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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," 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."
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