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| Chapter LVII
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Chapter
LVII.
See, then, whether we ought to yield to one who,
holding such opinions, calumniates the Christians, and thus abandon a
doctrine which explains the difference existing among bodies as due to
the different qualities, internal and external, which are implanted in
them. For we, too, know that there are “bodies celestial,
and bodies terrestrial;” and that “the glory of the
celestial is one, and the glory of the terrestrial another;” and
that even the glory of the celestial bodies is not alike: for
“one is the glory of the sun, and another the glory of the
stars;” and among the stars themselves, “one star differeth
from another star in glory.”3939
And
therefore, as those who expect the resurrection of the dead, we assert
that the qualities which are in bodies undergo change: since some
bodies, which are sown in corruption, are raised in incorruption; and
others, sown in dishonour, are raised in glory; and others, again, sown
in weakness, are raised in power; and those which are sown natural
bodies, are raised as spiritual.3940
That the
matter which underlies bodies is capable of receiving those qualities
which the Creator pleases to bestow, is a point which all of us who
accept the doctrine of providence firmly hold; so that, if God so
willed, one quality is at the present time implanted in this portion of
matter, and afterwards another of a different and better kind.
But since there are, from the beginning of the world, laws3941
established for the purpose of regulating
the changes of bodies, and which will continue while the world lasts, I
do not know whether, when a new and different order of things has succeeded3942
| 3942 καινῆς
διαδεξαμένης
ὁδοῦ καὶ
ἀλλοίας, etc. For
διαδεξαμένης,
Boherellus would read διαδεξομένης.
Cf. Origen, de Princip., iii. c. 5; ii. c. 3. [See
also Neander’s Church History, vol. 1. p. 328, and his
remarks on “the general ἀποκατάστασις”
of Origen. S.] | after the destruction of the world, and what
our Scriptures call the end3943
(of the ages), it
is not wonderful that at the present time a snake should be formed out
of a dead man, growing, as the multitude affirm, out of the marrow of
the back,3944
| 3944 Cf. Pliny, x. c.
66: “Anguem ex medullâ hominis spinæ gigni
accepimus a multis.” Cf. also Ovid, Metamorphos.,
xv. fab. iv. | and that a bee
should spring from an ox, and a wasp from a horse, and a beetle from an
ass, and, generally, worms from the most of bodies. Celsus,
indeed, thinks that this can be shown to be the consequence of none of
these bodies being the work of God, and that qualities (I know not
whence it was so arranged that one should spring out of another) are
not the work of a divine intelligence, producing the changes which
occur in the qualities of matter.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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