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For if any belong to Him, although far duller in intellect than
those, yet when they are freed from the body at the end of this life,
the envious powers have no right to hold them. For that Lamb that was
slain by them without any debt of sin has conquered them; but not by
the might of power before He had done so by the righteousness of
blood. And free accordingly from the power of the devil, they are
borne up by holy angels, being set free from all evils by the mediator
of God and men, the man Christ Jesus. Since by the harmonious
testimony of the Divine Scriptures, both Old and New, both those
by which Christ was foretold, and those by which He was announced,
there is no other name under heaven whereby men must be saved. And
when purged from all contagion of corruption, they are placed in
peaceful abodes until they take their bodies again, their own, but now
incorruptible, to adorn, not to burden them. For this is the will of
the best and most wise Creator, that the spirit of a man, when
piously subject to God, should have a body happily subject, and that
this happiness should last for ever.
45. There we shall see the truth without any difficulty, and shall
enjoy it to the full, most clear and most certain. Nor shall we be
inquiring into anything by a mind that reasons, but shall discern by a
mind that contemplates, why the Holy Spirit is not a Son, although
He proceeds from the Father. In that light there will be no place
for inquiry: but here, by experience itself it has appeared to me so
difficult, as beyond doubt it will likewise appear to them also who
shall carefully and intelligently read what I have written, that
although in the second book? I promised that I would speak thereof in
another place, yet as often as I have desired to illustrate it by the
creaturely image of it which we ourselves are, so often, let my
meaning be of what sort it might, did adequate utterance entirely fail
me; nay, even in my very meaning I felt that I had attained to
endeavor rather than accomplishment. I had indeed found in one
person, such as is a man, an image of that Highest Trinity, and had
desired, especially in the ninth book, to illustrate and render more
intelligible the relation of the Three Persons by that which is
subject to time and change. But three things belonging to one person
cannot suit those Three Persons, as man's purpose demands; and this
we have demonstrated in this fifteenth book.
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