[2067] The words "in aquis" are omitted in Redepenning's edition.
[2068] The original of this sentence is found at the close of the Emperor Justinian's Epistle to Menas, patriarch of Constantinople, and, literally translated, is as follows: "The world being so very varied, and containing so many different rational beings, what else ought we to say was the cause of its existence than the diversity of the falling away of those who decline from unity (tes henados) in different ways?"--Ruæus. Lommatzsch adds a clause not contained in the note of the Benedictine editor: "And sometimes the soul selects the life that is in water" (enudron).
[2069] Lit. "into various qualities of mind."
[2070] "Et diversi motus propositi earum (rationabilium subsistentiarum) ad unius mundi consonantiam competenter atque utiliter aptarentur, dum aliæ juvari indigent, aliæ juvare possunt, aliæ vero proficientibus certamina atque agones movent, in quibus eorum probabilior haberetur industria, et certior post victoriam reparati gradus statio teneretur, quæ per difficultates laborantium constitisset."
[2071] Jer. xxiii. 24.
[2072] Isa. lxvi. 1.
[2073] Matt. v. 34.
[2074] Acts xvii. 28.
[2075] 2 Mac. vii. 28.
[2076] Hermæ Past., book ii. [See vol. ii. p. 20, of this series. S]
[2077] Ps. cxlviii. 5.
Chapter II.--On the Perpetuity of Bodily Nature.
1. On this topic some are wont to inquire whether, as the Father generates an uncreated Son, and brings forth a Holy Spirit, not as if He had no previous existence, but because the Father is the origin and source of the Son or Holy Spirit, and no anteriority or posteriority can be understood as existing in them; so also a similar kind of union or relationship can be understood as subsisting between rational natures and bodily matter. And that this point may be more fully and thoroughly examined, the commencement of the discussion is generally directed to the inquiry whether this very bodily nature, which bears the lives and contains the movements of spiritual and rational minds, will be equally eternal with them, or will altogether perish and be destroyed. And that the question may be determined with greater precision, we have, in the first place, to inquire if it is possible for rational natures to remain altogether incorporeal after they have reached the summit of holiness and happiness (which seems to me a most difficult and almost impossible attainment), or whether they must always of necessity be united to bodies. If, then, any one could show a reason why it was possible for them to dispense wholly with bodies, it will appear to follow, that as a bodily nature, created out of nothing after intervals of time, was produced when it did not exist, so also it must cease to be when the purposes which it served had no longer an existence.
2. If, however, it is impossible for this point to be at all maintained, viz., that any other nature than the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit can live without a body, the necessity of logical reasoning compels us to understand that rational natures were indeed created at the beginning, but that material substance was separated from them only in thought and understanding, and appears to have been formed for them, or after them, and that they never have lived nor do live without it; for an incorporeal life will rightly be considered a prerogative of the Trinity alone. As we have remarked above, therefore, that material substance of this world, possessing a nature admitting of all possible transformations, is, when dragged down to beings of a lower order, moulded into the crasser and more solid condition of a body, so as to distinguish those visible and varying forms of the world; but when it becomes the servant of more perfect and more blessed beings, it shines in the splendour of celestial bodies, and adorns either the angels of God or the sons of the resurrection with the clothing of a spiritual body, out of all which will be filled up the diverse and varying state of the one world. But if any one should desire to discuss these matters more fully, it will be necessary, with all reverence and fear of God, to examine the sacred Scriptures with greater attention and diligence, to ascertain whether the secret and hidden sense within them may perhaps reveal anything regarding these matters; and something may be discovered in their abstruse and mysterious language, through the demonstration of the Holy Spirit to those who are worthy, after many testimonies have been collected on this very point.