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| Argument: Besides Asserting the Future Conflagration of the Whole World, They Promise Afterwards the Resurrection of Our Bodies: and to the Righteous an Eternity of Most Blessed Life; To the Unrighteous, of Extreme Punishment. PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP
Chapter
XI.—Argument: Besides Asserting the Future Conflagration of
the Whole World, They Promise Afterwards the Resurrection of Our
Bodies: and to the Righteous an Eternity of Most Blessed Life; To
the Unrighteous, of Extreme Punishment.
“And, not content with this wild opinion,
they add to it and associate with it old women’s fables:1746 they say that they will rise again
after death, and ashes, and dust; and with I know not what confidence,
they believe by turns in one another’s lies: you would
think that they had already lived again. It is a double evil and
a twofold madness to denounce destruction to the heaven and the stars,
which we leave just as we find them, and to promise eternity to
ourselves, who are dead and extinct—who, as we are born, so also
perish! It is for this cause, doubtless, also that they execrate
our funeral piles, and condemn our burials by fire, as if every body,
even although it be withdrawn from the flames, were not, nevertheless,
resolved into the earth by lapse of years and ages, and as if it
mattered not whether wild beasts tore the body to pieces, or seas
consumed it, or the ground covered it, or the flames carried it away;
since for the carcases every mode of sepulture is a penalty if they
feel it; if they feel it not, in the very quickness of their
destruction there is relief. Deceived by this error, they promise
to themselves, as being good, a blessed and perpetual life after their
death; to others, as being unrighteous, eternal punishment. Many
things occur to me to say in addition, if the limits of my discourse
did not hasten me. I have already shown, and take no more pains
to prove,1747
1747 “And I have
already shown, without any trouble,” is another reading. | that they
themselves are unrighteous; although, even if I should allow them to be
righteous, yet your agreement also concurs with the opinions of many,
that guilt and innocence are attributed by fate. For whatever we
do, as some ascribe it to fate, so you refer it to God: thus it
is according to your sect to believe that men will, not of their own
accord, but as elected to will. Therefore you feign an iniquitous
judge, who punishes in men, not their will, but their destiny.
Yet I should be glad to be informed whether or no you rise again with
bodies;1748
1748 Otherwise,
“without a body or with.” | and if so, with
what bodies—whether with the same or with renewed bodies?
Without a body? Then, as far as I know, there will neither be
mind, nor soul, nor life. With the same body? But this has
already been previously destroyed. With another body? Then
it is a new man who is born, not the former one restored; and yet so
long a time has passed away, innumerable ages have flowed by, and what
single individual has returned from the dead either by the fate of
Protesilaus, with permission to sojourn even for a few hours, or that
we might believe it for an example? All such figments of an
unhealthy belief, and vain sources of comfort, with which deceiving
poets have trifled in the sweetness of their verse, have been
disgracefully remoulded by you, believing undoubtingly1749
1749 Otherwise, “too
credulous.” | on your God.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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