De Sacrificiis Abelis Et Caini

Let us then, with reference to our gratitude to and honouring of the omnipotent God, be active and ready, deprecating all sluggishness and delay; for those who are passing over from obedience to the passions to the contemplation of virtue, are enjoined to keep the passover with their loins girded up, being ready to do service, and binding up the burden of the flesh, or, as it is expressed, their shoes, "standing upright, and firmly on their feet, and having in their hands a staff," [*](Exodus xii. 11. ) that is to say education, with the object of succeeding without any failure in all the affairs of life; and lastly, "to eat the passover in haste." For, by the passover, is signified the crossing over of the created and perishable being to God:—and very appropriately; for there is no single good thing which does not belong to God, and which is not divine.