretched, those whom it has befallen to please Him are, by all means, fortunate.

§. 7. It is not without purpose, however, that after having praised the man for so many virtues, he added that "he was perfect in his generation," original: "τέλειος ἦν ἐν τῇ γενεᾷ αὐτοῦ" (Gen. 6:9) indicating that he was not good in an absolute sense, but good in comparison with those who were born at that time. For not long from now, he will mention other wise men who had virtue that was uncontested, not because they were compared against wicked men, nor because they were deemed worthy of acceptance and privilege simply because they happened to be better than their contemporaries, but because, having acquired a fortunate nature, they kept it uncorrupted. They did not merely flee from base practices, but did not even fall into them in the first place, and by becoming practitioners of good works and words as a priority, they adorned their lives. Those men, therefore, were most admirable, who used their impulses in a free and noble way, not through imitation or in opposition to others, but by embracing the good and the just themselves.