Even if you be healed by drugs (I grant you that point by courtesy), yet it behoves you to give testimony of the cure to God. For the world still draws us down, and through weakness I incline towards matter. For the wings of the soul were the perfect spirit, but, having cast this off through sin, it flutters like a nestling and falls to the ground. Having left the heavenly companionship, it hankers after communion with inferior things. The demons were driven forth to another abode; the first created human beings were expelled from their place: the one, indeed, were cast down from heaven; but the other were driven from earth, yet not out of this earth, but from a more excellent order of things than exists here now. And now it behoves us, yearning after that pristine state, to put aside everything that proves a hindrance. The heavens are not infinite, O man, but finite and bounded; and beyond them are the superior worlds which have not a change of seasons, by which various diseases are produced, but, partaking of every happy temperature, have perpetual day, and light unapproachable by men below.⁴⁸¹

481 [The flavour of this passage comes out with more sweetness in Kaye’s note (p. 198, Justin M.), thus: “Above the visible heavens exist the better ages, αἰῶνες οἰ κρείττονες, having no change of seasons from which various diseases take their orgin; but, blest with a uniform goodness of temperature, they enjoy perpetual day, and light inaccessible to men who dwell here below.” Here Tatian seems to me to have had in mind a noble passage from Pindar, one of the most exquisite specimens of Greek poetry, which he baptizes and sanctifies. Ἴσον δὲ νύκτεσσιν αἰεὶ; Ἴσα δ᾽ἐν ἁμέραις ἄλι- ον ἔχοντες, ἀπονέστερον Ἐσθλοὶ νέμονται βίο- τον οὐ χθόνα ταράσσον- τες ἀλκᾷ χερῶν, Οὐδὲ πόντιον ὕδωρ, Κεινὰν παρὰ δίαιταν · κ.τ.λ. Olymp. ii. Truly the Gentiles reflect some light from the window in the ark of their father Noah. How sweet what follows: ἄδακρυν νέμονται αἰῶνα. Comp. Rev. vii. 7, xxi. 4, xxii.]

482 [Kaye thus renders this passage: “the spirit together with the soul will receive immortality, the heavenly covering of mortality.” Justin, p. 288.]

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