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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 t sundered,
and things that are composed from being dissolved, and can ordain that
tile souls t once allotted to their bodies should never abandon them,
but enjoy along with them immortality and everlasting bliss, why may
He t 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,
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.
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