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| Chapter XVI—Analogy of Death and Sleep, and Consequent Argument for the Resurrection.
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Chapter XVI—Analogy of Death and Sleep, and Consequent Argument for the Resurrection.
And let no one think it strange that we call by the
name of life a continuance of being which is interrupted by death and
corruption; but let him consider rather that this word has not one meaning
only, nor is there only one measure of continuance, because the nature
also of the things that continue is not one. For if each of the things
that continue has its continuance according to its peculiar nature,
neither in the case of those who are wholly incorruptible and immortal
shall we find the continuance like ours, because the natures of superior
beings do not take the level of such as are inferior; nor in men is it
proper to look for a continuance invariable and unchangeable; inasmuch
as the former are from the first created immortal, and continue to exist
without end by the simple will of their Maker, and men, in respect of
the soul, have from their first origin an unchangeable continuance,
but in respect of the body obtain immortality by means of change. This
is what is meant by the doctrine of the resurrection; and, looking to
this, we both await the dissolution of the body, as the sequel to a life
of want and corruption, and after this we hope for a continuance with
immortality,843
| 843 [Job xix. 25. On
which see St. Jerome, Ad Paulinum, cap. 10, tom. iv. 569,
ed. Bened. And, on the text itself, see Pusey on Daniel, p. 504,
London, 1864. A fine passage in Calvin, ad locum: “En igitur
qualis debate esse nostra Fides,” etc. Opp., tom. ii. p.
260, ed. Amsterdam, 1676.] | not putting either our death
on a level with the death of the
irrational animals, or the continuance of man with the continuance of
immortals, lest we should unawares in this way put human nature and life
on a level with things with which it is not proper to compare them. It
ought not, therefore, to excite dissatisfaction, if some inequality
appears to exist in regard to the duration of men; nor, because the
separation of the soul from the members of the body and the dissolution of
its parts interrupts the continuity of life, must we therefore despair
of the resurrection. For although the relaxation of the senses and
of the physical powers, which naturally takes place in sleep, seems to
interrupt the sensational life when men sleep at equal intervals of time,
and, as it were, come back to life again, yet we do not refuse to call
it life; and for this reason, I suppose, some call sleep the brother of
death,844
| 844 [Homer, Iliad,
b. xiv. 231, and Virgil, Æn., vi. 278.] | not as deriving
their origin from the same ancestors and fathers, but because those who
are dead and those who sleep are subject to similar states, as regards at
least the stillness and the absence of all sense of the present or the
past, or rather of existence itself and their own life. If, therefore,
we do not refuse to call by the name of life the life of men full of such
inequality from birth to dissolution, and interrupted by all those things
which we have before mentioned, neither ought we to despair of the life
succeeding to dissolution, such as involves the resurrection, although for
a time it is interrupted by the separation of the soul from the body.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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