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| Chapter VI. Christians’ Belief in the Resurrection.
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Chapter VI.—Christians’ Belief in the Resurrection.
And on this account we believe that there will be
a resurrection of bodies after the consummation of all things; not,
as the Stoics affirm, according to the return of certain cycles, the
same things being produced and destroyed for no useful purpose, but a
resurrection once for all,438
| 438
[Comp. cap. xvii.,
infra, note 5, p. 72. ἐν ἡμέρα
συντελείας.] |
when our periods of existence are completed, and in consequence
solely of the constitution of things under which men alone live, for
the purpose of passing judgment upon them. Nor is sentence upon us
passed by Minos or Rhadamanthus, before whose decease not a single
soul, according to the mythic tales, was judged; but the Creator,
God Himself, becomes the arbiter. And, although you regard us as mere
triflers and babblers, it troubles us not, since we have faith in this
doctrine. For just as, not existing before I was born, I knew not who
I was, and only existed in the potentiality (ὐπόστασις)
of fleshly matter, but being born, after a former state of nothingness,
I have obtained through my birth a certainty of my existence; in the same
way, having been born, and through death existing no longer, and seen no
longer, I shall exist again, just as before I was not, but was afterwards
born. Even though fire destroy all traces of my flesh, the world receives
the vaporized matter;439
| 439 [A
supposed discovery of modern science. See Religion and Chemistry,
by Professor Cook of Harvard, pp. 79, 101. Revised Edition,
Scribners, 1880.] | and though dispersed through rivers and
seas, or torn in pieces by wild beasts, I am laid up in the storehouses
of a wealthy Lord. And, although the poor and the godless know not what
is stored up, yet God the Sovereign, when He pleases, will restore the
substance that is visible to Him alone to its pristine condition.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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