priest falling over his feet, as being adorned with four rows of precious stones,[1] indicates the Tetrad; and if there are any other things in the Scriptures which can possibly be dragged into the number four, they declare that these had their being with a view to the Tetrad. The Ogdoad, again, was shown as follows:—They affirm that man was formed on the eighth day, for sometimes they will have him to have been made on the sixth day, and sometimes on the eighth, unless, perchance, they mean that his earthly part was formed on the sixth day, but his fleshly part on the eighth, for these two things are distinguished by them. Some of them also hold that one man was formed after the image and likeness of God, masculo-feminine, and that this was the spiritual man; and that another man was formed out of the earth.
3. Further, they declare that the arrangement made with respect to the ark in the Deluge, by means of which eight persons were saved,[2] most clearly indicates the Ogdoad which brings salvation. David also shows forth the same, as holding the eighth place in point of age among his brethren.[3] Moreover, that circumcision which took place on the eighth day,[4] represented the circumcision of the Ogdoad above. In a word, whatever they find in the Scriptures capable of being referred to the number eight, they declare to fulfil the mystery of the Ogdoad. With respect, again, to the Decad, they maintain that it is indicated by those ten nations which God promised to Abraham for a possession.[5] The arrangement also made by Sarah when, after ten years, she gave[6] her handmaid Hagar to him, that by her he might have a son, showed the same thing. Moreover, the servant of Abraham who was sent to Rebekah, and presented her at the well with ten bracelets of gold, and her brethren who detained her for ten days;[7] Jeroboam also, who received the ten sceptres[8] (tribes), and the ten courts[9] of the tabernacle, and the columns of ten cubits[10] [high], and the ten sons of Jacob who
