[9] For which reason, being desirous to deliver an admirable panegyric on the hopeful man, the sacred historian tells us, first, that "he hoped in the father and creator of the universe," [1] and adds in a subsequent passage, "This is the book of the generation of men," [2] and of their fathers, and grand-fathers who had existed previously; but he conceived that they were the ancestors of the mixed race, that is to say, of that purer and thoroughly sifted race which is the really rational one;