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| Chapter XIV. Of the continuance of the soul.
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Chapter XIV.
Of the continuance of the soul.
Wherefore every one while
still existing in this body should already be aware that he must be
committed to that state and office, of which he made himself a sharer
and an adherent while in this life, nor should he doubt that in that
eternal world he will be partner of him, whose servant and minister he
chose to make himself here: according to that saying of our Lord which
says “If any man serve Me, let him follow Me, and where I am,
there shall My servant also be.”1112
For as the kingdom of the devil is gained by consenting to sin, so the
kingdom of God is attained by the practice of virtue in purity of heart
and spiritual knowledge. But where the kingdom of God is, there most
certainly eternal life is enjoyed, and where the kingdom of the devil
is, there without doubt is death and the grave. And the man who is in
this condition, cannot praise the Lord, according to the saying of the
prophet which tells us: “The dead cannot praise Thee, O Lord;
neither all they that go down into the grave (doubtless of sin). But
we,” says he, “who live (not forsooth to sin nor to this
world but to God) will bless the Lord, from this time forth for
evermore: for in death no man remembereth God: but in the grave (of
sin) who will confess to the Lord?”1113
i.e., no one will. For no man even though he were to call himself a
Christian a thousand times over, or a monk, confesses God when he is
sinning: no man who allows those things which the Lord hates,
remembereth God, nor calls himself with any truth the servant of Him,
whose commands he scorns with obstinate rashness: in which death the
blessed Apostle declares that the widow is involved, who gives herself
to pleasure, saying “a widow who giveth herself to pleasure is
dead while she liveth.”1114
There are then
many who while still living in this body are dead, and lying in the
grave cannot praise God; and on the contrary there are many who though
they are dead in the body yet bless God in the spirit, and praise Him,
according to this: “O ye spirits and souls of the righteous,
bless ye the Lord:”1115
and “every
spirit shall praise the Lord.”1116
And in the
Apocalypse the souls of them that are slain are not only said to praise
God but to address Him also.1117
In the gospel too
the Lord says with still greater clearness to the Sadducees:
“Have ye not read that which was spoken by God, when He said to
you: I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac and the God of
Jacob. He is not the God of the dead but of the living: for all do live
unto Him.”1118
Of whom also the
Apostle says: “wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their
God: for He hath prepared for them a city.”1119
For that they are not idle after the
separation from this body, and are not incapable of feeling, the
parable in the gospel shows, which tells us of the beggar Lazarus and
Dives clothed in purple, one of whom obtained a position of bliss,
i.e., Abraham’s bosom, the other is consumed with the dreadful
heat of eternal fire.1120
But if you care too
to understand the words spoken to the thief “To-day thou shalt be
with Me in Paradise,”1121
what do they
clearly show but that not only does their former intelligence continue
with the souls, but also that in their changed condition they partake
of some state which corresponds to their actions and deserts? For the
Lord would certainly never have promised him this, if He had known that
his soul after being separated from the flesh would either have been
deprived of perception or have been resolved into nothing. For it was
not his flesh but his soul which was to enter Paradise with Christ. At
least we
must avoid,
and shun with the utmost horror, that wicked punctuation of the
heretics, who, as they do not believe that Christ could be found in
Paradise on the same day on which He descended into hell, thus
punctuate “Verily, I say unto you to-day,” and making a
stop apply “thou shalt be with Me in Paradise,” in such a
way that they imagine that this promise was not fulfilled at once after
he departed from this life, but that it will be fulfilled after the
resurrection,1122
| 1122 The punctuation
which Cassian here mentions only to reject and which is rightly
characterized by Alford as “worse than silly,” is also
mentioned by Theophylact. Com. in loc. | as they do not
understand what before the time of His resurrection He declared to the
Jews, who fancied that He was hampered by human difficulties and
weakness of the flesh as they were: “No man hath ascended into
heaven, but He who came down from heaven, even the Son of man who is in
heaven:”1123
by which He
clearly shows that the souls of the departed are not only not deprived
of their reason, but that they are not even without such feelings as
hope and sorrow, joy and fear, and that they already are beginning to
taste beforehand something of what is reserved for them at the last
judgment, and that they are not as some unbelievers hold resolved into
nothing after their departure from this life:1124
| 1124 Augustine (De
Hæres. c. lix.) speaks of “Seleuciani” or
“Hermiani” as denying a visible Paradise, and a future
resurrection; and again in c. lxxxiii. he speaks of some Arabian
heretics, as teaching that the soul died and was dissolved (dissolvi)
with the body and that it would at the end of the world be revived and
rise again. These were the heretics of whom Eusebius speaks in his
Eccl. History Book VI. c. xxxvii., where he tells us that they were
successfully refuted by Origen. It is probably to this last error that
Cassian is here making allusion. |
but that they live a more real life, and are still more earnest in
waiting on the praises of God. And indeed to put aside for a little
Scripture proofs, and to discuss, as far as our ability permits us, a
little about the nature of the soul itself, is it not beyond the bounds
of I will not say the folly, but the madness of all stupidity, even to
have the slightest suspicion that the nobler part of man, in which as
the blessed Apostle shows, the image and likeness of God
consists,1125
will, when the
burden of the body with which it is oppressed in this world is laid
aside, become insensible, when, as it contains in itself all the power
of reason, it makes the dumb and senseless material flesh sensible, by
participation with it: especially when it follows, and the order of
reason itself demands that when the mind has put off the grossness of
the flesh with which it is now weighed down, it will restore its
intellectual powers better than ever, and receive them in a purer and
finer condition than it lost them. But so far did the blessed Apostle
recognize that what we say is true, that he actually wished to depart
from this flesh; that by separation from it, he might be able to be
joined more earnestly to the Lord; saying: “I desire to be
dissolved and to be with Christ, which is far better, for while we are
in the body we are absent from the Lord:” and therefore “we
are bold and have our desire always to be absent from the body, and
present with the Lord. Wherefore also we strive, whether absent or
present, to be pleasing to Him;”1126
and he declares indeed that the continuance of the soul which is in the
flesh is distance from the Lord, and absence from Christ, and trusts
with entire faith that its separation and departure from this flesh
involves presence with Christ. And again still more clearly the same
Apostle speaks of this state of the souls as one that is very full of
life: “But ye are come to Mount Sion, and the city of the living
God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels,
and the church of the first born, who are written in heaven, and the
spirits of just men made perfect.”1127
Of which spirits he speaks in another passage, “Furthermore we
have had instructors of our flesh, and we reverenced them: shall we not
much more be subject to the Father of spirits and live?”1128
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