For Marcion's assembly is a Council of vanity in that he denies that the Father of Christ is God, the Creator, who by His Son made the world. Ebion's is a Council of vanity since he teaches that, while we believe in Christ, we are withal to observe the circumcision of the flesh, the keeping of the Sabbath, the accustomed sacrifices, and all the other ordinances according to the letter of the Law. Manichæus' is a Council of vanity in regard of his teaching; first in that he calls himself the Paraclete, then that he says that the world was made by an evil God, denies God the Creator, rejects the Old Testament, asserts two natures, one good the other evil, mutually opposing one another, affirms that men's souls are co-eternal with God, that, according to the Pythagoreans, they return through divers circles of nativity into cattle and animals and beasts, denies the resurrection of our flesh, maintains that the passion and nativity of the Lord were not in the verity of flesh, but only in appearance. It was the Council of vanity when Paul of Samosata and his successor Photinus afterwards taught, that Christ was not born of the Father before the world, but had His beginning from Mary, and believed not that being God He was born man, but that of man He was made God. It was the Council of vanity when Arius and Eunomius taught as their determinate opinion that the Son of God was not born of the very substance of the Father, but was created out of nothing, and that the Son of God had a beginning, and is inferior to the Father: moreover they affirm that the Holy Ghost is not only inferior to the Son, but is also a ministering Spirit. [3408] Theirs also is a Council of vanity who confess indeed that the Son is of the substance of the Father, but distinguish and separate the Holy Spirit, while yet the Saviour shews in the Gospel that the power and Godhead of the Trinity are one and the same, saying, "Baptize all nations in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost," [3409] and it is plainly impious for man to put asunder what God hath joined together. That also is the Council of vanity which a pertinacious and wicked contention formerly gathered together, affirming that Christ assumed human flesh indeed, but not a rational soul withal, since Christ conferred one and the same salvation on the flesh, and the animal soul, and the reason and mind of man. That also is the Council of vanity which Donatus drew together throughout Africa, by charging the Church with traditorship (delivering up the sacred books), and with which Novatus disturbed men's minds by denying the grant of repentance to the lapsed, and condemning second marriages, though contracted possibly of necessity. All of these then avoid as congregations of malignants. Those also, if such there be, who are said to assert that the Son of God does not see or know the Father, as Himself is known and seen by the Father; or that the kingdom of Christ will have an end; or that the flesh will not be raised in the complete restoration of its substance; these also who deny that there will be a just judgment of God in respect of all, and affirm that the devil will be absolved from the punishment of damnation due to him. To all these, I say, let the believer turn a deaf ear. But hold fast by the holy Church, which confesses God the Father Almighty, and His only Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, and the Holy Ghost, of one concordant and harmonious substance, believes that the Son of God was born of the Virgin, suffered for man's salvation, rose again from the dead in the same flesh in which he was born; and, lastly, hopes that He will come the Judge of all, through Whom also both the Forgiveness of Sins and the Resurrection of the Flesh are preached.
[3406] Ps. xxvi. 5
[3407] Cant. vi. 9
[3408] Mittendarium, "Mittendarii, Palatini qui in sacro Palatio militabant, et in provincias extraordinarie mittebantur, a Principe, ut eorum mandata perferrent." Officers attached to the Palace, who were sent into the provinces by the Emperor on extraordinary occasions, as bearers of his orders--Glossarium Manuale ex Magnis Glossariis Du Fresne, etc.
[3409] Matt. xxviii. 19
40. As to the Forgiveness of Sins, it ought to be enough simple to believe. For who would ask the cause or the reason when a Prince grants indulgence? When the liberality of an earthly sovereign is no fit subject for discussion, shall man's temerity discuss God's largess? For the Pagans are wont to ridicule us, saying that we deceive ourselves, fancying that crimes committed in deed can be purged by words. And they say, "Can he who has committed murder be no murderer, and he who has committed adultery be accounted no adulterer? How then shall one guilty of crimes of this sort all of a sudden be made holy?" But to this, as I said, we answer better by faith than by reason. For he is King of all who hath promised it: He is Lord of heaven and earth who assures us of it. Would you have me refuse to believe that He who made me a man of the dust of the earth can of a guilty person make me innocent? And that He who when I was blind made me see, or when I was deaf made me hear, or lame walk, can recover for me my lost innocence? And to come to the witness of Nature--to kill a man is not always criminal, but to kill of malice, not by law, is criminal. It is not the deed then, in such matters, that condemns me, because sometimes it is rightly done, but the evil intention of the mind. If then my mind which had been rendered criminal, and in which the sin originated, is corrected, why should I seem to you incapable of being made innocent, who before was criminal? For if it is plain, as I have shewn, that crime consists not in the deed but in the will, as an evil will, prompted by an evil demon, has made me obnoxious to sin and death, so the will prompted by the good God, being changed to good, hath restored me to innocence and life. It is the same also in all other crimes. In this way there is found to be no opposition between our faith and natural reason, while forgiveness of sins is imputed not to deeds, which when once done cannot be changed, but to the mind, which it is certain can be converted from bad to good.
41. This last article, which affirms the Resurrection of the Flesh, concludes the sum of all perfection with succinct brevity. Although on this point also the faith of the Church is impugned, not only by Gentiles, but by heretics likewise. For Valentinus altogether denies the resurrection of the flesh, so do the Manicheans, as we shewed above. But they refuse to listen to the Prophet Isaiah when he says, "The dead shall rise, and they who are in the graves shall be raised," [3410] or to most wise Daniel, when he declares, "Then they who are in the dust of the earth shall arise, these to eternal life, but those to shame and confusion." [3411] Yet even in the Gospels, which they appear to receive, they ought to learn from our Lord and Saviour, Who says, when instructing the Sadducees, "As touching the resurrection of the dead: have ye not read how He saith to Moses in the Bush, I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob? Now God is not the God of the dead but of the living." [3412] Where in what goes before He declares what and how great is the glory of the resurrection, saying, "But in the resurrection of the dead they will neither marry or be given in marriage, but will be as the angels of God." [3413] But the virtue of the resurrection confers on men an angelical state, so that they who have risen from the earth shall not live again on the earth with the brute animals but with angels in heaven--yet those only whose purer life has fitted them for this--those, namely, who even now preserving the flesh of their soul in chastity, have brought it into subjection to the Holy Spirit, and thus with every stain of sins done away and changed into spiritual glory by the virtue of sanctification, have been counted worthy to have it admitted into the society of angels.
[3410] Is. xxvi. 19
[3411] Dan. xii. 2
[3412] Mark xii. 26, 27
[3413] Matt. xxii. 30
42. But unbelievers cry, "How can the flesh, which has been putrified and dissolved, or changed into dust, sometimes also swallowed up by the sea, and dispersed by the waves, be gathered up again, and again made one, and a man's body formed anew out of it?" To whom our first answer is in Paul's words: "Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die. And that which thou sowest, thou sowest not the body, which shall be, but bare grain of wheat or of some other seed: but God giveth it a body as seemeth good to Him." [3414] Did you not believe that that which you see taking place every year in the seeds which you cast into the ground will come to pass in your flesh which by the law of God is sown in the earth? Why, pray, have you so mean an opinion of God's power that you do not believe it possible for the scattered dust of which each man's flesh was composed to be re-collected and restored to its own original fabric? Do you refuse to admit the fact when you see mortal ingenuity search for veins of metal deeply buried in the ground, and the experienced eye discover gold where the inexperienced thinks there is nothing but earth? Why should we refuse to grant these things to Him who made man, when he whom He made can do so much? And when mortal ingenuity discovers that gold has its own proper vein, and silver another, and that a far different vein of copper, and diverse and distinct veins of iron and lead lie concealed beneath what has the appearance of earth, shall divine power be thought unable to discover and distinguish the component particles belonging to each man's flesh, even though they seem to be dispersed?
[3414] 1 Cor. xv. 36-38
43. But let us endeavour to assist those souls which fail in their faith through reasons drawn from nature. If one should mix different sorts of seeds together and sow them indiscriminately in the earth, will not the grain of each several kind, wherever it may have been thrown, shoot forth at the proper time in accordance with its own specific nature so as to reproduce the condition of its own form and its own body.
Thus then the substance of each individual flesh, though its particles have been variously and diversely scattered, has within it an immortal principle, since it is the flesh of an immortal soul, and at the time which God in His good pleasure shall appoint, there will be collected from the earth and drawn to it, its own component particles, which will be restored to that form which death had formerly dissolved. And thus it will come to pass that to each soul will be restored, not a confused or foreign body but its own which it had when alive, in order that the flesh together with its own soul may for the conflicts of the present life either be crowned if undefiled, or punished if defiled. And accordingly our Church, [3415] in teaching the faith instead of "the Resurrection of the flesh," as the Creed is delivered in other Churches, guardedly adds the pronoun "this"--"the resurrection of this flesh." "Of this," that is, no doubt, of the person who rehearses the Creed, making the sign of the cross upon his forehead, while he says the word, that each believer may know that his flesh, if he have kept it clean from sin, will be a vessel of honour, useful to the Lord, prepared for every good work; but, if defiled by sins, that it will be a vessel of wrath destined to destruction.
But now, concerning the glory of the resurrection and the greatness of the promise by which God has bound Himself, if any one desires to be more fully informed, he will find notices in almost all the divine volumes, out of which, simply by way of bringing them to remembrance, we will mention a few passages in the present place, and then make an end of the work which you have enjoined. The Apostle Paul makes use of such arguments as the following in asserting that mortal flesh will rise again. "But if there be no resurrection of the dead, then is not Christ risen. And if Christ be not risen, our preaching is vain and your faith is vain." [3416] And presently afterwards, "But now is Christ risen from the dead, the first-fruits of them that sleep. For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. But every man in his own order. Christ the first-fruits, afterwards they that are Christ's at His coming, then cometh the end." [3417] And afterways he adds, "Behold I shew you a mystery: We shall all rise indeed, but we shall not [3418] all be changed;" or as other copies read, "We shall all sleep, indeed but we shall not all be changed; in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump; for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall rise incorruptible, and we shall be changed." [3419] However, whichever be the true text, writing to the Thessalonians, he says, "I would not have you ignorant, brethren, concerning those who are asleep, that ye sorrow not, as the others who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, so those also who sleep through Jesus shall God bring with Him. For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain at the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them that sleep. For the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, with the trump of God, and the dead who are in Christ shall rise first: then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet Christ in the air, and so shall we ever be with the Lord." [3420]