PHIL. IUD. DE ABRAHAMO. §. 17. 18.

...grasping no intelligible nature whatsoever. But when he had migrated and moved, he necessarily recognized the world as subject, and not as an autocrat; not governing, but governed by an originating cause, which the intellect, looking up for the first time, then saw. For much mist had previously been poured over it by the sensory world, which, having dispersed with warm and fiery doctrines, it barely possessed the power, as in a clear, open sky, to gain a vision of that which had long been hidden and invisible. For the sake of this, the soul, arriving as if toward Him, was not turned away; but He, having gone out to meet it, showed His own nature, as far as it was possible for the one who sees to see. Therefore it is said, not that the wise man saw God, but that "God appeared to the wise man." For it was impossible for anyone to grasp the Truly Existing through oneself, had He not revealed and displayed Himself.

§. 18. The change and transposition of the name also bears witness to the things said. For he was called Abram in the ancient name, but was later addressed Abraham; by the sound of a single element, the alpha the first letter of the Greek alphabet being doubled, but by power, it indicated a great matter and doctrine through the change. For Abram, when interpreted, is "exalted father," but Abraham is "chosen father of sound." The former signifies the one who is astrological and meteorological, who calls upon these things, thus caring for the Chaldean doctrines as a father might care for his descendants; the latter signifies the wise man. For through "sound" he hints at the spoken word, and through "father," the governing intellect. For the internal mind is by nature the father of the sounded word, being older and sowing the things to be said. And through the addition, he signifies the noble man. For the base way of life is random and confused, but the good is chosen, selected as the best from all. Therefore, to the meteorological person, nothing seems greater than the world, to which he also assigns the causes of things that come to be; but the wise man, having seen with more accurate eyes the more perfect intelligible being, ruling and leading, by whom other things are mastered and steered, has often blamed himself for his former life, as having passed through a blind existence, leaning upon the objects of sense, a thing of uncertain and unstable nature. And the noble man is sent on a second migration, again persuaded by an oracle, no longer from city to city, but into a desolate land, in which he continued to wander, not being displeased with the wandering and the instability caused by it. And yet, who else would not have been grieved, not only rising up from his own home but also being driven out of every city into difficult and hard-to-travel pathless regions? And who, turning back, would not have returned home, having cared little for future hopes and hastening to escape the present difficulty, assuming it to be folly to choose known evils for the sake of unseen goods? But he alone appears to have suffered the opposite, considering the life without the company of the many to be the sweetest. And it is natural that it should be so. For those who seek and yearn to find God love the solitude dear to Him, in this very thing first hastening to be assimilated to the blessed and happy nature. Having therefore made each interpretation, both the literal one as applied to a man, and the one through suggestion as applied to the soul, we have declared both the man and the intellect to be worthy of love; the man, because he was persuaded by oracles and drawn away from things difficult to detach from; the intellect, because it was not deceived to the end by stopping at the sensory substance, assuming the visible world to be the greatest and first god, but having run back with its reasoning, it beheld a nature better than the visible—an intelligible one—and simultaneously the maker and leader of both.