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| Conclusion. Points Postponed. All Souls are Kept in Hades Until the Resurrection, Anticipating Their Ultimate Misery or Bliss.
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Chapter
LVIII.—Conclusion. Points Postponed. All Souls are Kept in Hades
Until the Resurrection, Anticipating Their Ultimate Misery or
Bliss.
All souls, therefore, are shut up within Hades: do
you admit this? (It is true, whether) you say yes or no: moreover,
there are already experienced there punishments and consolations; and
there you have a poor man and a rich. And now, having postponed some
stray questions1834
for this part of my
work, I will notice them in this suitable place, and then come to a
close. Why, then, cannot you suppose that the soul undergoes punishment
and consolation in Hades in the interval, while it awaits its
alternative of judgment, in a certain anticipation either of gloom or
of glory? You reply: Because in the judgment of God its matter
ought to be sure and safe, nor should there be any inkling
beforehand of the award of His sentence; and also because (the soul)
ought to be covered first by its vestment1835
| 1835
“Operienda” is Oehler’s text; another reading gives
“opperienda,” q.d., “the soul must
wait for the restored body.” | of
the restored flesh, which, as the partner of its actions, should be
also a sharer in its recompense. What, then, is to take place in that
interval? Shall we sleep? But souls do not sleep even when men are
alive: it is indeed the business of bodies to sleep, to which
also belongs death itself, no less than its mirror and counterfeit
sleep. Or will you have it, that nothing is there done whither the
whole human race is attracted, and whither all man’s expectation
is postponed for safe keeping? Do you think this state is a foretaste
of judgment, or its actual commencement? a premature encroachment on
it, or the first course in its full ministration? Now really, would it
not be the highest possible injustice, even1836
| 1836 This
“etiam” is “otium” in the Agobardine
ms., a good reading; q.d. “a most
iniquitous indifference to justice,” etc. | in
Hades, if all were to be still well with the guilty even there, and not
well with the righteous even yet? What, would you have hope be still
more confused after death? would you have it mock us still more with
uncertain expectation? or shall it now become a review of past life,
and an arranging of judgment, with the inevitable feeling of a
trembling fear? But, again, must the soul always tarry for the body, in
order to experience sorrow or joy? Is it not sufficient, even of
itself, to suffer both one and the other of these sensations? How
often, without any pain to the body, is the soul alone tortured by
ill-temper, and anger, and fatigue, and very often unconsciously, even
to itself? How often, too, on the other hand, amidst bodily suffering,
does the soul seek out for itself some furtive joy, and withdraw for
the moment from the body’s importunate society? I am mistaken if
the soul is not in the habit, indeed, solitary and alone, of rejoicing
and glorifying over the very tortures of the body. Look for
instance, at the soul of Mutius Scævola as he melts his
right hand over the fire; look also at Zeno’s, as the torments of
Dionysius pass over it.1837
| 1837 Comp. The
Apology, last chapter. | The bites of wild
beasts are a glory to young heroes, as on Cyrus were the scars of the
bear.1838
Full well, then, does the soul even in Hades
know how to joy and to sorrow even without the body; since when in the
flesh it feels pain when it likes, though the body is unhurt; and when
it likes it feels joy though the body is in pain. Now if such
sensations occur at its will during life, how much rather may they not
happen after death by the judicial appointment of God! Moreover, the
soul executes not all its operations with the ministration of the
flesh; for the judgment of God pursues even simple cogitations and the
merest volitions. “Whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after
her, hath committed adultery with her already in his
heart.”1839
Therefore, even for
this cause it is most fitting that the soul, without at all waiting for
the flesh, should be punished for what it has done without the
partnership of the flesh. So, on the same principle, in return for the
pious and kindly thoughts in which it shared not the help of the flesh,
shall it without the flesh receive its consolation. Nay
more,1840
even in matters done through the flesh the
soul is the first to conceive them, the first to arrange them, the
first to authorize them, the first to precipitate them into acts. And
even if it is sometimes unwilling to act, it is still the first to
treat the object which it means to effect by help of the body. In
no case, indeed, can an accomplished fact be prior to the mental
conception1841
thereof. It is
therefore quite in keeping with this order of things, that that part of
our nature should be the first to have the recompense and reward to
which they are due on account of its priority. In short, inasmuch as we
understand “the prison” pointed out in the Gospel to be
Hades,1842
and as we also
interpret “the uttermost farthing”1843
to
mean the very smallest offence which has to be recompensed there before
the resurrection,1844
| 1844 Morâ
resurrectionis. See above, on this opinion of Tertullian, in ch.
xxxv. | no one will
hesitate to believe that the soul undergoes in Hades some compensatory
discipline, without prejudice to the full process of the resurrection,
when the recompense will be administered through the flesh besides.
This point the Paraclete has also pressed home on our attention in most
frequent admonitions, whenever any of us has admitted the force of His
words from a knowledge of His promised spiritual disclosures.1845
| 1845 [A symptom of
Montanism.] | And now at last having, as I believe,
encountered every human opinion concerning the soul, and tried its
character by the teaching of (our holy faith,) we have satisfied the
curiosity which is simply a reasonable and necessary one. As for
that which is extravagant and idle, there will evermore be as great a
defect in its information, as there has been exaggeration and self-will
in its researches.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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