10. If the illustration is understood, let us apply it to the quality of the rational food of rational creatures. And consider whether Plato and the wise men of the Greeks do not in their choice dicta resemble physicians who attend only better-class patients, while they despise the bulk of men. But the Jewish Prophets and the disciples |70 of Jesus, bidding a long farewell to the embroidery of diction, and, as Scripture terms it, "the wisdom of men" and "wisdom after the flesh " (hinting at the tongue), would be like the cooks who take care, the quality of the food remaining the same, to prepare it the most wholesome way; they have at their command a style which reaches the masses of mankind, adapts itself to their speech, and does not by its strangeness close men's ears to such discourses because they are unfamiliar. For if the real object of eating the rational food, if I may so speak, is to make the eater submissive and meek, must we not think that the Word which produces multitudes of forbearing and meek hearers, or sets them on the way to becoming so, is better prepared than that which makes a mere handful, to concede so much, forbearing and meek? And if Plato, a Greek, intended to benefit Greek or Syrian adherents by sound doctrine, he would take care to learn the languages of his future hearers, and, as the Greeks phrase it, would rather be a "barbarian" to do the Egyptians and Syrians good, than remain a Greek and be incapable of speaking anything of use to the Egyptians and Syrians. Just so, the Divine Nature taking thought not only for those who are reputed learned among the Greeks, but also for the rest of the Greeks, condescended to the ignorance of the majority of hearers, so that, employing words familiar to them, it might encourage the unlearned multitude to hearken; for after the first introduction they can easily endeavour to get a hold on the deeper truths hidden in the Scriptures. For even an ordinary reader soon discovers that many passages have a deeper signification than appears on the surface, a signification revealed to devoted students of the Word, and revealed in proportion to the time they spend upon the Word and to their zeal in putting into practice what they read.