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But men who use their learning and intellectual ability to resist the
force of that great authority which, in fulfillment of what was so long
before predicted, has converted all races of men to faith and hope in
its promises, seem to themselves to argue acutely against the
resurrection of the body while they cite what Cicero mentions in the
third book De Republica. For when he was asserting the apotheosis of
Hercules and Romulus, he says: "Whose bodies were not taken up
into heaven; for nature would not permit a body of earth to exist
anywhere except upon earth." This, forsooth, is the profound
reasoning of the wise men, whose thoughts God knows that they are
vain. For if we were only souls, that is, spirits without any body,
and if we dwelt in heaven and had no knowledge of earthly animals, and
were told that we should be bound to earthly bodies by some wonderful
bond of union, and should animate them, should we not much more
vigorously refuse to believe this, and maintain that nature would not
permit an incorporeal substance to be held by a corporeal bond? And
yet the earth is full of living spirits, to which terrestrial bodies
are bound, and with which they are in a wonderful way implicated.
If, then, the same God who has created such beings wills this also,
what is to binder the earthly body from being raised to a heavenly
body, since a spirit, which is more excellent than all bodies, and
consequently than even a heavenly body, has been tied to an earthly
body? If so small an earthly particle has been able to hold in union
with itself something better than a heavenly body, so as to receive
sensation and life, will heaven disdain to receive, or at least to
retain, this sentient and living particle, which derives its life and
sensation from a substance more excellent than any heavenly body? If
this does not happen now, it is because the time is not yet come which
has been determined by Him who has already done a much more marvellous
thing than that which these men refuse to believe. For why do we not
more intensely wonder that incorporeal souls, which are of higher rank
than heavenly bodies, are bound to earthly bodies, rather than that
bodies, although earthly, are exalted to an abode which, though
heavenly, is yet corporeal, except because we have been accustomed to
see this, and indeed are this, while we are not as yet that other
marvel, nor have as yet ever seen it? Certainly, if we consult sober
reason, the more wonderful of the two divine works is found to be to
attach somehow corporeal things to incorporeal, and not to connect
earthly things with heavenly, which, though diverse, are yet both of
them corporeal.
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