Wisdom of Solomon 8:1

Deuterocanon

1 She reaches mightily from one end of the earth to the other, and she orders all things well. 2 I loved her and sought her from my youth; I desired to take her for my bride, and became enamored of her beauty. 3 She glorifies her noble birth by living with God, and the Lord of all loves her. 4 For she is an initiate in the knowledge of God, and an associate in his works. 5 If riches are a desirable possession in life, what is richer than wisdom, the active cause of all things?

Augustine City of God 15.3

On the City of God Against the Pagans
Patristic

Sarah, in fact, was barren; and, despairing of offspring, and being resolved that she would have at least through her handmaid that blessing she saw she could not in her own person procure, she gave her handmaid to her husband, to whom she herself had been unable to bear children. From him she required this conjugal duty, exercising her own right in another's womb. And thus Ishmael was born according to the common law of human generation, by sexual intercourse. Therefore it is said that he was born according to the flesh,— not because such births are not the gifts of God, nor His handiwork, whose creative wisdom reaches, as it is written, from one end to another mightily, and sweetly does she order all things, but because, in a case in which the gift of God, which was not due to men and was the gratuitous largess of grace, was to be conspicuous, it was requisite that a son be given in a way which no effort of nature could compass.

 Notes and References

"... In affirming the canonicity of the two ‘Solomonic’ books not written by Solomon, Augustine says of Wisdom and Sirach “the Church especially in the West has accepted them as authoritative from antiquity”; City of God 17.20). A survey of patristic comments on the liturgical use of what Rufinus called the ecclesiastical books bears out Augustine’s geographical distinction. Eastern sources restrict the liturgical use of documents to the books of the Jewish canon. Cyril of Jerusalem (Catechesis 4.36–38) emphatically asserts that only the 22 books accepted by the Jews find a place in Christian liturgy, and he advises catechumens to maintain this standard in their private reading. Athanasius (Festal Letters 39) assigns the ecclesiastical books the role of elementary instruction in the faith, as do the Apostolic Canons (canon 85); this position seems to discount their use in the liturgy. The Council of Laodicea is more explicit; in the same context in which it limits the OT canon to 22 books ... However, the matter stood differently among Latin writers: Jerome, Rufinus, and Augustine all affirm that the ecclesiastical books are used in the corporate worship of the Church ... if the Church reads a ‘scriptural’ book, it is a canonical book. Similarly, Augustine responds to the objection of some that the Book of Wisdom is not canonical by arguing that its employment in the liturgy implies its divine authority ..."

Gallagher, Edmon L. Hebrew Scripture in Patristic Biblical Theory: Canon, Language, Text (pp. 54-55) Brill, 2012

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