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| As the Flesh is a Partaker with the Soul in All Human Conduct, So Will It Be in the Recompense of Eternity. PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP
Chapter XV.—As the Flesh is a Partaker with the Soul in All
Human Conduct, So Will It Be in the Recompense of Eternity.
Come now, let our opponents sever the connection
of the flesh with the soul in the affairs of life, that they may be
emboldened to sunder it also in the recompense of life. Let them deny
their association in acts, that they may be fairly able to deny also
their participation in rewards. The flesh ought not to have any share
in the sentence, if it had none in the cause of it. Let the soul
alone be called back, if it alone went away. But (nothing of the kind
ever happened); for the soul alone no more departed from life, than it
ran through alone the course from which it departed—I mean this
present life. Indeed, the soul alone is so far from conducting (the
affairs of) life, that we do not withdraw from community with the flesh
even our thoughts, however isolated they be, however unprecipitated
into act by means of the flesh; since whatever is done in man’s
heart is done by the soul in the flesh, and with the flesh, and through
the flesh. The Lord Himself, in short, when rebuking our thoughts,
includes in His censures this aspect of the flesh, (man’s heart),
the citadel of the soul: “Why think ye evil in your
hearts?”7371 and again:
“Whosoever looketh on a woman, to lust after her, hath already
committed adultery with her in his heart.”7372 So that even the thought, without operation
and without effect, is an act of the flesh. But if you allow that
the faculty which rules the senses, and which they call
Hegemonikon,7373 has its sanctuary
in the brain, or in the interval between the eyebrows, or wheresoever
the philosophers are pleased to locate it, the flesh will still be the
thinking place of the soul. The soul is never without the flesh, as
long as it is in the flesh. There is nothing which the flesh does not
transact in company with the soul, when without it it does not exist.
Consider carefully, too, whether the thoughts are not administered by
the flesh, since it is through the flesh that they are distinguished
and known externally. Let the soul only meditate some design, the face
gives the indication—the face being the mirror of all our
intentions. They may deny all combination in acts, but they
cannot gainsay their co-operation in thoughts. Still they enumerate
the sins of the flesh; surely, then, for its sinful conduct it
must be consigned to punishment. But we, moreover, allege against them
the virtues of the flesh; surely also for its virtuous conduct
it deserves a future reward. Again, as it is the soul which acts and
impels us in all we do, so it is the function of the flesh to render
obedience. Now we are not permitted to suppose that God is either
unjust or idle. Unjust, (however He would be,) were He to exclude
from reward the flesh which is associated in good works; and
idle, were He to exempt it from punishment, when it has been an
accomplice in evil deeds: whereas human judgment is deemed to be the
more perfect, when it discovers the agents in every deed, and neither
spares the guilty nor grudges the virtuous their full
share of either punishment or praise with the principals who employed
their services.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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