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| Particulars of the Alleged Communication to a Montanist Sister.
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Chapter IX.—Particulars
of the Alleged Communication to a Montanist Sister.
When we aver that the soul has a body of a quality
and kind peculiar to itself, in this special condition of it we shall
be already supplied with a decision respecting all the other accidents
of its corporeity; how that they belong to it, because we have shown it
to be a body, but that even they have a quality peculiar to themselves,
proportioned to the special nature of the body (to which they belong);
or else, if any accidents (of a body) are remarkable in this instance
for their absence, then this, too, results from the peculiarity of the
condition of the soul’s corporeity, from which are absent sundry
qualities which are present to all other corporeal beings. And yet,
notwithstanding all this, we shall not be at all inconsistent if we
declare that the more usual characteristics of a body, such as
invariably accrue to the corporeal condition, belong also to the
soul—such as form1540
and limitation; and
that triad of dimensions1541
| 1541 Illud trifariam
distantivum (Τριχῶς
διαστηματικόν)
Fr. Junius. | —I mean
length, and breadth and height—by which philosophers gauge all
bodies. What now remains but for us to give the soul a figure?1542
Plato refuses to do this, as if it
endangered the soul’s immortality.1543
| 1543 See his
Phædo, pp. 105, 106. |
For everything which has figure is, according to him, compound, and
composed of parts;1544
whereas the soul is
immortal; and being immortal, it is therefore indissoluble; and being
indissoluble, it is figureless: for if, on the contrary, it had
figure, it would be of a composite and structural formation. He,
however, in some other manner frames for the soul an effigy of
intellectual forms, beautiful for its just symmetry and tuitions of
philosophy, but misshapen by some contrary qualities. As for ourselves,
indeed, we inscribe on the soul the lineaments of corporeity, not
simply from the assurance which reasoning has taught us of its
corporeal nature, but also from the firm conviction which divine grace
impresses on us by revelation. For, seeing that we acknowledge
spiritual charismata, or gifts, we too have merited the
attainment of the prophetic gift, although coming after John (the
Baptist). We have now amongst us a sister whose lot it has been to be
favoured with sundry gifts of revelation, which she experiences in the
Spirit by ecstatic vision amidst the sacred rites of the Lord’s
day in the church: she converses with angels, and sometimes even with
the Lord; she both sees and hears mysterious communications;1545
some men’s hearts she understands, and
to them who are in need she distributes remedies. Whether it be in the
reading of Scriptures, or in the chanting of psalms, or in the
preaching of sermons, or in the offering up of prayers, in all these
religious services matter and opportunity are afforded to her of seeing
visions. It may possibly have happened to us, whilst this sister of
ours was rapt in the Spirit, that we had discoursed in some ineffable
way about the soul. After the people are dismissed at the conclusion of
the sacred services, she is in the regular habit of reporting to us
whatever things she may have seen in vision (for all her communications
are examined with the most scrupulous care, in order that their truth
may be probed). “Amongst other things,” says she,
“there has been shown to me a soul in bodily shape, and a spirit
has been in the habit of appearing to me; not, however, a void and
empty illusion, but such as would offer itself to be even grasped by
the hand, soft and transparent and of an etherial colour, and in form
resembling that of a human being in every respect.” This was her
vision, and for her witness there was God; and the apostle most
assuredly foretold that there were to be “spiritual gifts”
in the church.1546
Now, can you refuse
to believe this, even if indubitable evidence on every point is
forthcoming for your conviction? Since, then, the soul is a corporeal
substance, no doubt it possesses qualities such as those which we have
just mentioned, amongst them the property of colour, which is
inherent in every bodily substance. Now what colour would you
attribute to the soul but an etherial transparent one? Not that its
substance is actually the ether or air (although this was the opinion
of Ænesidemus and Anaximenes, and I suppose of Heraclitus also, as
some say of him), nor transparent light (although Heraclides of Pontus
held it to be so). “Thunder-stones,”1547
indeed, are not of igneous substance,
because they shine with ruddy redness; nor are beryls composed of
aqueous matter, because they are of a pure wavy whiteness. How many
things also besides these are there which their colour would associate
in the same class, but which nature keeps widely apart! Since, however,
everything which is very attenuated and transparent bears a strong resemblance to the air,
such would be the case with the soul, since in its material
nature1548
it is wind and
breath, (or spirit); whence it is that the belief of its corporeal
quality is endangered, in consequence of the extreme tenuity and
subtilty of its essence. Likewise, as regards the figure of the human
soul from your own conception, you can well imagine that it is none
other than the human form; indeed, none other than the shape of that
body which each individual soul animates and moves about. This we may
at once be induced to admit from contemplating man’s original
formation. For only carefully consider, after God hath breathed
upon the face of man the breath of life, and man had consequently
become a living soul, surely that breath must have passed through the
face at once into the interior structure, and have spread itself
throughout all the spaces of the body; and as soon as by the divine
inspiration it had become condensed, it must have impressed itself on
each internal feature, which the condensation had filled in, and so
have been, as it were, congealed in shape, (or stereotyped). Hence, by
this densifying process, there arose a fixing of the soul’s
corporeity; and by the impression its figure was formed and moulded.
This is the inner man, different from the outer, but yet one in the
twofold condition.1549
It, too, has eyes
and ears of its own, by means of which Paul must have heard and seen
the Lord;1550
it has, moreover
all the other members of the body by the help of which it effects all
processes of thinking and all activity in dreams. Thus it happens that
the rich man in hell has a tongue and poor (Lazarus) a finger and
Abraham a bosom.1551
By these features
also the souls of the martyrs under the altar are distinguished and
known. The soul indeed which in the beginning was associated with
Adam’s body, which grew with its growth and was moulded after its
form proved to be the germ both of the entire substance (of the human
soul) and of that (part of) creation.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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