Chapter 3 [III.]—It is One Thing to Be Mortal, Another Thing to Be Subject to Death.

Nor was there any reason to fear that if he had happened to live on here longer in his natural body, he would have been oppressed with old age, and have gradually, by increasing age, arrived at death. For if God granted to the clothes and the shoes of the Israelites that “they waxed not old” during so many years,8    Deut. xxix. 5. what wonder if for obedience it had been by the power of the same [God] allowed to man, that although he had a natural and mortal body, he should have in it a certain condition, in which he might grow full of years without decrepitude, and, whenever God pleased, pass from mortality to immortality without the medium of death? For even as this very flesh of ours, which we now possess, is not therefore invulnerable, because it is not necessary that it should be wounded; so also was his not therefore immortal, because there was no necessity for its dying. Such a condition, whilst still in their natural and mortal body, I suppose, was granted even to those who were translated hence without death.9    Gen. v. 24; 2 Kings ii. 11. For Enoch and Elijah were not reduced to the decrepitude of old age by their long life. But yet I do not believe that they were then changed into that spiritual kind of body, such as is promised in the resurrection, and which the Lord was the first to receive; only they probably do not need those aliments, which by their use minister refreshment to the body; but ever since their translation they so live, as to enjoy such a sufficiency as was provided during the forty days in which Elijah lived on the cruse of water and the cake, without substantial food;10    1 Kings xix. 8. or else, if there be any need of such sustenance, they are, it may be, sustained in Paradise in some such way as Adam was, before he brought on himself expulsion therefrom by sinning. And he, as I suppose, was supplied with sustenance against decay from the fruit of the various trees, and from the tree of life with security against old age.

CAPUT III.

3. Aliud esse mortalem, aliud esse morti obnoxium. Neque enim metuendum fuit, ne forte si diutius hic viveret in corpore animali, senectute gravaretur, et paulatim veterascendo perveniret ad mortem. Si enim Deus Israelitarum vestimentis et calceamentis praestitit, quod per tot annos non sunt obtrita (Deut. XXIX, 5); quid mirum si obedienti 0111 homini ejusdem potentia praestaretur, ut animale ac mortale habens corpus , haberet in eo quemdam statum, quo sine defectu esset annosus , tempore quo Deus vellet, a mortalitate ad immortalitatem, sine media morte venturus? Sicut enim haec ipsa caro quam nunc habemus, non ideo non est vulnerabilis, quia non est necesse ut vulneretur: sic illa non ideo non fuit mortalis, quia non erat necesse ut moreretur. Talem puto habitudinem adhuc in corpore animali atque mortali, etiam illis qui sine morte hinc translati sunt, fuisse concessam. Neque enim Enoch et Elias per tam longam aetatem senectute marcuerunt. Nec tamen credo eos jam in illam spiritualem qualitatem corporis commutatos, qualis in resurrectione promittitur, quae in Domino prima praecessit: nisi quia isti fortasse nec his cibis egent, qui sui consumptione reficiunt; sed ex quo translati sunt, ita vivunt, ut similem habeant satietatem illis quadraginta diebus, quibus Elias ex calice aquae et ex collyride panis sine cibo vixit (IV Reg. II, 11): aut si et his sustentaculis opus est, ita in paradiso fortasse pascuntur, sicut Adam priusquam propter peccatum exinde exire meruisset. Habebat enim, quantum existimo, et de lignorum fructibus refectionem contra defectionem, et de ligno vitae stabilitatem contra vetustatem.