perfection not enjoyed by the flesh of our first parents._
Thus the souls of departed saints are not affected by the death which
dismisses them from their bodies, because their flesh rests in hope,
no matter what indignities it receives after sensation is gone. For
they do not desire that their bodies be forgotten, as Plato thinks
fit, but rather, because they remember what has been promised by Him
who deceives no man, and who gave them security for the safe keeping
even of the hairs of their head, they with a longing patience wait in
hope of the resurrection of their bodies, in which they have suffered
many hardships, and are now to suffer never again. For if they did not
"hate their own flesh," when it, with its native infirmity, opposed
their will, and had to be constrained by the spiritual law, how
much more shall they love it, when it shall even itself have become
spiritual! For as, when the spirit serves the flesh, it is fitly called
carnal, so, when the flesh serves the spirit, it will justly be called
spiritual. Not that it is converted into spirit, as some fancy from the
words, "It is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption,"[600]
but because it is subject to the spirit with a perfect and marvellous
readiness of obedience, and responds in all things to the will that
has entered on immortality,--all reluctance, all corruption, and all
slowness being removed. For the body will not only be better than it
was here in its best estate of health, but it will surpass the bodies
of our first parents ere they sinned. For, though they were not to die
unless they should sin, yet they used food as men do now, their bodies
not being as yet spiritual, but animal only. And though they decayed
not with years, nor drew nearer to death,--a condition secured to them
in God's marvellous grace by the tree of life, which grew along with
the forbidden tree in the midst of Paradise,--yet they took other
nourishment, though not of that one tree, which was interdicted not
because it was itself bad, but for the sake of commending a pure and
simple obedience, which is the great virtue of the rational creature
set under the Creator as his Lord. For, though no evil thing was
touched, yet if a thing forbidden was touched, the very disobedience
was sin. They were, then, nourished by other fruit, which they took
that their animal bodies might not suffer the discomfort of hunger or
thirst; but they tasted the tree of life, that death might not steal
upon them from any quarter, and that they might not, spent with age,
decay. Other fruits were, so to speak, their nourishment, but this
their sacrament. So that the tree of life would seem to have been in
the terrestrial Paradise what the wisdom of God is in the spiritual, of
which it is written, "She is a tree of life to them that lay hold upon
her."[601]