Genesis 47:24

We have compared priests with priests; now, if it seems good, let us also compare the Egyptian people with the Israelite people. For it is said in what follows that after the famine and the servitude the Egyptian people offer a fifth part to Pharaoh; but on the contrary the Israelite people offer tithes to the priests. See in this too that the divine Scripture is supported by a mighty reason. See the Egyptian people paying tribute by the number five: for the five bodily senses are designated, to which the carnal people is enslaved; for the Egyptians always give obedience to visible and corporeal things. But the Israelite people honors the number ten, the number of perfection; for it received the ten words of the law and, bound by the power of the Decalogue, took up by divine largess the divine mysteries unknown to this world. But in the New Testament also the number ten is likewise venerable, just as the fruit of the Spirit too is set forth as germinating in ten virtues, and the faithful servant offers to the Lord ten minas from the gains of his trading and receives power over ten cities. But because there is one author of all and one fount and "beginning," Christ, therefore the people indeed renders tithes to the ministers and priests, but offers the firstborn to "the firstborn of all creation" and the first-fruits to the "beginning" of all, of whom it is written: "who is the beginning, the firstborn of all creation." See therefore from all these things the difference of the people of the Egyptians and the people of Israel, and the difference of the priests of Pharaoh and the priests of the Lord, and, examining yourself, discern of which people you are and of what order you hold the priesthood. If you still serve the carnal senses, if you still pay tribute by the number five and look to those things which are "visible" and "temporal," and do not look to those things which are "invisible" and "eternal," know that you are of the Egyptian people. But if you always have before your eyes the Decalogue of the law and the ten of the New Testament, which we expounded above, and offer tithes of these, and immolate the firstborn of your sense in faith to "the firstborn from the dead," and refer your first-fruits to the "beginning" of all, you are "a true Israelite, in whom there is no guile." But the priests of the Lord too, if they examine themselves and are free from earthly deeds and from worldly possession, can truly say to the Lord that: "behold, we have left all things, and have followed you," and hear from him that: "you who have followed me, in the regeneration of all things, when the Son of Man shall have come in his kingdom, you also shall sit upon twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel."