incorruptible and eternal._
These same philosophers further contend that terrestrial bodies
cannot be eternal, though they make no doubt that the whole earth,
which is itself the central member of their god,--not, indeed, of the
greatest, but yet of a great god, that is, of this whole world,--is
eternal. Since, then, the Supreme made for them another god, that
is, this world, superior to the other gods beneath Him; and since
they suppose that this god is an animal, having, as they affirm,
a rational or intellectual soul enclosed in the huge mass of its
body, and having, as the fitly situated and adjusted members of its
body, the four elements, whose union they wish to be indissoluble
and eternal, lest perchance this great god of theirs might some day
perish; what reason is there that the earth, which is the central
member in the body of a greater creature, should be eternal, and the
bodies of other terrestrial creatures should not possibly be eternal
if God should so will it? But earth, say they, must return to earth,
out of which the terrestrial bodies of the animals have been taken.
For this, they say, is the reason of the necessity of their death and
dissolution, and this the manner of their restoration to the solid
and eternal earth whence they came. But if any one says the same
thing of fire, holding that the bodies which are derived from it to
make celestial beings must be restored to the universal fire, does
not the immortality which Plato represents these gods as receiving
from the Supreme evanesce in the heat of this dispute? Or does this
not happen with those celestials because God, whose will, as Plato
says, overpowers all powers, has willed it should not be so? What,
then, hinders God from ordaining the same of terrestrial bodies? And
since, indeed, Plato acknowledges that God can prevent things that
are born from dying, and things that are joined from being sundered,
and things that are composed from being dissolved, and can ordain
that the souls once allotted to their bodies should never abandon
them, but enjoy along with them immortality and everlasting bliss,
why may He not also effect that terrestrial bodies die not? Is
God powerless to do everything that is special to the Christian's
creed, but powerful to effect everything the Platonists desire? The
philosophers, forsooth, have been admitted to a knowledge of the
divine purposes and power which has been denied to the prophets! The
truth is, that the Spirit of God taught His prophets so much of His
will as He thought fit to reveal, but the philosophers, in their
efforts to discover it, were deceived by human conjecture.
But they should not have been so led astray, I will not say by their
ignorance, but by their obstinacy, as to contradict themselves so
frequently; for they maintain, with all their vaunted might, that
in order to the happiness of the soul, it must abandon not only its
earthly body, but every kind of body. And yet they hold that the
gods, whose souls are most blessed, are bound to everlasting bodies,
the celestials to fiery bodies, and the soul of Jove himself (or this
world, as they would have us believe) to all the physical elements
which compose this entire mass reaching from earth to heaven. For
this soul Plato believes to be extended and diffused by musical
numbers,[596] from the middle of the inside of the earth, which
geometricians call the centre, outwards through all its parts to the
utmost heights and extremities of the heavens; so that this world is
a very great and blessed immortal animal, whose soul has both the
perfect blessedness of wisdom, and never leaves its own body, and
whose body has life everlasting from the soul, and by no means clogs
or hinders it, though itself be not a simple body, but compacted
of so many and so huge materials. Since, therefore, they allow so
much to their own conjectures, why do they refuse to believe that by
the divine will and power immortality can be conferred on earthly
bodies, in which the souls would be neither oppressed with the burden
of them, nor separated from them by any death, but live eternally
and blessedly? Do they not assert that their own gods so live in
bodies of fire, and that Jove himself, their king, so lives in the
physical elements? If, in order to its blessedness, the soul must
quit every kind of body, let their gods flit from the starry spheres,
and Jupiter from earth to sky; or, if they cannot do so, let them be
pronounced miserable. But neither alternative will these men adopt.
For, on the one hand, they dare not ascribe to their own gods a
departure from the body, lest they should seem to worship mortals; on
the other hand, they dare not deny their happiness, lest they should
acknowledge wretches as gods. Therefore, to obtain blessedness,
we need not quit every kind of body, but only the corruptible,
cumbersome, painful, dying,--not such bodies as the goodness of God
contrived for the first man, but such only as man's sin entailed.