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| Against the Opinion of Those Who Do Not Believe that the Primitive Men Would Have Been Immortal If They Had Not Sinned.
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Chapter 19.—Against the Opinion
of Those Who Do Not Believe that the Primitive Men Would Have Been
Immortal If They Had Not Sinned.
At present let us go on, as we have
begun, to give some explanation regarding the bodies of our first
parents. I say then, that, except as the just consequence of sin,
they would not have been subjected even to this death, which is
good to the good,—this death, which is not exclusively known and
believed in by a few, but is known to all, by which soul and body
are separated, and by which the body of an animal which was but now
visibly living is now visibly dead. For though there can be no
manner of doubt that the souls of the just and holy dead live in
peaceful rest, yet so much better would it be for them to be alive
in healthy, well-conditioned bodies, that even those who hold the
tenet that it is most blessed
to be quit of every kind of
body, condemn this opinion in spite of themselves. For no one
will dare to set wise men, whether yet to die or already dead,—in
other words, whether already quit of the body, or shortly to be
so,—above the immortal gods, to whom the Supreme, in Plato,
promises as a munificent gift life indissoluble, or in eternal
union with their bodies. But this same Plato thinks that nothing
better can happen to men than that they pass through life piously
and justly, and, being separated from their bodies, be received
into the bosom of the gods, who never abandon theirs; “that,
oblivious of the past, they may revisit the upper air, and conceive
the longing to return again to the body.”602
| 602 Virgil, Æn, vi. 750,
751. | Virgil is applauded for borrowing
this from the Platonic system. Assuredly Plato thinks that the
souls of mortals cannot always be in their bodies, but must
necessarily be dismissed by death; and, on the other hand, he
thinks that without bodies they cannot endure for ever, but with
ceaseless alternation pass from life to death, and from death to
life. This difference, however, he sets between wise men and the
rest, that they are carried after death to the stars, that each man
may repose for a while in a star suitable for him, and may thence
return to the labors and miseries of mortals when he has become
oblivious of his former misery, and possessed with the desire of
being embodied. Those, again, who have lived foolishly
transmigrate into bodies fit for them, whether human or bestial.
Thus he has appointed even the good and wise souls to a very hard
lot indeed, since they do not receive such bodies as they might
always and even immortally inhabit, but such only as they can
neither permanently retain nor enjoy eternal purity without. Of
this notion of Plato’s, we have in a former book already said603
that
Porphyry was ashamed in the light of these Christian times, so that
he not only emancipated human souls from a destiny in the bodies of
beasts but also contended for the liberation of the souls of the
wise from all bodily ties, so that, escaping from all flesh, they
might, as bare and blessed souls, dwell with the Father time
without end. And that he might not seem to be outbid by
Christ’s promise of life everlasting to His saints, he also
established purified souls in endless felicity, without return to
their former woes; but, that he might contradict Christ, he denies
the resurrection of incorruptible bodies, and maintains that these
souls will live eternally, not only without earthly bodies, but
without any bodies at all. And yet, whatever he meant by this
teaching, he at least did not teach that these souls should offer
no religious observance to the gods who dwelt in bodies. And why
did he not, unless because he did not believe that the souls, even
though separate from the body, were superior to those gods?
Wherefore, if these philosophers will not dare (as I think they
will not) to set human souls above the gods who are most blessed,
and yet are tied eternally to their bodies, why do they find that
absurd which the Christian faith preaches,604
| 604 A catena of passages, showing that
this is the catholic Christian faith, will be found in Bull’s
State of Man before the Fall (Works, vol. ii.). | namely, that our first parents were
so created that, if they had not sinned, they would not have been
dismissed from their bodies by any death, but would have been
endowed with immortality as the reward of their obedience, and
would have lived eternally with their bodies; and further, that the
saints will in the resurrection inhabit those very bodies in which
they have here toiled, but in such sort that neither shall any
corruption or unwieldiness be suffered to attach to their flesh,
nor any grief or trouble to cloud their felicity?E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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