10. Thus much then at present, in the way of
a digression, to put you in remembrance. Let me, however, add yet
another testimony in proof that God is called the Father of men in an
improper sense. For when in Esaias God is addressed thus, For
Thou art our Father, though Abraham be ignorant of us Is. lxiii. 16., and Sarah travailed not with
us Ib. li.
2., need we inquire
further on this point? And if the Psalmist says, Let them be
troubled from His countenance, the Father of the fatherless, and Judge
of the widows Ps. lxviii. 5. Cyril quotes as usual from the
Septuagint (Ps. lxvii. 6), where the clause ταραχθήσονται
ἀπὸ προσώπου
αὐτοῦ, answering to nothing in the
Hebrew, is evidently an interpolation, and may have crept in from a
marginal quotation of Is.
lxiv. 2., is it not manifest
to all, that when God is called the Father of orphans who have lately
lost their own fathers, He is so named not as begetting them of
Himself, but as caring for them and shielding them. But whereas
God, as we have said, is in an improper sense the Father of men, of
Christ alone He is the Father by nature, not by adoption: and the
Father of men in time, but of Christ before all time, as He saith,
And now, O Father, glorify Thou Me with Thine own self, with the
glory which I had with Thee before the world was John xvii. 5..