PHIL. IUD. DE ABRAHAMO. §. 14. 15.

Some, sailing for the sake of trade, or an embassy, or to see sights in foreign lands, or for the love of learning—having forces that pull them away from their stay abroad—the ones for profit, others to benefit the city in times of the most necessary and greatest needs, and others for the history of things they previously did not know, providing both pleasure and benefit to the soul (for they are blind to those who see keenly, and stay-at-homes to those who have traveled)—nevertheless, they are eager to see and worship the paternal soil and to greet their associates, to enjoy the sweetest and most longed-for sight of kinsmen and friends. Often, seeing the affairs for which they traveled extended, they left, drawn by a most violent yearning for their own. But he, with a few others, or even alone, as soon as he was commanded, migrated, and he prepared for the departure with his soul before his body, the heavenly love outshining the yearning for mortal things. He cared for nothing: not tribesmen, not fellow citizens, not fellow students, not companions, not those of his blood from his father’s or mother's side, not fatherland, not ancient customs, not upbringing, not shared living—each of which has an attractive and hard-to-sever pull and power. With free and unbridled impulses, he migrated as quickly as possible, first from the land of the Chaldaeans inhabitants of Chaldaea, a prosperous country and flourishing at that time, to the land of the Charrhaeans inhabitants of Haran; then, not long after, also from this to another place, about which we shall speak, having said that first.

§. 15. The indicated migrations were, in the letter of the scripture, performed by a wise man, but according to the laws of allegory, by a virtue-loving soul seeking the true God. For the Chaldaeans, having labored most in astronomy, and attributing everything to the movements of the stars, by which they supposed things in the world to be managed—powers which numbers and the proportions of numbers contain—venerated the visible essence, not having grasped the notion of the invisible and intelligible.