|
25. But in respect to that image indeed, of which it is said,
"Let us make man after our image and likeness," we believe, and,
after the utmost search we have been able to make, understand, that
man was made after the image of the Trinity, because it is not said,
After my, or After thy image. And therefore that place too of the
Apostle John must be understood rather according to this image, when
he says, "We shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is;"
because he spoke too of Him of whom be had said, "We are the sons of
God." And the immortality of the flesh will be perfected in that
moment of the resurrection, of which the Apostle Paul says, "In
the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump; and the dead shall be
raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed." For in that very
twinkling of an eye, before the judgment, the spiritual body shall
rise again in power, in incorruption, in glory, which is now sown a
natural body in weakness, in corruption, in dishonor. But the image
which is renewed in the spirit of the mind in the knowledge of God,
not outwardly, but inwardly, from day to day, shall be perfected by
that sight itself; which then after the judgment shall be face to
face, but now makes progress as through a glass in an enigma. And we
must understand it to be said on account of this perfection, that "we
shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is." For this gift
will be given to us at that time, when it shall have been said,
"Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for
you." For then will the ungodly be taken away, so that he shall not
see the glory of the Lord, when those on the left hand shall go into
eternal punishment, while those on the right go into life eternal.
But "this is eternal life," as the Truth tells us; "to know
Thee," He says, "the one true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou
hast sent."
26. This contemplative wisdom, which I believe is properly called
wisdom as distinct from knowledge in the sacred writings; but wisdom
only of man, which yet man has not except from Him, by partaking of
whom a rational and intellectual mind can be made truly wise; this
contemplative wisdom, I say, it is that Cicero commends, in the end
of the dialogue Hortensius, when he says: "While, then, we
consider these things night and day, and sharpen our understanding,
which is the eye of the mind, taking care that it be not ever dulled,
that is, while we live in philosophy; we, I say, in so doing, have
great hope that, if, on the one hand, this sentiment and wisdom of
ours is mortal and perishable, we shall still, when we have discharged
our human offices, have a pleasant setting, and a not painful
extinction, and as it were a rest from life: or if, on the other, as
ancient philosophers thought, and those, too, the greatest and far
the most celebrated, we have souls eternal and divine, then must we
needs think, that the more these shall have always kept in their own
proper course, i.e. in reason and in the desire of inquiry, and the
less they shall have mixed and entangled themselves in the vices and
errors of men, the more easy ascent and return they will have to
heaven." And then he says, adding this short sentence, and
finishing his discourse by repeating it: "Wherefore, to end my
discourse at last, if we wish either for a tranquil extinction, after
living in the pursuit of these subjects, or if to migrate without delay
from this present home to another in no little measure better, we must
bestow all our labor and care upon these pursuits." And here I
marvel, that a man of such great ability should promise to men living
in philosophy, which makes man blessed by contemplation of truth, "a
pleasant setting after the discharge of human offices, if this our
sentiment and wisdom is mortal and perishable;" as if that which we
did not love, or rather which we fiercely hated, were then to die and
come to nothing, so that its setting would be pleasant to us! But
indeed he had not learned this from the philosophers, whom he extols
with great praise; but this sentiment is redolent of that New
Academy, wherein it pleased him to doubt of even the plainest things.
But from the philosophers that were greatest and far most celebrated,
as he himself confesses, he had learned that souls are eternal. For
souls that are eternal are not unsuitably stirred up by the exhortation
to be found in "their own proper course," when the end of this life
shall have come, i.e. "in reason and in the desire of inquiry,"
and to mix and entangle themselves the less in the vices and errors of
men, in order that they may have an easier return to God. But that
course which consists in the love and investigation of truth does not
suffice for the wretched, i.e. for all mortals who have only this
kind of reason, and are. without faith in the Mediator; as I have.
taken pains to prove, as much as I could, in former books of this
work, especially in the fourth and thirteenth.
|
|