System of Sacred Theology — Book 2

2.1.1BOOK TWO. On the end of man, as a citizen of God's kingdom — the absolutely highest and last end, or eternal beatitude.

CHAPTER ONE. Whether there is some highest good of man, and that eternal, and what it is.

The common part of sacred theology pursues three things: the absolutely highest and last end of man, namely eternal beatitude; the subject, that is, man himself as a citizen of God; and the principles on which eternal salvation depends, together with the means by which he is directed to it.

2.1.2II. But for man — the noblest creature and a citizen of God's kingdom — an absolutely highest and last end and good is given, by which he is perfected in every way, and that eternal, which embraces all things to be wished for, as Augustine teaches in book 4 of the City of God, chapter 21.

And in the same sense eternal beatitude, or the possession of the highest and most perfect good, is so called.

2.1.44. Each thing, if it attains its good and end, is perfect — or, if its nature is intelligent, blessed. For no animal that lacks knowledge can be blessed, and it does not fall to things without reason to be blessed, as Augustine teaches in the book of eighty-three questions, question 1; but on the contrary it is imperfect, wretched, and unhappy if it falls from and is deprived of its end and good.

5. The highest good is called also the last, because it is subjected to no other as a means, or is not at all ordered to the attaining of something higher and greater; and most perfect, because it excludes every defect and need, and gives itself to the one who has it so that it may be perfectly well with him.

2.1.5III. But this perfection of the thing that is perfected is necessarily proportioned, so that it cannot be lesser or worse than the thing to be perfected.

For it would not be perfection if it could not perfect its subject — or, what amounts to the same, actuate and exhaust that potency which it has toward perfection, and sufficiently fill its appetite.

IV. Hence it is that to mortal and fleeting things mortal and fleeting perfections also belong, which affect and perfect them as long as they last; but if any thing is eternal and immortal, its good too is eternal and immortal.

For it would be absurd if the perfection of an eternal and immortal thing were placed in something that is by its nature fragile, flowing, and liable to ruin, among those things that are below the first heaven.

2.1.6Dionysius the Carthusian speaks aptly against Scotus: There is not, he says, the same mode of receiving a natural and acquired form and habit as a supernatural and infused form and habit; nor is the inclination of the created mind to a supernatural form and habit judged natural, but rather supernatural — that is, fitting to a power beyond and above the grade, measure, and limit of its natural condition, namely by respect to a supernatural end. Indeed if it consisted as natural, it could be completed and actuated by a natural cause.

And Richard, whom they call the solid Doctor, holds that philosophers, however excellent in talent, who have not been supernaturally illuminated, have never known nor been able to know true and full beatitude. These are signs of the evangelical light, which in the midst of the darkness of the papacy was not wholly obscured among all.

But also Thomas, whose authority even the scholastic crowd prefers to Scotus: All, he says, who have sensed rightly have placed the end of human life in the contemplation of God.

But the contemplation of God is twofold: one through creatures, which is imperfect, inasmuch as the creature is an effect not proportioned to the Creator but infinitely distant from him. Therefore it leads into an imperfect knowledge of God, in which the philosopher places contemplative happiness — which happiness is nevertheless a way, and to it the whole of philosophical cognition is ordered, proceeding from reasons and considerations of creatures.

The other is the contemplation of God by which he is seen immediately through his essence: this is perfect contemplation, and it is had in the homeland, and is possible for man according to the supposition of faith; whence those things that are toward the end must be proportioned to the end, so that man in the state of the way may be led by the hand to that beatitude not by cognition taken from creatures but by cognition inspired from divine light. And this is the doctrine of theology, whose office it is to command all other sciences and to use them in its service.

2.1.7So Thomas. From which it is gathered at once what and why this supernatural doctrine and theology is necessary for man beside and beyond the natural sciences: namely because it raises and directs his true practice — which is according to piety — above nature to his highest end and to the good of eternal joy and glory.

That good cannot be taught clearly enough unless other hypotheses have already been settled in the reader's mind, namely: first, the immortality of the rational soul; second, the state of the same when separated from its body; third, the end of this world; fourth, the resurrection of the flesh; fifth, the last judgment.

When these are rightly established, the highest beatitude of God's kingdom, and of man as citizen of this kingdom, will be explained somewhat more solidly.

2.1.8V. Since therefore man is endowed with a rational soul, which is immaterial, indissoluble, and immortal, such a good suits him as exceeds the measure and duration of the body and endures with the immortal soul itself after departure from the body: when he has obtained it he will be happy and blessed; but if he falls from it he will be extremely wretched.

Man has a rational soul: this is confessed among all, and we all experience it from the operations of the soul in us. For we understand that we arrive from known things at knowledge of unknowns, which is to reason.

From which we gather that there is in us some principle from which this operation flows. This is the soul, which from so excellent an effect we call rational; concerning its nature the following rules are to be observed here in passing.

2.1.91. The rational soul is the true form of man.

I mean a form that is not accidental — such as continuous and perennial motion, which Cicero in the first Tusculan Questions believed Aristotle meant by the word entelechy, and such as the mixture of the primary qualities, which both impious heretics (Carpocrates, Epiphanes, Prodicus, the Cainites and Antitactae, in Theodoret, book 5 On divine decrees, chapter on man) and Galen (in the book That the manners of the soul follow the temperament of the body, chapters 3 and 4, and Epidemic book 6, and book 3 On affected places) imagined as the form of man;

nor an assisting form, such as Averroes (On the soul book 3, chapter 5) thought to be one for all, in reality separated from all, and joined to individuals only through images of phantasy residing in them;

but an informing form, which informs the body and with it constitutes man in a certain species of things.

2.1.11VII. The immortality of the soul is that perfection of it by which, without destruction of its substance, by the kindness of its Creator, it endures forever.

This is opposed to death strictly taken, inasmuch as it is extinction with respect to the destruction of substance. Otherwise certain of the fathers take death more loosely, for change with respect to its state, whatever that finally is. So Bernard: Every change, he says, is a death. And therefore Nyssenus proves that death is implicated in this life, because this life is subject to change.

Augustine agrees in book 3 against Maximinus the Arian bishop, chapter 12, column 730: Immortality, he says, God alone is said to have, because he alone is immutable. For in every changeable nature the change itself is some death, because it makes something in it not to be what it was. Accordingly the human soul itself, which is therefore called immortal because in whatever way, according to its own mode, it never ceases to live, nevertheless has according to that same mode a certain death of its own: because if it was living justly and sins, it dies to justice; if it was a sinner and is justified, it dies to sin — not to mention its other changes, about which it is long to dispute.

Ambrose agrees in book 3 On faith, chapter 2: And the soul, he says, dies. For the soul that has sinned, it itself shall die. Every rational creature receives accidents and is subject to judgment. But in accidents both the penalty of judgment is corruption and also progress.

2.2.1CHAPTER TWO. On the immortality of the soul, from the light of nature and the confession of barbarians, both the ancient and those discovered in our own memory.

That our rational soul, free from destruction, survives after its departure from the body is shown by the light of nature and of Scripture, as by two torches shining in the dark. See our Alsted's Encyclopaedia, book 6, pneumatic part 4, chapter 2.

2.2.2II. By the light of nature: because it has been received by common opinion that the Gentiles — both barbarians and philosophers — have acknowledged this, and on that account have been anxious about its state after this life.

2.2.3III. Barbarians — both the ancient and those recently and newly discovered — have acknowledged it.

IV. The ancient, such as the Getae and the Egyptians. The Getae do not think that they themselves cease, but that he who has died goes across to Zamolxis. The Egyptians judge that their parents and ancestors have been translated to an eternal dwelling. Concerning the former Herodotus bears witness in book 4; concerning the latter Diodorus Siculus in book 1 of the Library, number 93.

2.2.4V. The recent and newly discovered, such as the Guineans, Chinese, Peruvians, Mexicans, Guianans, Tupinamba, Brazilians, and Virginians.

I call these newly discovered. Yet it is not a curious question whether those regions which we now mark with the title of the West Indies were known to the ancient Greeks, Romans, and other nations. The holy Fathers once denied antipodes — Lactantius, Divine Institutes book 3, chapter 24; Augustine, City of God book 16, chapter 9. Indeed the constant opinion of those who asserted antipodes was that their region was wholly unknown to us — in Cicero, On the Republic book 6, and Pomponius Mela book 1, chapter 1 — and that it had still lain hidden in the secret of the divine mind, as Salmuth thought in his notes on Panciroli's New Discoveries, chapter 1; Jacob Martin, professor of Wittenberg, Miscellaneous Disputations, folio 599; Joseph Acosta, book 1, chapter 1.

2.2.5Yet it is more likely that the islands, and the adjacent continent of that New World, were also long ago, many ages before, not wholly unknown to our world, as the polyhistor Christopher Besoldus, professor of Tubingen, demonstrates at length in his Political Discourses on the growth of empire, chapter 4, year 10; and the inhabitants are believed to have been of Cymbric or ancient Teutonic and Scythian origin from Japheth the son of Noah (Genesis 9:19, 27). Compare Nicholas Fuller, Theological Miscellanies book 1, chapter 4; Vandermylius On the Belgian Language chapter 25; Acosta book 1, chapter 24; Claude Duret, History of Languages chapter 78; Peter Bertius in his contracted maps of America; Johannes Goropius Becanus in the Antwerp Origins, in the Niloscopium; Lipsius, Stoic Physiology book 2, dissertation 19.

2.2.6VI. THE GUINEANS, when asked about another life and the last judgment, answered that they indeed were wholly ignorant of the last day of judgment, yet affirmed that the account of men is one thing and that of cattle another; and although they were completely unaware of what becomes of people after death, nor did they know whether that place to which they would be transferred was above or below the earth, they nonetheless usually assign some part of their household goods to the dead, so that wherever they finally arrive they may have what is necessary for daily uses.

So narrates the Description of the African kingdom of Guinea, chapter 21. And from this it is clear, says the author, that they somehow believe another life after this one survives, yet are wholly ignorant of the resurrection of the dead, estimating that as soon as they die they are transferred into another world, where they need varied household goods just as in this world: whence if they happen to lose something, they at once form thoughts of this sort — that perhaps some friend of theirs has come from the other world and carried it off because he could no longer do without it. The same author reports in chapter 44 that nobles, when a king has died, bestow some slave, and even slaughter a dearest wife and sons, so that they may be buried with the king and serve him in the other world.

2.2.7VII. THE CHINESE, whose religion — without the contagion of Mohammedanism — is merely pagan, all believe the immortality of the soul, and after this life a retribution of goods or evils according as each has done good or evil things, and on that account they set up for the dead sepulchral monuments magnificently carved. They believe there is an immortal life in the other world, as Hugo Linschoten witnesses, part 1, chapter 25.

2.2.8VIII. THE PERUVIANS believe the immortality of the soul and eternal life and death. Joseph Acosta, book 5, chapter 7: The Indians who dwell in Peru, he says, hold that the souls of men are immortal, and that eternal life awaits the pious, but eternal damnation the impious. And therefore they can easily be led to take up the faith of this article. But that bodies would one day rise again together with the souls themselves they were wholly ignorant. And from this he writes that it came about that, anxious about the other life, they slaughtered slaves at the funerals of their own, to minister there. Compare Girolamo Benzoni, History of the New World book 3, chapter 20.

2.2.9IX. THE MEXICANS profess the same faith. For Acosta in chapter 8 reports nearly the same things, and that at the funerals of great men those who had been ready in serving the living were compelled by them to die, so that they might render the same services in the other age as well.

X. THE GUIANANS, Epicurean natives of the gold-bearing province, agree with the Peruvians in religion and opinions. For, as Walter Raleigh witnesses in his Description of Guiana, they believe the immortality of souls, adore the sun, and take care that the dearest wives they have had, as also their treasures, be buried with them: but the Orenoqueponi are not indeed buried with their wives, yet with all their treasures; they hope and believe that after these times they will again possess them.

2.2.10XI. THE TUPINAMBA, Brazilians, believe the immortality of souls, being fierce and cannibals. For concerning them Jean de Lery, who spent a year among them, that he does not believe there is any nation in the whole globe of lands more alien from all religion: if nevertheless, by his own witness, they not only believed the immortality of souls, but also held it for certain that after death the souls of those who had cultivated virtue (but they define virtue in their own way — namely to take vengeance on enemies and to devour as many as possible), flying past the highest mountains, are gathered to the souls of their fathers and grandfathers, and there in most pleasant gardens spend a joyful age in perpetual delights and dances: but on the contrary the shades of the cowardly, who have lived without any care of defending the fatherland and ingloriously, are snatched away to Aygnan (so they call the evil demon) and live with him amid everlasting torments.

2.2.11XII. THE VIRGINIANS also believe the immortality of the soul. For as soon as it is loosed from the body they hold that it is transferred according to the works it has done, either to the seats of the gods to enjoy perpetual happiness, or to a huge ditch or pit (which they judge to be situated at the furthest bounds of the world, far from themselves toward the west) unto perpetual fire. This place they themselves call Popogusso, as Thomas Hariot the Englishman related in his narrative of the commodities and rites of Virginia.

2.2.12XIII. This confession of the barbarians shows: 1. That concerning the immortality of the soul and its beatitude or misery after death there is a constant opinion among all nations, drawn from the principles of nature (as discussed in pneumatology), which may seem not so much learned as connate. For in every matter the consensus of all nations is to be counted the law of nature, as Cicero authorizes in Tusculan Disputations book 1; of which common consensus the vulgar opinions of the Gentiles, or the fables of shades, the Elysian fields, and Tartarus sung by the poets — Homer in Odyssey book 11, Virgil in Aeneid 6, and Ovid in Fasti book 2 — also give faith, which rest upon the immortality of the soul as a foundation from which they were born and without which they could not have been born.

2. That upon those things which are indeed true and legitimately deduced from the light of nature, the darknesses of the nations have built false, vain, and impious additions. It is true that souls are immortal, and that after their departure from the body it will go well or ill with them. It is false that happiness comes on account of victory won over external enemies. It is vain that household goods should be buried as if they would be of use in another world. And it is also impious and more than superstitious to slaughter human beings to that end, that provision may be made for the comforts of the dead in eternal life.

2.3.1CHAPTER THREE. On the immortality of the soul from the confession of the best philosophers and from reasons.

Hitherto the immortality of the soul has been established from the confession of the Gentile barbarians: now the same will be demonstrated from the consensus and reasons of the best philosophers.

2.3.2I. I say of the best philosophers, because there are not lacking philosophers of no best sense who have denied, attacked, or at least called into doubt the immortality of the soul. Epicurus, parting company with the better ones, embraced a sentence worthy of himself; Lucretius following him in the third book which he wrote On the Nature of Things attacks the immortality of the soul with good and elegant verses indeed, but with bad and weaker arguments, and tries to prove that minds and light souls are native to living things and mortal. Nay more, as Cicero witnesses in Tusculan Disputations book 1, troops of contradictors come — not only of Epicureans, but Dicaearchus also discoursed against this immortality and wrote three books in which he tries to make souls mortal. So also Panaetius wants them to perish. But the Stoics grant us a loan as to crows: they say minds will remain long, they deny forever.

2.3.3The same Stoics, according to Diogenes Laertius book 6 on Zeno, hold the soul to be generated twice.at all remain until the conflagration; but Chrysippus only those of the wise. Pliny, a philosopher not of better mark, in Natural History book 7, chapter 33, impiously mocks the sentence on the immortality of souls: Those, he says, are inventions of childish deliriums and of a greed never to cease from mortality.

2.3.4Next from the Peripatos there are two interpreters of Aristotle, one Greek — Alexander of Aphrodisias — the other Arab, namely Averroes: both place outside man the agent intellect, which alone they admit to be immortal; to which opinion of Averroes in the previous century Peter Pomponazzi alluded in disputing, and thereby provoked the censure of Pope Leo X in the Lateran Council, session 8. Galen also either denied the immortality of the soul or called it into doubt. For although somewhere he speaks so that he might seem less alien from admitting it, yet in the book That manners follow the temperament of the body he rebukes Plato for asserting the immortality of the mind.

Oppose to him what Isidore of Pelusium, the excellent disciple of the great Chrysostom, says against him in book 4, letter 125. Concerning the cure of bodies, he says, since that man is a most excellent craftsman in this art, let him speak by his own judgment: but concerning the soul let him not take up a contest with the wise nor descend into a struggle for which he is neither trained nor prepared. Galen was indeed a most excellent man in philosophy and medicine, and an impious mocker of the doctrine of Moses, who even in On the Use of Parts book 10 dared to deny that God, if he wished, could make a horse or an ox from ashes — much more, as it seems, about to deny that the first man was produced from a clod of earth, or that the body of each man already reduced to dust would be raised again the same in number.

2.3.5II. But a wonder has occurred: that what by nature's instinct among barbarian nations, and by best reason among the learned (if you except a few), was received without Scripture, that very thing has been denied by some who have acknowledged Scripture. The Sadducees of old taught that there is no resurrection, nor angel, nor spirit (that is, immortal) (Acts 23:8). See also Josephus, Antiquities book 18, chapter 2, and Jewish War book 2, chapter 7. Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History book 6, chapter 30, reports that certain persons arose in Arabia in the third century who so denied the immortality of souls that they did not meanwhile abolish the resurrection, but affirmed that the soul is also raised again together with the body. Augustine from Eusebius mentions the same in Heresies 83. Then John XXIII, Roman Pontiff, said and stubbornly believed that the soul is extinguished and dies together with the human body, otherwise of brutes, as the words of the Council of Constance, session 11, have it.

2.3.6The Photinians of this age lay down those principles from which the mortality of the soul must necessarily be concluded, in the Racovian Catechism, in order to attack the union of the divine and human natures in Christ, in the chapter on the knowledge of Christ. So they say that two substances adverse in properties cannot come together into one person, as mortal and immortal are. Tertullian ascribes a corporeal nature, yet does not take away immortality, but rather vindicates it sharply. But he seems to call every created thing that truly subsists a body, as also Hilary in his Matthew canon 5; therefore he ought not to be numbered among those errors: yet what he ascribes in On the Soul chapter 9 — length, breadth, and height, by which philosophers measure bodies — cannot be excused or explained by any convenient reason. And chapter 36: The soul, he says, sown in the womb together with the flesh, together with it also obtains sex. These things are to be trembled at, not laughed at, as Augustine witnesses in On Genesis Literally book 20, the last chapters.

2.3.7III. The best philosophers asserting the immortality of the soul are Greeks or Latins. Pherecydes the Syrian, as Cicero witnesses in Tusculan Disputations book 1, was first or among the first, and his disciple was Pythagoras, who, though he knew the soul to be immortal, yet did not have it known what happens to it after departure from the body, and embraced metempsychosis, concerning which Ovid in Metamorphoses book 15 introduces him speaking thus: Souls lack death, and always, the former seat left behind, they live in new homes and dwell in those received. The Druids of the Gauls, embracing Pythagoras's opinion, according to Julius Caesar, Gallic War book 6, wish above all to persuade this — that souls do not perish, but after death pass from some to others. And the Brahmans who still survive among the Indians today profess themselves disciples of Pythagoras, as Linschoten witnesses, part 1, chapter 38, and believe that souls are immortal, yet so that they transmigrate from one body into another, and that there is no difference whether they fly into a brute or a human body, according as each has done well or ill. This reciprocal recurring discourse of souls, as Tertullian calls it in On the Soul chapter 28, the Pharisees also of old believed, as Josephus witnesses in Jewish War book 2, chapter 7, and Antiquities book 18, chapter 2; concerning Herod the tetrarch and the Jews the same seems to be gathered from Matthew 14:2 and 16:14 and Luke 9:7.

2.3.8Among the Greeks, among the chiefs of philosophers, for Socratic Plato and for Aristotle the immortality of the soul was a certain and clear thing. For even Cicero, however devoted to the Stoics, thinks those who dissent from Plato and Socrates and from that family ought to be called plebeian philosophers (Tusculan Disputations book 1). Plato pursues this matter expressly in the Phaedo, which when read Cleombrotus of Ambracia, as the same Cicero reports from Callimachus's epigram, though nothing adverse had befallen him, threw himself from a wall into the sea — whom Jerome in letter 25 calls a martyr of foolish philosophy. See also, if you please, Plato in the Phaedrus, Timaeus, Philebus, and Republic; and among Platonists above the rest Marsilio Ficino in Platonic Theology, or On the Immortality of the Soul, a far most learned treatise.

Aristotle left contexts not to be despised for the immortality of the soul in the books On the Soul: book 1, contexts 65 and 66 — he says the intellect does not perish, is something divine and impassible; book 2, context 21 — that the intellect is a diverse genus of the soul, and this alone is separated, as eternal from corruptible; book 3, contexts 4, 6, 7, and 19 — he teaches that it, since it understands universals, is neither mixed nor corporeal; likewise separable from the body, though sense cannot be separated. And context 20 he expressly says immortal and eternal. And On the Generation of Animals book 2, chapter 3: It remains that the intellect alone enters from outside and alone is divine. For it has nothing in common by its act with bodily act.

2.3.9IV. Among the Latins Cicero and Seneca stand for all, who vote for the immortality of the soul. Cicero in On Friendship under the person of Laelius does not assent to those who have begun to argue that souls perish together with bodies, and that all things are destroyed by death. And in Tusculan Disputations book 1 he brings reasons into the middle, as also in On Old Age. But Seneca so often inculcates the immortality of the soul that he seems to have been wholly in it. See Consolation to Marcia chapter 24; to Helvia his mother chapter 11; letters 85 and 102. From which testimonies it is gathered how wisely and rightly Tertullian pronounced in On the Resurrection chapter 3: certain things are known from nature, as the immortality of the soul among many, as our God among all.

2.3.10V. Thus far have been the authorities of the best philosophers: to these can be added not a few reasons by which they were accustomed to establish the immortality of the soul. A heap of reasons after Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero for the immortality of the soul, and a refutation of contrary sophisms, are exhibited especially by Marsilio Ficino in his Platonic Theology, and by Petrus Gregorius of Toulouse in the volume of his Commentary on the Wonderful Art concerning the immortality of the soul. For us these suffice which are sought from its operations and rest, and from the chief inconveniences of the contrary opinion.

REASON I is from the operations of the intellect. For whoever conceives and knows the genera of all things, all grades of natures, even spiritual things such as God and intelligences, and is not, like bodily senses, hurt and weakened by perceiving such excellent objects, but rather is perfected, is reflected upon himself, and understands what and how he knows, abstracts universals from singulars, and those immaterial things have a reason of futures, compares these, and gathers what is of use: he is immortal. But the rational soul by its intellect produces operations of such a kind. Therefore it is immortal.

2.3.11II. From the operations of the will. That which by its will is so carried toward every good as the intellect toward every true thing, delights in the beauty of all things, and in admiring the artifice that shines in singulars, and also in just and honest actions and liberal disciplines; is free, and can itself specify its actions and determine to either part of opposites; often also resists its own body, rules its affections, and operates contrary to what they urge: that is immortal. But the rational soul by its will produces such operations. Therefore it is immortal.

III. From its ultimate rest. Whatever nothing non-eternal fills, and for which neither time nor place nor life nor pleasure nor honor nor empire nor finally any good, however great, when apprehended as mortal and something about to fail, neither all these together nor each singly so satisfy that it rests in them: that is eternal and immortal. But the rational soul is such. Therefore it is immortal and eternal.

2.3.12IV. From the chief inconveniences of the contrary opinion. For if the sentence on the immortality of souls is taken away from human minds, and the contrary persuasion of their destruction is put in its place, there is also taken away and overturned not only all worship of deity and religion, but whatever there is among men of integrity, virtue, justice, and honesty; and from the opposite side is introduced and confirmed the pursuit of the body's delights and pleasures, and a life wholly given to filling carnal desires, and placing the highest good in such enjoyments and delights. For if the soul is of the same nature and condition with flesh or body, why should it pursue anything other than what is pleasing to flesh and body? And if nothing of man remains after the destruction of the flesh, and he lasts only so long as his flesh, why should he not have care of his flesh alone, that by its benefit he may survive as long as possible? Why should he ever discomfort or oppose his flesh? Why look to anything but what is present, and by which the body may be well and kept stuffed and covered?

That these inconveniences necessarily follow the denied immortality of souls has been observed in Wisdom 2, where at verse 1 the wicked first deny and mock it; then, this hypothesis made, they plunge themselves wholly into pleasures (verses 6 and following); third the wise man adds how, that they may have whence to care for their skin and live genially, they spoil and afflict others, and serving their affections define by their power what is lawful and honest (verses 10, 11 and following); fourth the wise man concludes at verse 21 that these have erred in judgment.

VI. THE USE of these reasons is: 1. that we presuppose them in our theology; 2. that we have them ready, so that when need arises we may turn them against those who do not receive the Scriptures.

2.4.1CHAPTER FOUR. On the immortality of the soul from clear testimonies of Scripture.

Hitherto there have been authorities and reasons concerning the immortality of the soul: there follow clear testimonies of the Scriptures, by which it is demonstrated to Christians and to all who receive the Scriptures.

II. And those testimonies are of the Old or of the New Testament.

2.4.2III. In the Old Testament that of Ecclesiastes 12:7 is most clear: the dust (the body produced from dust) will return to the earth as it was (what was made from earth ought to return into earth), but the spirit will return to God who gave it. Here body and spirit or the rational soul are opposed: and as they are of diverse nature and origin, so also they obtain a diverse exit. The body indeed, made from soil and matter, returns or is resolved into that very thing from which it was made — that is, it perishes. But the soul, produced not from any matter but from nothing, when it returns has nowhere to return except to the author who gave it, as Augustine writes in On Genesis Literally book 10.

2.4.3IV. In the New Testament Christ most clearly asserts the immortality of the soul and a nature diverse from the body (Matthew 10:28): do not fear those who kill the body, but cannot kill the soul. If the rational soul were mortal and of the same condition with the body, why could it not be killed as the body is killed? So also the Savior's narrative of the rich man and Lazarus clearly shows that by the death of the body all things are not finished (Luke 16:22 and following). So on the cross, about to meet death for the human race, he solemnly affirms to the penitent thief who was about to act out his soul, Today you will be with me in paradise (Luke 23:43) — with the body indeed nowhere but on the cross and in the tomb, but with the soul with Christ in Paradise.

2.4.4So Paul in Philippians 1:23 desires to depart and to be with Christ. So Stephen the first martyr, stoned and now about to die, says, Lord Jesus, receive my Spirit (Acts 7:59). So John in Revelation 6:9 sees under the altar the souls of those who were slain for the word of God.

2.5.1CHAPTER FIVE. On the state of the soul separated from the body.

Hitherto there has been discussion of the immortality of the soul: there follows its separation from the body, which by the just judgment of God awaits all Adam's posterity — rich as well as poor, those conspicuous for piety as well as the impious and wicked: whence a new state of the soul arises, which is commonly called the state of separation.

For from the time when the first parents, to whom it had been said by God, On whatever day you eat of this fruit, you shall die the death, violated God's commandment, they drew upon themselves not only the necessity of dying, but also upon all their posterity, as the Apostle witnesses (Romans 5:12 and 6:23 and 1 Corinthians 15:22 and 36). With which Wisdom of Solomon 1:13 and 2:24 agree. An example is Luke 16:22.

Hence the Council of Milevis pronounces anathema (canon 1) against the Pelagians who say that a human being goes out from the body not by the desert of sin but by necessity of nature. And the Second Council of Orange (canon 2) strikes with anathema those who deny that the death of the body is the punishment of sin.

2.5.2But the state of freed souls Scripture does not so much express to us as adumbrate by the word house taken figuratively. For concerning the state of the future life, as it regards the soul, almost nothing is properly enunciated in the sacred writings. Rightly indeed Irenaeus (book 2, chapter 35) says it is fitting that earthly things be types of those that are heavenly, yet made by the same God. For spiritual images could not otherwise be assimilated. What is this? Heavenly things cannot otherwise be taught except figuratively. Gregory of Nyssa seems to give the reason of this matter: Nor indeed, he says, let anyone describe to me the figure, habit, and form of that dwelling not made by hand, after the likeness of those figures which now appear in us. For since not only is the resurrection preached to us from the sacred letters, but also a change is promised: it is altogether necessary that it be hidden and utterly unknown into what we shall be changed — inasmuch as no example and no likeness of the things hoped for is seen in this life. See Sanford, On the Descent to Hell, book 2, folios 43 and 44.

II. The state of the separated soul is twofold, common or proper.

III. The common state is each soul's departure from this visible world by dissolution from its body.

2.5.3So Hermes in the Asclepius (p. 61): Death, he says, is a change, because the body indeed is dissolved, but life goes away into obscurity, so that some part of the world daily becomes invisible. The death of the body is when it is forsaken by the soul; of the soul, when it is forsaken by God. And just as when the soul departs the body does not indeed return into nothing, but loses the whole nature of humanity: so also when God departs the soul does not indeed cease to be, but ceases to be what it was, and is no longer a soul, if one may say truly, but — so to speak — a corpse of a soul.

Nor let anyone wonder that corruption is attributed also to the soul above in chapter 1, scholium on aphorism 7. For besides the privation of every good, which is the greatest corruption, which the souls of the damned suffer: even in the most blessed, until they are consummated with bodies resumed, there is privation, there is defect, and therefore there is corruption — though far distant from that which the souls of the impious experience. Nor indeed in the bodies themselves is the reason of corruption the same. The bodies of the pious are dissolved, but that they may put on a heavenly nature; of the impious, that they may lose what good they had: therefore they first melt away into this our earth, from that again to pass into a spiritual earth of eternal corruption. The same reason holds of souls: the force of privation reigns in all for a time, but the souls of the pious by failing advance, while the natural fall of the impious is terminated in eternal precipice.

2.5.4IV. Of this common status there are four grades: (1) the soul's divorce from its body; (2) the loss of the sensitive part; (3) the privation of outward actions; (4) the defect of consummated glory pending the resumption of the body — which may be called so many of its mutations, plagues, and as it were wounds.

2.5.6VI. The second plague of the soul in death is that which snatches from her that part which is common to us with the brutes. That we may understand this privation, some things from others' opinions seem here to be repeated. Paul in Hebrews 4:12 has a division of soul and spirit, from which one may conjecture that the ancients did not altogether foolishly philosophize who constituted three things in the human being — mind, soul, and body — of which they also affirmed the two latter to be mortal.

Nor did Gregory of Nyssa in On the Soul and Resurrection seem to derogate anything from the immortality of the human soul when the irascible and concupiscible parts were said to perish: inasmuch as they are not of the essence of the soul but adventitious from without and as it were placed on the soul's boundary, he shows by these reasons: (1) Whatever is alien from God is also alien from the definition of the soul, which admits nothing except what is proper. (2) Reason fights against these and segregates itself from them as far as it may; but nature does not wage civil war. (3) These have causes from the body, as anger from the heat of blood. Compare Ambrose, On Paradise, chapters 1 and 2. Origen places the same division on Matthew 24:51: He divides him, he says, when his spirit indeed returns to God who gave it, but the soul goes with its body into gehenna. But the just man is not divided, but his soul goes with the spirit to the heavenly kingdoms. To this looks what Jerome writes on Ephesians chapter 5, that he nowhere reads of the death of the spirit, frequently of the soul.

2.5.7This division is supported by Irenaeus (book 5, chapter 6), Chrysostom (homily 13 on Romans), Tertullian at the beginning of On the Trinity, and Athenagoras On the Resurrection. If this opinion is true, the solution is easy of all things that are brought from the Scriptures against the immortality of the mind, and the ancients' soul-sleep, well understood, will contain not much absurdity — the sensitive soul, not the rational, passing as it were into the matter of the soul, as bodies are born from bodies. Concerning which matter Prudentius among the ancients thus: Dry soil receives the body; the breeze snatches the moisture of the soul. An oracle in Pausanias says the soul is carried into the ether. So Psellus: the Greeks carry the soul atermon to the sublunary elements; the Chaldeans even above the moon; but Christians even make it die. Plutarch, On the Face in the Moon's Orb (p. 174): The element of souls, he says, is the moon, for they are dissolved into it just as the bodies of the dead return into the earth. But the sun receives the mind, which gave it. Finally Antoninus in his book On His Life (p. 36) had drawn from the Stoics that the human being consists of three things — soul, body, and spirit: whence he says the mind is a part of God and therefore returns into heaven; but concerning body and soul he philosophizes much, which we here forbear to review. Therefore the abolition of the sensible part is the other plague and mutation of each soul departing from its body, nor indeed will this seem light to him who considers this complaint of the crowd in Gregory of Nyssa.

2.5.8VII. The third plague of the soul in death is that by which it extinguishes all its operations, especially those outward. For that the state of the soul severed from the body is imperfect, and that it has no act, has seemed so to many holy men. Tatian by that argument proves that souls do not become demons: how would souls be operative after death? The soul, by its own resources, barely suffices for action, says Tertullian in On the Resurrection chapter 46. For from its own it has only to think, to will, to desire; but for accomplishing, it awaits the service of the flesh. Deeds are administered through the flesh. The soul alone does nothing, says Nyssen in the first oration On the Resurrection. The spirit of a human being without the body can neither itself advance nor profit another, as Bernard authorizes in Song of Songs sermon 5. And again, where the body shall be wanting, there will be no delusion. So Durandus, whom Pico della Mirandola follows. Angels are said to be moved from place to place insofar as they operate successively in diverse places. But the separated soul is not said to have any operation around a place, or around a body existing in a place, because since by its nature it is determined to a certain body, it cannot move nor act upon another except by means of its own body, but it lacks that while it is separated. Therefore the soul cannot be moved from place to place by reason of operation.

2.5.9VIII. The last plague of the soul in death is that which implants in her a certain burning — painless yet — desire of felicity to be consummated together with the resumed body. Hence Bernard in the treatise On Loving God: The freed souls, he says, even of the saints are bound to bodies — if not by life or sense, certainly by natural affection — so that without these they neither will nor are able to be consummated. And in sermon 4 on the feast of the saints: There will not be integral beatitude until the whole human being is cared for. Nor indeed is this privation to be lightly estimated. Tertullian seems to acknowledge a certain great punishment in it at the end of On the Soul: In sum, he says, when we understand by that prison which the Gospel demonstrates the inferi, and interpret the last farthing — a little also deferred by the delay of the resurrection — as to be paid there: no one will doubt that the soul pays something among the inferi, the fullness of the resurrection through the flesh also being safe.

And indeed their desire toward bodies is vehement. Therefore in the Apocalypse they are even introduced crying under the altar, concerning which Gregory in the Moral Exposition on Job chapter 1, book 2, chapter 4: What is it to say that souls petition for vengeance, except to desire the last day of judgment and the resurrection of extinguished bodies? For their great cry is a great desire. And Bernard in sermon 3 on Palm Sunday: Those who die in the Lord rest from labor, but they do not meanwhile rest from crying. Finally under the throne of God the souls of the slain cry, because although they have nothing that molests, they do not yet have what delights, until the resurrection follows rest, until Passover follows the sabbath.

2.5.11XI. These things concerning the common status: the proper status of souls, when they have gone out from the age, is likewise twofold — the status of joy or of the kingdom of the heavens, by which the souls of the pious are received, and of torment, into which the souls of the impious are delivered, which in the same sense is called gehenna (Hypognostics book 5). So Christ teaches (Matthew 25:34, 41; Mark 16:16; Luke 16:23; John 3:18). Hence Irenaeus (book 5, chapter 27), making two orders of the dead, says the impious and blasphemers are sent into eternal fire, while to the just and equitable life is given and eternal brightness is put around them. Tertullian also gathers the same in On Idolatry chapter 13: If we rejoice with the age, it is to be feared lest we mourn with the age hereafter. But let us mourn while the age rejoices, and we shall rejoice when the age afterward mourns.

So Lazarus is about to obtain refreshment in Abraham's bosom; on the contrary the rich man, comforted in the torment of fire, compensates alternating turns of evils and goods by rival retribution. Nor besides these two is there a third place and status of the dead, nor otherwise Fulgentius to Venantius On Penitence chapter 7: That we may know, he says, that those who delight in temporal joys and contemn divine commands are to be burned with eternal fires, but those who patiently bear temporal evils with the fear of God will obtain eternal rest: let us attend to the purple-clad rich man and poor Lazarus. Nor is it to be said that these things have place after the resurrection indeed, but not before it. For as Olympiodorus truly says on Ecclesiastes 1:3: In whatever place a human being is found when he dies, in that grade and order he remains forever. And Augustine to Hesychius (letter 80): In what state each one's own last day finds him, in that the last day of the world will seize him. And sermon On Time 232: Let no one deceive himself, brothers. For there are two places, and there is no third. Whoever has not deserved to reign with Christ will perish with the devil without any doubt.

2.5.12XII. Neither the joys of the pious nor the torments of the impious are finished: but the status of both remains the same from death until the day of judgment, nor after the soul's exit from the body can humans perceive any benefit by any prudence and study of humans. This from Christ's words in Luke 16:26 Epiphanius gathers (Heresy 59 against the Cathars) and Chrysostom (homily 2 on Lazarus) and the author of Questions and Responses to the Orthodox. So also Cyprian in tract 1 to Demetrianus (folio 32): When departure from here shall have occurred, there is already no place of penitence, no effect of satisfaction. For that reason what Damascene — or whoever else is the writer of the oration concerning those who have departed this life with faith — says, that the soul of Falconilla, although dead without washing and faith, was yet saved by Thecla's prayers: that conflicts with the judgment of the sacred letters and of purer antiquity.

XIII. Nor is return to the lands granted to a soul, from where it has once been carried, by any magical power. Tertullian concludes this from Christ's words already praised, in On the Soul chapter 57: Enough, he says, has the Lord sanctioned in that argument of the resting poor man and the groaning rich man from Abraham's person, that a messenger of the infernal disposition cannot be relegated: which might even then have been permitted, that Moses and the prophets might be believed. But although God's power recalled some into bodies for proofs of his right, it will not therefore be communicated to the faith and boldness of sorceresses, and the deceit of dreams, and the license of poets.

2.5.13XIV. The positive and received sentence of the ancients down to our Sardian age was that the souls of the faithful of the Old Testament were not received into paradise before Christ by his death had unlocked it and first entered it with the thief. But this is among those questions on account of which the Church ought least to be troubled or split, as Calvin authorizes (Institutes book 4, chapter 1, §12) — especially if there is consensus in this, that the souls of the ancient fathers immediately from their departure obtained beatitude and the beneficent presence of God. Theophilus of Antioch among the ancients (Allegories book 4): In these things also, he says, that he sees Abraham among the infernal, this reason is thought by some to underlie, that all the saints before the advent of the Lord Jesus Christ are said to have descended even to the inferi, though into a place of refreshment.

So John Chrysostom (homily 4 on Mark), Jerome to Heliodorus in the epitaph of Nepotianus, likewise to Paula on the death of Blesilla and on Ecclesiastes chapters 3 and 9, Augustine (City of God book 20, chapter 15, and letter 99 to Evodius), the Council of Toledo under Honorius celebrated in the year 633 (chapter 1): He descended, it says, to the inferi, that he might rescue the saints who were held there — which sentence clearly also assert Irenaeus, Tertullian, Origen, Gregory of Neocaesarea, Eusebius, Macarius of Jerusalem, Basil, Athanasius, Epiphanius, Cyril of Jerusalem, Ambrose, Rufinus, Synesius, and even among the juniors Zwingli on Hebrews 11:39–40, Calvin in the Psychopannychia, Bullinger on Luke 16:23 and Hebrews 9:8 and 1 Peter 3:19, and Martyr on 2 Kings 2:13.

2.5.14XV. The fathers who lived before the four-hundredth year of Christ judged that the souls of the faithful, after Christ had opened paradise, are received into paradise immediately from their departure.

XVI. But in the manner of speaking they seem to differ much, because some say they are received at once into heaven, others will have them detained among the inferi even to the last day.

XVII. Although nothing seems more diverse from heaven than the inferi: yet if we weigh those fathers' mind rather than their words, we shall not find among these so great a contradiction as it seems. For under the name of the inferi they do not understand a place of torments, but either the more common (so they call it) status of separated souls, or an invisible place defined by God, which some place below, some within the earth, some outside the world, some even think unknown to humans. See Sanford and Parker, On the Descent to Hell, book 2, sections 44, 45, 53, 54, 55.

XVIII. But in this all agree, that souls in this state they certainly await with joy the blessed resurrection and the consummation of glory

XIX. Nor do we seem about to do rightly if on that account we move controversy against those fathers, or others who thus far agree, as if they were badly catholic. See the most learned Gerhard Vossius On the State of the Separated Soul, question 2, thesis 5; Hugh Sanford and Robert Parker in four most erudite books On the Descent of Our Lord Jesus Christ to Hell, solidly discussing this great question of hell from the ancients.

2.5.15XX. But Origen, laying the foundations of the papal purgatory from Plato's dogma, also expressed by Virgil in Aeneid book 6, first imported into the church a fire by which souls after this life would be purged from sins. XXI. Ambrose, Hilary, Jerome, and Rufinus followed Origen in this matter.

XXII. Yet Origen's purgatory differs from the papal in three ways. (1) By reason of persons: because according to the papalists only those are purged by fire whose souls are bound by the guilt of some temporal punishment, or who migrate from this life with some venial sins; but according to Origen and others who preceded Augustine, all mortals except Christ alone will undergo this fire. (2) By reason of time: because the papalists teach souls are to be purged by this fire immediately from departure, those ancients only on the last day of judgment. (3) By reason of mitigation: because the papalists judge that purgatorial punishments can be taken away or mitigated by the offerings and prayers of the living — which sort of thing Origen neither felt nor said, nor those we touch who followed him.

XXIII. Therefore purgatory such as the papalists hand down was unknown before Augustine's times: but to Augustine it seemed doubtful; yet from Gregory's age in the Roman church it has been held certain from lying revelations and visions; but the Greek church does not receive it even today. All these things Gerhard Vossius, a man of infinite reading and doctrine, has most rightly built up in On the State of the Separated Soul. If any things are brought from antiquity to the contrary, they are either from spurious and bastard writings, or they speak of the purgation of this age which is done by the fire of tribulation (as Augustine), or of the purgation of fire which may be done at Christ's second advent. Compare Doctor Johannes Crocius's treatise On Purgatory, and others of our people.

2.6.1CHAPTER SIX. On the end of this world.

From the state of the separated soul there follows the end of this world, by which the heavens (Enchiridion chapter 91) will pass away with a great noise not from a natural cause but from the free determination and omnipotence of their Creator; the elements burning with heat will be dissolved, and the earth and the works that are in it will be burned up.

2.6.2It is called συντέλεια τοῦ αἰῶνος, the consummation of this age (Matthew 13:40 and 18:20); τέλος, end (Matthew 24:6, 14); harvest (Matthew 13:39 and Revelation 14:15–16 and Joel 3:13). This world, as it had a beginning, so also will have an end (Revelation 21:1; 2 Peter 3:5, 6, 7, 8, 12).

Nor is Didymus to be approved here, in his exposition on the canonical epistles, observing that mention is made here of a threefold world — of the ancient or past (verse 6), of the present (verse 7), and of the future after this one (verse 13) — which things he thinks were sprinkled into this epistle by heretics dreaming of several creations and periods of worlds. But this conjecture deceived him. For that Peter says the world perished by the flood sufficiently indicates that he is not speaking of three worlds diverse in essence, as the followers of Origen thought, but only pointing out that just as this world once began and was corrupted by water, so the same will sometime perish by fire.

2.6.3And indeed this dogma has always been among the things confessed among Christians, whom therefore Porphyry mocks, as Augustine witnesses (City of God book 20, chapter 24), following Plato, who in the Timaeus hands down that the world began but will not perish. Others also withdrew further, as Xenophanes, who thought the world neither began nor will cease, as Plutarch is author in On the Opinions of the Philosophers book 2, chapter 4, and that long before Plato. For Xenophanes lived around the sixtieth Olympiad, that is, in the times of Cyrus and Tarquinius Superbus. Aristotle with great effort defends this sentence of Xenophanes (Physics book 8 and On the Heavens). Averroes defends Aristotle tooth and nail in his first disputation On the Eternity of the World, where he answers Algazel's solutions.

2.6.4But fire is thought to be taken by metaphor for divine wrath and judgment by Franciscus Puccius of Filidino, as Nicolaus Serarius the Mainz Jesuit notes (book 1 against Puccius, chapter 2, and book 2, chapter 2): yet that it is taken properly is argued by this, that it is said that as it formerly perished by water, so on that day it will perish by fire. Hence Augustine (City of God book 20, chapter 16): Then, he says, the figure of this world will pass away by the conflagration of worldly fires, just as it was done by the inundation of worldly waters in the flood.

But what that fire will be and whence it will come, Hieronymus Magius disputes in On the Burning of the World book 3: yet we love Augustine's modesty, who in the place praised judges that no one, so far as he himself knows, has known these things. But here it is controverted whether the starry heaven also is to be purged by fire. The most ancient fathers affirm it. Augustine denies it, and with him the juniors. We hold the ancients' sentence, resting on the sayings of Scripture by which we have already proved that this world will perish, to be preferable to the other.

2.6.5Augustine dissents (City of God book 20, chapter 24), and speaking doubtfully on Psalm 101: There are, he says, three heavens of heavens superior in the firmament. But whether they themselves also will perish by fire, or only those heavens which also perished in the flood, is a somewhat more scrupulous debate among the learned; nor can it easily be explained, especially in the narrowness of time. But how many now follow Augustine's sentence, Sixtus of Siena shows (Sacred Library book 6, annotation 246) and Feuardentius on Irenaeus book 4, chapter 6.

Against whom you will set the fathers, both all the Greeks and the Latins who wrote before Augustine — namely Justin Martyr, or whoever else, in the Confutation of Aristotle's Dogmas book 2 On the Heavens denying that the heavens can be corrupted; Irenaeus book 4, chapter 6; Ambrose Hexaemeron book 1, chapter 6; and among juniors also Augustinus Eugubinus on 2 Peter 3; and Hieronymus Magius On the Burning of the World book 2, chapters 6 and 7.

2.6.6II. Whether this world will truly perish as to substance, or only as to its qualities, is uncertain. The more common sentence is that the world will not simply perish but is to be renewed, and Paul strongly urges this (Romans 8:19, 20, 21, 22), and because new heavens and a new earth are often mentioned in the Scriptures.

The ancients, whose sentences Gerhard Vossius, a man of diffuse learning — whose works we cite here gathers as it were in a medley (disputation On the End of the World, thesis 3, page 280), all thought that this world will not utterly perish but is to be renewed: as Irenaeus, Andrew of Caesarea, Probus in Epiphanius, Eusebius, Philastrius, Cyril of Jerusalem, Chrysostom, Cyril of Alexandria, Theodoret, Aeneas of Gaza, Elias of Crete on Gregory of Nazianzus's tenth oration, Basil the emperor Constantine, Oecumenius, Euthymius. From the Latins: Hilary, Jerome, Quintus Julius Hilarianus, Augustine, Julian of Toledo, Bede, Alcuin, Ambrosius Ansbertus, Olympiodorus, Haymo, Anselm or Hervaeus Brito, Peter Lombard, Otto of Freising, Hugh Etherianus, Hildegard, Vincent of Beauvais, Nicholas of Lyra, Ludolph the Saxon Carthusian, and others.

2.6.8III. Nor is it more certain to humans when this world's conflagration will definitely and precisely be future, so that, security shaken off, they may always prepare themselves for it by watching, praying, and performing the exercises of repentance.

For wisely Augustine (City of God book 18, chapter 53): It is altogether importune, he says, that that be asked. And he adds: If it were profitable for us to know this, by whom better than by God's own Master would it be said to the asking disciples? For they were not silent about it before him, but asked of him present, saying, Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel? But he: It is not yours, he says, to know the times which the Father has put in his own power (Acts 1:6–7). They had certainly not asked about day or hour or year, but about the time, when they received that answer. So also Anastasius of Sinai (Hexaemeron book 7): The true exit and end of the age, he says, only the creator of times and of all things knows. And Vincent of Beauvais (Natural Mirror book 32, chapter 102): How much time remains until the end of the age, it is certain that no mortal knows, unless perhaps the Lord has revealed it to someone by special grace. For he who says It is not yours to know commands the fingers of all who calculate about this matter to rest.

2.6.9Therefore certain mathematicians and philosophers are in vain who say that it will be in the great year, within which the sun, moon, and all the stars return to the same place of heaven whence they set out; on which see Censorinus On the Birthday chapter 18. The opinion of the Jews and of certain fathers also seems propped on uncertain conjectures — that the world will last six thousand years: two before the law, two under the law, two after the law under the Messiah. That this was said by Elijah the Tishbite has been believed not only by Jews but by many of the Christians, as by Stratonicus bishop of Cumae, as Sixtus of Siena proves from his collectanea (Sacred Library book 2, under Elias), who himself also seems to have been of that sentence, and also Ludovicus Vives (City of God book 20, chapter 7).

We confess indeed that it is Elijah's — but not the Tishbite's, but a Cabbalist Rabbi's, whose comment, as Genebrard observes at the start of his Chronography, is read in the Talmud, in the treatise Sanhedrin and in the treatise On Idolatry and in the treatise On the Sabbath.

2.6.10The reasons by which the Rabbis defend the truth of this saying, Rabbi Isaac on Genesis chapter 1 offers four. (1) Because the first verse of Genesis contains א six times, by which a thousand is denoted. (2) Because God made heaven and earth in six days and rested on the seventh; but a thousand years before God are as one day. (3) Because God, both in days and in years, indicates by the sixfold the time of labor and by the sevenfold the time of rest. For he commanded us to work six days and on the seventh to rest from all work: he also granted a six-year period to agriculture, but in the seventh year enjoined rest both on the field and on the cultivator. (4) Because the six first makers of the human race died — namely Adam, Seth, Enos, Cainan, Mahalalel, Jared — but Enoch, who is the seventh, happily translated into a place known to God, still lives.

To which reasons some of the juniors add: (5) Because when the human race was corrupted God said (Genesis 6:3), My spirit will not remain in man forever, for he is flesh: and his days will be one hundred twenty years — where first they understand the time of repentance granted before the flood, which was 120; if you take it fifty times, the number of six thousand results. (6) They also gather the same from Moses' age. For he lived 120 years (Deuteronomy 34:7): forty years in Pharaoh's court (Acts 7:23), forty in exile with Jethro (Exodus 2:15 and 3:1), by which two thousand years under the law are adumbrated; likewise he ruled the Israelite people forty years in the desert (Exodus 16:35), by which two thousand years under Messiah's empire are signified. (7) To these they add that Noah's ark rested in the seventh month (Genesis 8:4); that Moses was in the cloud six days and on the seventh was called by the Lord (Exodus 24:16); that when the Israelites had gone around Jericho six days, on the seventh day its walls fell (Joshua 6:16); likewise that the angel foretold to Esdras (4 Esdras 7:30) that the age would be of seven days; further that seven trumpets (Revelation 8:2) and seven bowls (Revelation 16:1) are commemorated, and certain other things of the same kind. Therefore what Christ said to the Apostles present, let us think said also to us: It is not yours to know the times which the Father has put in his own power (Acts 1:7).

2.6.11IV. But God has revealed in Scripture an indefinite time of the last day, and various things signify that it is not so very remote from this our age. Some declare simply that Christ's advent is approaching; others are immediately joined with Christ's advent. Of the former mark are: (1) the conversion of the Jews predicted (Romans 11:25; Revelation 3:9 and 7:4–8) — see Finus Hadrianus in The Scourge of the Jews book 7, chapter 20; (2) the preaching of the Gospel through the whole world, as Augustine wills (letters 78 and 80 to Hesychius), Jerome on Matthew chapter 24, Origen tractate 28 on Matthew, Prosper's reply to the fourth chapter of the Gauls, Ambrose on Luke book 10, the author of the Incomplete Work homily 48 on Matthew, Damascene On the Orthodox Faith book 4, chapter 27. From the more recent: Lyra, Cajetan, Maldonatus on Matthew 24, Bellarmine On the Roman Pontiff book 3, chapter 4, Suarez disputation 50, tome 2.

2.6.12Of the latter mark are things in the world, in which both heaven is beheld and the globe of earth and sea (Luke 21:25–26). On the Scriptures and Ecclesiastical Dogmas book 3, tractate 3, folio 159. The Jews hand down fifteen signs which will precede the last day by fifteen days, which Thomas recounts from Jerome (Sentences book 4, distinction 48, question 1, article 4). But that they assign to each sign its own day is Rabbinic.

Hither they also refer that the sign of the cross will appear in heaven, and they gather that from Matthew 24:30. Remaclus de Vaulx in Divine Harpocrates or On the Consummation of the World part 2: By this sign, he says, both Greeks and Latins with consenting minds assert that Christ's cross is signified. And Lucas Pinellus On the Other Life book 2, chapter 20: By this sign of the Son of Man, he says, all interpreters, both Greek and Latin, affirm that the cross is signified. Whom Maldonatus refutes on Matthew chapter 24. It seems simpler if the sign of the Son of Man is understood as the Son of Man himself coming in a cloud (Luke 21:27), whose sight will be the most certain sign of the world's end. By a similar phrase the sign of circumcision is taken for circumcision itself (Romans 4:11). See the ocean of antiquity and learning, Gerhard Johann Vossius, disputation On the Advent of Christ, theses 5–9.

2.6.13V. Since this world with all its goods will soon perish and cannot grant perpetual quiet and tranquillity to our mind, it is extreme madness and misery so to cling to it that by love of it you lose the true good; but it belongs to Christian wisdom and felicity in this life to send a farewell to the world and its goods, so that after this life you may enjoy the eternal good. Hither looks Paul's warning (1 Corinthians 7:29, 30, 31) and David's (Psalm 49:4, 7, 12, 13, 15, 20, 21).

2.7.1CHAPTER SEVEN. On the resurrection of the flesh.

The disputation concerning the end of this world having been settled: there follows the resurrection of the flesh, which is a new, inseparable, and definitive union of souls — as many as have departed from their bodies by death — with those same bodies, future on the last day of this age, by the power and command of God, so that each one may be presented before the tribunal of Christ the judge to God and may carry away, correspondingly to what he has done, either everlasting good or everlasting evil.

2.7.2For Sacred Scripture leads us further than where the light of reason can. For it teaches that this immortal soul will sometime again be joined to its body, and that the body itself also will be partaker of immortality: which is nothing other than the resurrection of the flesh, or of that very body from which the soul formerly departed, which has been consumed by worms, or reduced to ashes, or corrupted by any other chance and mode — which we Christians profess to believe as an article of our faith in the Apostles' Creed and in the other catholic symbols.

2.7.3II. I call the union new, because the soul, which formerly when a human is generated had been united to the body and separated from it by death, is now again united.it inseparable, because it will never again be separated but will remain united forever — whereas concerning those who were raised by Christ, the prophets, and the Apostles, a new union indeed was made, but one which was again dissolved by death.

III. But it can be asked, since the article of Christian faith concerning the resurrection of the flesh is said purely and properly, whence it is that certain vestiges of it are also observed in the minds and opinions of the nations? For Ariovistus and the Germans in Appian On the Gallic Wars are said to be despisers of death because of hope of recovering life. Indeed some also report concerning the American barbarians that they had some sense of resurrection. For the Spaniards, who that they might possess the riches customarily buried with funerals — as we said above — disturbed bones with opened tombs, were asked by the Peruvians not to do what might perhaps hinder the resurrection.

2.7.4Yet these authors contradict Joseph Acosta, praised by us above. But if anything concerning resurrection was believed by the barbarians, it must be established that it was passed down to them through tradition, as though from their ancestors, just as the opinion concerning the flood, which was not itself utterly unknown. See the notes on Benzoni book 1, chapter 10. And indeed if we refer knowledge of such mysteries to nothing other than the traditions of the ancestors, it is certainly less wonderful that Seneca in letter 36 alludes to resurrection. And what would be said by a Christian concerning resurrection more expressly and rightly than what is transcribed under Phocylides' name? Which poem Joseph Scaliger in the Eusebian Animadversions number 1480 judged not to be of that most ancient Phocylides, but of some Alexandrian Hellenist, or — what he thinks nearer the truth — of some Christian. Eusebius also (Preparation for the Gospel book 11, chapter 11) tries to persuade that the resurrection of the dead was known to Plato: but it is more probable that he alluded not so much to the resurrection believed by us as to the παλιγγενεσία and ἀποκατάστασις such as the Platonists invent when the great year is completed.

2.7.5IV. For the rest, whatever Democritus — whom Pliny mocks (Natural History book 7, chapter 55) — or others of the same flour stammered concerning resurrection, they could have received that whole only by hearsay, either from tradition, which yet for the most part they either received corrupt from their teachers or themselves corrupted: but from reason or from principles which all would admit as known apart from revelation they could not draw it. For there is none of those from which it is permitted to prove that the resurrection of bodies will sometime be future.

2.8.1CHAPTER EIGHT. It is demonstrated that the resurrection of the flesh is denied by some to whom the authority of Scripture is established.

The resurrection of the flesh is wrongly denied by some who acknowledge the authority of Sacred Scripture, but is firmly asserted by others and better ones.

II. It is denied either by the ancients or by certain more recent ones.

III. By the ancients, as by the Sadducees, Hymenaeus, Philetus, and the like.

2.8.2I. Concerning the Sadducees it is established from the Gospel history and the Acts of the Apostles. Hymenaeus and Philetus said that the resurrection had already happened (2 Timothy 2:18), because they judged that no other than a spiritual one — which is from sins through regeneration — is promised, as Haymo and Lyra explain, or because they placed the resurrection in succession through the procreation of children, as Theodoret hands down concerning them, and Augustine concerning the disciples of Severus and Hermias (Heresy 89 to Quodvultdeus).

2.8.3II. Besides these Augustine also teaches that Carpocrates denied the resurrection (Heresy 7); a certain Marcus (Heresy 14); the Cainites (Heresy 21); the Severians (Heresy 24); the Hieracites (Heresy 47); the Seleucians and Proclianites (Heresies 59 and 60).

III. Irenaeus also, writing against the Valentinians or Gnostics (book 5, chapter 4 and following), says that they excluded the salvation of the flesh, denied it, despised its regeneration, saying that it is not capable of incorruptibility and of God's gift, which is eternal life.

IV. Tertullian likewise in On Prescriptions chapter 15 teaches that the resurrection was denied by that whole Gnostic bilge: Paul, he says, notes deniers and doubters of the resurrection. This opinion is proper to the Sadducees: Marcion and Apelles and Valentinus usurp part of it. But why he says part, he gives the reason in chapter 16 — namely that the Sadducees admit salvation neither of soul nor of flesh, namely immortality and restoration: but these who brandished the name of Christians conceded it indeed to the soul, but by no means to the flesh. Whence also Tertullian in chapter 20 called them partiarii of the Sadducees' sentence.

2.8.4Toward the end of On Prescriptions he indicates that in the first ages heretics attacked this article of our faith — namely Saturninus, Basilides, the Ophites, Carpocrates, Cerinthus, Valentinus, Ptolemy, Secundus, Marcus, and Colarbasus, Cerdo and his disciple Marcion of Pontus, Lucian, Apelles. Concerning each see Epiphanius bishop of Cyprus, who teaches that from Simon Magus, parent and leader of the heretics in the New Testament Church, the resurrection was denied, and that the sects born from him persisted in this error. Add to him Theodoret (Heretical Fables book 1). Johannes Philoponus the Grammarian wrote a book On the Resurrection in which he takes away the resurrection of bodies and speaks many things inconsiderately, even mocking the holy fathers, as Photius notes.

V. In sum, if we unroll ecclesiastical history and the authors who wrote on heresies by design, it is plain that nearly all the heretics of the prior ages denied the resurrection of the flesh.

2.8.5IV. From the more recent who profess Christ's name, not indeed so many proceed to that temerity and profanity that they openly deny the resurrection of the flesh: yet there are not lacking those who are not ashamed to call back from hell the ancient heresies interpolated and crusted over even in this part of doctrine. Under the emperor, son of Ahenobarbus, Amalric the Paris doctor, having embraced this error among others, was burned at Paris with companions and followers. Pope John XXIII denied the resurrection of the flesh just as he denied the immortality of the soul.

Concerning the Libertines arisen in our fathers' memory, having many things in common with Cerdo, Valentinus, and Marcion, the great John Calvin (Instruction chapter 3): Whatever, he says, Christians hold concerning eternal life, concerning the resurrection, is a fable to them. For they imagine this — that the human soul, which is God, returns to itself when death has come, not so that it may live as a human soul but as God himself. And chapter 22: They laugh, he says, at every hope which we have concerning the resurrection, and say that what we still await has already happened to us.

2.8.6If it be asked how they understand that, they say namely that a human may know that his soul is an immortal spirit perpetually living in the heavens; and that Christ by his death abolished the false opinion, and by that reason restored to us the life which is in him, so that we may know that we by no means die. But also the Photinians, Weigelians, and Rosicrucians of our time and like fanatics recook this error of Valentinus, and above the rest the more superstitious chemists, going on foot into Theophrastus Paracelsus's opinions and certain trifles, deceived by a certain analogy of their art, dare to evoke from three as it were worlds — namely elemental, angelic, and divine — threefold bodies, nay even souls and spirits: against whom the catholic faith is to be opposed courteously from the perfume-boxes of the sacred letters, as the midday sun by which the dusky and dark dawn of their wisdom is scattered with temples and open doors of hearts.

2.8.7But Franciscus Feuardentius shamelessly insults Farel on Irenaeus book 5, chapter 2, and writes that he goes off into the camps of the Simonians and Marcionites, because the resurrection of the flesh seems to him among the ἀδύνατα, among those things which cannot happen. For Farel well knew that things impossible with humans are possible with God (Luke 18:27), for whom no word will be impossible (Luke 1:37): but he wished only to indicate that by human judgment it seems impossible — inasmuch as he proves by a letter written to Calvin with most dense and solid arguments that not simply the resurrection of a body, but of this flesh with which we are now clothed, ought to be believed by us, as the most learned Vossius teaches in his thesis On the Resurrection. But the most clear Rivetus (Synopsis of Purer Theology, disputation 51, thesis 27) observes that it is Calvin's letter to Laelius Socinus, which was falsely titled Farel to Calvin, on account of which Feuardentius insults Calvin.

2.9.1CHAPTER NINE. The resurrection of the dead is proved to be possible from natural principles.

These things concerning those who wrongly denied the resurrection of the flesh: there follow the better ones, who rightly and firmly assert (1) that it is possible, (2) that it is certainly future, (3) its causes, (4) its mode, (5) its necessary consequence.

2.9.2II. For although that the resurrection of the flesh will be future cannot be demonstrated by the light of nature: yet that it is possible and fitting can be proved. Theologians in the schools defend this aphorism. John Scotus not badly in Sentences book 4, distinction 43, question 2: Neither a priori, he says, by an intrinsic principle within the human, nor a posteriori by reason of some operation or perfection congruent to the human, can resurrection be proved as necessary by leaning on the light of nature. Therefore this is not held as altogether certain except by faith. And afterward: From these things it appears how great is the grace and liberality of the Creator's heart, who through faith has made us most certain in those things which pertain to our end and everlasting perpetuity.

He brings to this sense that of Augustine (On the Trinity book 13, chapter 9): Those attempting to find these things by human argumentations — scarcely a few endowed with great genius, abounding in leisure, and trained in the most subtle doctrines — have been able to arrive at investigating the immortality of the soul alone. But that faith promises that the whole human will be immortal, who certainly consists of soul and body, and on that account truly blessed, not by human argumentation but by divine authority.

2.9.3But of this aphorism there are two members: one by which it is denied that the resurrection can be demonstrated as necessarily future from the light of nature; the other by which it is affirmed that it can be proved from that light to be possible and truly fitting. The reason of the former is that both resuscitation and glorification hang on God's free will, which cannot otherwise be known or demonstrated except from revelation, which, made by him likewise freely and kindly, opens to us so great a mystery looking toward beatitude and our last end. But the reasons of the latter are brought either to the person or to the thing.

2.9.4The fathers argue for the resurrection of the flesh when they confront pagans, using examples—though some might call them fables—of revived figures. Of Antioch (To Autolycus book 1): You believe, he says, that Hercules, whom the flame consumed, lives; and that Aesculapius struck by lightning was restored to life: what madness is it to refuse to give faith to those things which God speaks?

So Aeneas of Gaza, a Platonic Christian philosopher flourishing in the fifth century after Christ under the emperors Zeno and Anastasius, in his Dialogue on the Immortality of the Soul and the Resurrection of Bodies, which he titled Theophrastus, under Theophrastus's person: Do you think, he says, that this earthly body is to be resuscitated? But that would be like a miracle, seeing that it has flowed apart and been dispersed. And one part indeed has been filed by fishes, another torn by birds; and those animals in turn have been caught and consumed by others, so that not even any vestige of the human body remains. And he answers under Axitheus's person. Pliny also recounts some who revived after being carried out (Natural History book 7, chapter 52). These are arguments to the person, which press no one other than him who believes such things.

2.9.5REASON I. It is from natural desire and inclination. For the soul is naturally united to the body. For according to its essence it is the form of the body. Therefore it is against the soul's nature to be without a body. But nothing that is against nature can be perpetual. Therefore the soul will not perpetually be without a body. Since therefore it remains perpetually, it must be joined again to the body, which is to rise. Therefore the immortality of souls seems to demand that the resurrection of bodies will be future.

2.9.6II. From the human's natural desire by which he tends toward felicity. Next, Thomas says, it has been shown that the human's natural desire tends toward felicity. But last felicity is the perfection of the happy one. Therefore to whomsoever something is lacking toward perfection, he does not yet have perfect felicity, because his desire is not yet totally quieted. For every imperfect thing naturally appetites to obtain perfection. But the soul separated from the body retains a natural desire toward union with the body; therefore it is not yet perfectly blessed without the body.

2.9.7Therefore the Gentiles can reply that if any desire toward union is in the soul, it is sufficiently filled by that union which it once obtained, and that the soul does not receive some perfection from the body but rather communicates to the body: but by separation it has already drawn closer to the highest order of beings, and so is more like the intelligences and God.

III. From divine justice. Third, Thomas says, from divine providence punishment is owed to those sinning, and reward to those acting well. But in this life humans composed of soul and body sin. Therefore reward or punishment is owed to the human both according to soul and according to body. And truly this reason is the strongest of all in this kind, which the ancient doctors everywhere and vehemently urge, especially Tertullian.

2.9.8IV. From a principle conceded by all — namely, as actions are of the subjects, so also passions, and so also rewards and punishments: but now it is certain that the soul alone is not the human. Yet if what is the case must be confessed, this reason persuades, yet does not compel and prove. For since the soul is the principal cause of action, but the body the instrument, it cannot be proved that justice does not stand consistent with itself if the principal cause is affected with reward or punishment, the instrument meanwhile left aside — especially if the matter has come to that.

2.9.9But to the thing: concerning which Gregory of Nyssa, who wrote three most learned orations on Christ's resurrection, in the book which the ancients called On Structure, On the Making of Man chapters 25, 26, and 27, teaches that the soul by affection and love from a singular nature pursues the body in whose quasi-companionship it was, and by an ineffable pull of nature is carried to its conjunction; and he declares that by the example of quicksilver.

But the types of art are various. The first is of the potter's art, which Gregory of Nyssa uses in his third oration On the Resurrection. For just as the potter forms a vessel from clay and dries it in the sun, but if by chance it is broken and reduced to clay he reshapes and restores it: so also God our bodies. The second is the golden Achilles who formerly had been bronze. The third is of the glassmaker's art: for from sand and nitre transparent glass is made, and there are also glasses from ashes. The fourth finally is of chemical art: if a lye prepared from the ashes of nettles is exposed to cold, in that ice the nettles offer themselves to be seen. Hitherto we have seen that the resurrection of the flesh is possible.

2.10.1CHAPTER TEN. The resurrection of the flesh is demonstrated to be certainly future from the Old Testament.

So far we have seen that the resurrection of the flesh is possible: now we shall demonstrate from the Scriptures and from orthodox antiquity that it is certainly future.

2.10.2Those who are nearer to the Sadducees, and the Christian Sadducees — as Tertullian calls the deniers of the resurrection, both On the Flesh of Christ ch. 1 and On the Resurrection ch. 36 — we answer not undeservedly with Christ, Matt. 22:29: You err, not knowing the Scriptures, by which God has foretold and promised the resurrection; nor the power of God, by which things are done that otherwise could be done by no power of nature, and on which the resurrection of the flesh depends.

II. And this is to be demonstrated both from the Old and from the New Testament.

2.10.3III. From the Old Testament it is demonstrated either more obscurely, by just interpretation, or more clearly, by evident diction.

IV. More obscurely by just interpretation it is demonstrated when a firm consequence is drawn from a saying of the Old Testament. Luke 20:27: the Sadducees tried to defend their opinion against Christ and to overthrow the resurrection he asserted with an argument to absurdity: If there is a resurrection of the dead, a great confusion of marriages will arise, so that seven will be husbands of one woman. But the consequent is absurd and against the law of nature. Therefore so is the antecedent. They prove the consequence from Moses' law, Deut. 25:5. But Christ answers (1) by denying that consequence, because in the resurrection marriages cease (Luke 20:34 more fully); (2) by opposing a new argument: Concerning the resurrection, Have you not read what was said to you by God: I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob?

2.10.4It is asked whether and how these words prove the resurrection. Those whose God is God, they live. But God is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Therefore Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob live. The major: there is a true and real relationship between God and them; if a true relation, there must be a true foundation on both sides. Therefore they cannot be utterly nothing, but truly exist in some way — certainly according to the soul if not according to the body. It would be the same if, proving the resurrection against the Sadducees, he proves the soul's immortality, because by proving this he proves that indirectly.

Secondly the sense is: they are not wholly withdrawn from the divine power, but so subject to it that they can be recalled to life at his good pleasure; Luke 20:38 hints this.

Why did Christ wish to prove by consequence when clear OT testimonies occur? Origen and Jerome note that the Sadducees received Moses alone. More rightly: since the Sadducees attacked the resurrection from Moses, Christ wished to confirm it from the same and to beat back their arrogance.

2.10.5V. The evident diction of the Old Testament concerning the resurrection of the flesh exhibits partly clear documents, partly splendid and living specimens.

VI. Clear documents are testimonies which no sane person can deny. Here belongs (1) Dan. 12:2, Many of those who sleep, &c. For this reason Chrysostom in Homily 1 on Lazarus was too much hallucinating when he thought the secret dogma of the resurrection unknown to OT men. (2) Job 19:25: For I know that my Redeemer lives, and that he shall at last stand upon the dust, and from my flesh I shall see God. Rightly Jerome, Epistle 61: What is clearer than this prophecy? No one speaks so openly after Christ as this one before Christ concerning the resurrection.

2.10.7VII. The splendid and living specimens by which in the OT the resurrection of the dead is established are God's wondrous works recalling some from death to life: the widow of Sarepta's son by Elijah, the Shunammite's son by Elisha, and the man who revived at Elisha's bones — 1 Kings 17:22; 2 Kings 4:35 and 13:21.

One wonders that the Sadducees so obstinately denied it. The occasion of erring was taken by Sadoc from Antigonus of Socho's words: Be not like servants who serve the Lord to receive a portion; he commanded not so much by hope of reward as from love. Twisting that sentence worse, they inferred no reward of good deeds, no hope of another life — to which Paul alluded in Acts 23:6.

2.11.1CHAPTER ELEVEN. That the same is certainly future is demonstrated from the New Testament.

We have seen that in the Old Testament the resurrection of the flesh as certainly future is clearly enough foreshadowed, preached, and promised: now we shall see it taught in the New Testament so clearly as if written by a sunbeam.

2.11.3IV. It is proved by most solid reasons. Although the bare Apostolic assertion of this dogma suffices, yet lest anything be lacking against deniers and sophists, it is also proved through the whole of 1 Cor. 15.

Ratio I. From Christ's resurrection and our conformity and conjunction with Christ as members with the head, v.13: If there is no resurrection of the dead, Christ also has not been raised. The consequence is proved: (1) if there is utterly no resurrection, neither did Christ rise, since he was one of the dead; (2) he called himself the vine and us the branches (John 15:5) and is head of the body, the Church (Col. 1) — so if the joined members remain dead, the head itself also remains in death. From the same principle Paul argues at 1 Thess. 4:14. Then, the consequent granted, many absurdities follow: vain preaching; vain faith; we still in our sins; the Apostles false witnesses of God; those who fell asleep in Christ have perished.

2.11.4II. From God's providence, by which it must finally go wellof whom in this life it goes ill, v.19. And v.20 he returns to the first reason.

III. From baptism for the dead, v.29. This reason is difficult and has strangely exercised the most learned interpreters. First Epiphanius (Haer. 28 on the Cerinthians) reports some who, when someone died without baptism, substituted another to be baptized for the dead. Second, others of those baptized when near death — preferred by Calvin, Vermigli, Gualther, Hemmingsen. Third Chrysostom on Marcionite abuse; he expounds of confession of the resurrection before baptism. Fourth Sedulius and the schoolmen of the death of sin. Fifth Bellarmine of the baptism of tears for purgatory. Sixth Guilandus and the Leiden theologians of martyrdom. Seventh Major of baptism over graves — of which custom there is no trace. Eighth of sepulchral washing. Ninth Camerarius. Tenth Scaliger of annual refrigerium.

2.11.5Of all opinions that seems truest which is most ancient — and what some have gathered from Tertullian by presumption should be admitted — and thence the Apostle after his manner argues ad hominem: which is also Musculus's judgment. For the simple and customary acceptation of the words is preserved. Further it is certain the Corinthian church was not very pure then, and as Scaliger notes, deadly rites and errors had then begun. So it is no wonder men so stained with errors erred about baptism's administration.

If it be objected that the Apostle nowhere rebukes this abuse: Answer with Chrysostom — one need not answer to farces. The article shows not all but some were baptized for some; he notes only those who did this, and of them shortly after said v.34: Awake to righteousness and sin not.

2.11.6IV. From the hope which the Apostle connects with the foregoing; opposing to the opinion of those who act wrongly the sure hope of those who suffer gloriously, and confirming the resurrection from this also as from that, vv.30–32: unless there is a resurrection of the dead and hope of recompense, he and all who undergo extremities for truth and Christ will have been in vain. Why, he says, are we in danger every hour? If after the manner of men — for praise or gain or some other cause for which secular men face dangers — I fought with beasts at Ephesus (against wicked men such as Demetrius, Acts 19), what does it profit me? Finally, if the dead are not raised, we shall not only in vain expose our heads to so many dangers, but rather will join those who say: Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.

2.12.1CHAPTER TWELVE. On the causes of the resurrection.

So far we have seen that the resurrection of the flesh is certainly future: now we shall examine its causes — namely efficient, material, formal, and final.

II. The efficient cause is God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

2.12.2The raising of the dead is a merely divine work, far surpassing every power of creatures (Dionysius On the Divine Names ch. 6), and therefore proceeds immediately from God, as prefigured in Ezek. 37:12. The Father raises (Rom. 8:11; 1 Cor. 6:14; 2 Cor. 4:14); the Son (John 5:28; ch. 6; 11:25); the Holy Spirit with the same power (Rom. 8:11). Although the Holy Trinity is commonly the cause of the resurrection, yet Christ is specially so (John 6:54) — both as exemplar cause and because his most powerful voice is instrumental cause. If resurrection is taken strictly, it is God's immediate work; if more loosely for the whole complex before and after, angels may be called ministers and instruments (Matt. 24:31). We reject Richard and Scotus who thought nature could be a cause of the resurrection.

2.12.3III. The matter of the resurrection is considered either as the subject-quo or as the subject-quod. The matter is man alone: for his body alone, being mortal, is rendered immortal, as Nemesius On the Nature of Man ch. 1. Therefore Muhammad is to be refuted, who in the Qur'an makes the resurrection of beasts an article of faith.

IV. The subject-quo is properly the flesh, or the body of man, and that whole and complete. For resurrection properly is not according to the soul but according to the body, because the human soul is immortal. Hence they err who say souls perish with bodies, or that to die is to be utterly extinguished.

2.12.4The body that will rise is the same in number and substance: (1) Matt. 10:28; 1 Cor. 15:53; Phil. 3:21; 2 Cor. 5:10; (2) from God's justice (Ambrose); (3) from the very name — otherwise a new creation, not resurrection; (4) because death is called sleep and resurrection awakening; (5) from Christ's example and nine particular examples; (6) from the promise of immortality to this flesh; (7) from the double rite of baptism and burial. Nor does 1 Cor. 15:50 hinder — flesh and blood are barred under the name of guilt, not substance. Against the Origenist delirium Gregory the Great disputed. The subject-quod are all who are to rise.

2.12.5Of those found alive it may be asked whether they will rise, since they have not fallen. Christ is judge of living and dead; the Apostle at 1 Cor. 15:51 and 1 Thess. 4 — by a shortcut of death through change, the living will not die but be stripped of mortality. Augustine Retractations 2.33: Either they will not die, or they will not feel death. Both expositions stand. Next, will the impious also rise? Besides recent Jews and Socinians, Scripture on the judge of living and dead, eternal fire, and the worm that dies not must be opposed. Resurrection is sometimes taken strictly for that unto blessed life.

2.12.6VI. The form of the resurrection is twofold, internal or external. The internal, for those who properly rise, consists in gathering ashes, reforming bodies, uniting souls; for those to be changed, in sudden change of qualities (1 Cor. 15:51).

VII. The external consists in the order in which Christ will appear in the clouds and by his voice set all before the tribunal.

VIII. The end with respect to God is the glory of Christ the Mediator; with respect to men, the judgment, glory for believers, ignominy for unbelievers. We reject Lactantius's error of the millennium and double resurrection. Rightly Gennadius: There will be a resurrection of all the dead, but one together and at once. A double purpose: comfort and a deterrent from sin.

2.13.1CHAPTER THIRTEEN. On the mode and necessary consequence and end of the resurrection — namely the last judgment.

So far have been the causes of the resurrection; now follow its mode and necessary consequence and end.

II. The mode of the resurrection is not perfectly known — he who willed that not even of all natural things the modes and reasons be open to us. The mode can be reduced to the form explained in Cap. 12 aph. 6–7: gathering of dust, formation of the body, animation — but it is a mystery (1 Cor. 15:51; 1 Thess. 4:15).

2.13.2III. The necessary consequence and end is the last judgment, and the condition of those judged.

IV. The last judgment is that most august act by which Christ, returning from heaven with highest glory and majesty at the end of this world, judges the whole orb of the earth. In the foundations of the Christian faith (Heb. 6:2) these two are joined. A general notion is implanted in all by nature, and a confused sense among the Gentiles — whether because they gathered that divine justice requires such a judgment, or from conscience, or because something of the Church's teaching reached their ears. That the dogma was revealed to the patriarchs the prophecy of Enoch shows (Jude 14–15).

2.13.3V. Its existence as certainly future is on the last day of this world, hidden in the treasures of divine wisdom. Scriptures: Acts 17:31; Rom. 2:5; 2 Thess. 1; Matt. 24:36; 25:31. Detestable are the Borborians, Floriani, Manichees and Proclinianites who denied it. In vain we try to compute the years; Christ forbade it (Acts 1:7).

VI. The principal efficient cause is the Holy Trinity as to authority and power; the visible form and exercise is the Son of God in assumed human nature. To him is given all judgment (John 5:22, 27), all power (Matt. 28:18); he is appointed (Acts 17:31) — not as a delegated judge but as prince by appropriation. The saints enter partnership not as to authority in themselves, but inasmuch as in Christ the head they pronounce, approve, and testify by their life.

2.13.4VII. The matter or object of the last judgment is partly persons, partly their acts.

VIII. The persons are the evil angels and all humans both good and evil. The evil angels, already subject to punishments, will receive the complement on the last day. All humans living and dead will be judged — the good by a judgment of discernment and absolution, the evil of condemnation.

IX. The acts are all thoughts, inclinations, gestures, words, and deeds of all humans, with their principles, circumstances, and accidents. Their revelation is signified by the opening of the books (Rev. 20:12).

2.13.5X. The form of this judgment is contained in (1) knowledge of the cause; (2) separation of those to be judged; (3) decision of the known cause and promulgation of the sentence; (4) execution of the sentence passed. In knowledge the judge needs no examination of witnesses. Separation of sheep from goats is Matt. 25:32–33. The sentence is most joyful for the pious, most sad for the impious. Execution is in public and solemn pronouncement, so that the just begin to enjoy beatitude consummately in heaven, and the impious to be punished without end in hell.

XI. The ultimate end of this judgment is that God be glorified in his saints and become wonderful in all who believed; subordinate ends are the salvation of the pious, the casting off of the impious, and the liberation of Christ's Church (2 Thess. 1:6–7).

2.14.1CHAPTER FOURTEEN. On the condition of those judged — and namely on ETERNAL LIFE, which embraces man's absolutely highest and last end.

The state of those judged, which they enter after this judgment, is for some eternal life and beatitude, for others death, misery, and eternal damnation.

2.14.2II. Eternal life is the citizens of God's kingdom's absolute immunity from sin, Satan and the tyranny of the impious, and every misery, and joined with this the eternal and fullest fruition of every good in the blessed vision and communion of God, perfect glorification of soul and body, restoration of the divine image, most joyful fellowship of holy angels and all the pious, and unexhausted joy for perfectly celebrating God's glory.

We call it life by metonymy of the subject for the elect's beatitude in a protected and youthful state — here to live is to be blessed. We call it eternal to differ both from temporal bodily life and from the faithful's spiritual life in this world, which is a degree and beginning of that eternal life now hidden with Christ in God (Col. 3:3).

2.14.3(3) It belongs to the citizens of God's kingdom (Heb. 11, &c.). (4) It consists both in the removal of contrary evils and in the access of positive goods — the vision of God, glorification, fellowship of the saints, joy. The vision of God is essential to beatitude. God's essence is infinite; this vision if considered statically; what is natural in God; the reason of the persons; another reason of the decrees. Fellowship of the holy angels. The end of eternal life is God's glory. Therefore man's highest beatitude is in God alone.

2.14.4II. From this the following porismata are inferred. (1) Man's highest beatitude is not the pleasure of the flesh.

(2) Nor is it in secondary things under divine providence it blinds mortals; entangles the most prudently planned with the worst outcomes; afflicts with great sadness; makes men insolent; and keeps a strange constancy in its very mutability.

2.14.5(3) Nor is it wealth — the immoderate zeal of heaping up riches; acquiring wealth is full of toil; he who has ample riches exposes them to so many dangers.

(6) Nor is it in magnificent and proud buildings. (7) Nor in nobility — full of toil; whatever good is in nobility is fragile; it is not a perennial and stable good.

2.14.6(8) Nor is it the favor of kings, princes, and others — more by flattery than by desert.

(10) Nor is it in wife and children — they are outside us; they are lost; they often turn to evil; they do not eternalize.

(11) Just as the highest good is contained neither in goods of the body nor in external goods, so neither in goods of the mind alone. (12) Nor in these goods of body and mind taken together.

2.14.7IV. So far the porismata: there follow positive statements. (1–2) True beatitude is in God alone. (3) The earnest of eternal beatitude in this life is not separated from it as a pledge. (4) Eternal life is not in us and the world, but in Christ. (5) Restoration of the divine image in man begins in this life. (6) The principal good of eternal life is union with God. (7) Diligent and religious meditation on eternal life leads to piety and loathing of sin — Cap. 14 close before CHAPTER FIFTEEN on eternal death.

2.15.1CHAPTER FIFTEEN. On eternal death.

These things concerning eternal life: there follows eternal death, which is the separation of the impious from God and all the saints because of impenitence and unbelief, and so their own malice, in which with the Devil they will endure without end the wrath of God, the bite of conscience, and thence ignominy of every kind and anxiety with unspeakable torment.

2.15.2I. The nomenclature of eternal death is taken from 2 Thess. 1:8–9, where it is called eternal destruction; also Wis. 4:19; and Heb. 6:2 eternal damnation; from place and reception hell, prison, furnace of fire, place of torments, lake and winepress of wrath, lake of fire, pit, chains of darkness, Gehenna, eternal fire, outer darkness.

II. The receiving subject are the impious who do not have true and heavenly wisdom, nor the wedding garment of Christ's righteousness through faith, not obeying the Gospel, but worshiping the beast — the fearful, unbelieving, fornicators, idolaters, and the like.

2.15.3III. The reason of eternal death is both the absence of the highest good and the presence of evil. Absence of good is separation from God, the principal evil of the damned — they are deprived of God's face and fruition entirely. From separation from God arises separation from the saints; denial of all compassion. Present external evils: a horrible place, society of the Devil. Internal: (1) God's wrath; (2) the bite of conscience (the gnawing worm); (3) ignominy, anguish, envy, fear, horror, and perpetual despair.

2.15.4IV. The efficient — or rather deficient — proximate and adequate cause is the impenitent unbelief of the impious with malice.

V. The end intended by God is the glory of his patience and justice; the terminus of that death is none — it will be continued forever.

Canons: (1) That the damned have a certain place and will be tormented with eternal fire is plain from Scripture; the constitution of hell and what sort the fire is is not revealed — be not curious. (2) Although God is not the procreating cause of damnation but the damned themselves, he yet concurs as just judge by preparing, threatening, inflicting, and continuing punishments.

2.15.5(3) Just as in eternal life there will be degrees of glory in the elect, so in the damned there will be degrees of punishments from deserts. Equality in the defect of God's vision and in eternity; distinction of degrees from deserts.

(4) That eternal death is nothing other than eternal extinction of soul and body is a harmful and most absurd Socinian opinion.

(5) That the hour of torments will at last have some end — Origenists and some Anabaptists dream, but in vain: eternal death and life are opposed in the same sense; the worm does not die; the smoke ascends forever and ever.

2.15.6(6) The pious in this life sometimes also feel some of hell's torments, which yet God's grace so tempers that they make them seek him more ardently. Christ felt the pains of hell in our place.

(7) The impious, although they carry their hell about with them daily in this life, yet most rarely feel it because of incredible stupor, and under it at last they sink.

(8) The way which most pursue is the way of hell, which the more it is loved the more it ought to be suspect to the pious.

2.15.7(9) Perpetual meditation on hell ought to rouse us from the flesh's security and license to sin; in persecutions to comfort by confidence of eternal immunity. Let us descend into hell while living lest we descend while dying (Bernard). It serves repentance and consolation.

For the rest: as concerning Sacred Scripture in Book I, so concerning man's highest good and its opposite evil in Book II — among theologians against papist tyranny who embrace the Augsburg, Helvetic, French, English, and Belgian confessions, by God's benefit there is consensus. For which the God of peace is to be prayed that he further confirm it. Closing distich of Bernard of Morlaix: No one can speak or write or meditate the joys of the just nor the torments of the wicked.