III. Such was Joseph your Superintendent of
corn measures, whom I may call ours also; who by his surpassing wisdom
was able both to foresee the famine and to cure it by decrees of
government, healing the ill-favoured and starving kine by means of the
fair and fat. Gen. xli. 29 sq. And indeed
you may understand by Joseph which you will, either the great lover and
creator and namesake of immortality or his successor in throne and word
and hoary hair, our new Peter, Athanasius. not inferior in
virtue or fame to him by whom the middle course was destroyed and
crushed, though it still wriggles a little weakly, like the tail of a
snake after it is cut off; the one of whom, after having departed this
life in a good old age after many conflicts and wrestlings, looks upon
us from above, I well know, and reaches a hand to those who are
labouring for the right: and this the more, in proportion as he
is freed from his bonds; and the other is hastening to the same end or
dissolution of life, and is already drawing near the dwellers in
heaven, but is still so far in the flesh as is needed to give the last
aids to the Word, and to take his journey with richer
provision.