Fragmenta in epistulam ad Hebraeos

To those around Abraham and Moses and those in succession. In different ways, then, he says, and appropriately to each time, having conversed with our ancestors through their own prophets, God, now that the whole time is being completed, has spoken to us in a son, that is, having previously educated our race through laws appropriate to each generation for the acquisition of righteousness and knowledge of God through his own servants, now that the times have been completed in Christ and the economy according to him, he proclaimed to us the perfect grace of these things. He speaks of the restoration of our nature to the incorruptible and sinless state after the cross through his resurrection. He has called the father glory reverently, and the son radiance, teaching from the example that he is both from the father and coeternal with the father; for such is the radiance, both being from the sun and coexisting with it. Therefore, if one were to speak of the sun, one would never speak of its own radiance as older. He spoke it without the syllable of the father according to the idiom of scripture. Instead of having the learning of obedience through suffering, he displayed it most perfectly, and this while being a son. And we are accustomed to speak in this way. Often, indeed, when someone has delivered an excellent discourse, we say that this one truly learned from the words he has spoken, that is, by the proclamation and the phrasing he has firmly shown that he has accomplished the learning of the words.

The expression is hyperbatic; for the word "teaching" is placed in the middle and is applied to the whole intervening passage, and the arrangement of it according to its sense is this: not again laying a foundation of teaching, and then in this way the things subsequently indicated in the enumeration concerning which the foundation of the teaching is laid. And it wishes to say that for those now approaching the faith for the first time, we lay down the teaching about these things as a kind of foundation, first naturally urging them to repent from death-dealing works, and when they repent to believe in God, and when they believe to be baptized, and when they are baptized to submit themselves to the imposition of priestly hands for participation in the Spirit, and when they have partaken of this no longer to disbelieve concerning the resurrection from the dead, and when they are resurrected and live again to know that there is a judgment, both perpetual and just, and to await the recompense of what we have lived here. By one account, then, I think that the lampstand, as has been said, hints at the light from these perceptible stars, the table at the earth, and the setting forth of the loaves at the production from the earth of things suitable for us.