9. Beneath all these thoughts lay an instinctive hope, which strengthened my assertion of the faith, in some perfect blessedness hereafter to be earned by devout thoughts concerning God and upright life; the reward, as it were, that awaits the triumphant warrior. For true faith in God would pass unrewarded, if the soul be destroyed by death, and quenched in the extinction of bodily life. Even unaided reason pleaded that it was unworthy of God to usher man into an existence which has some share of His thought and wisdom, only to await the sentence of life withdrawn and of eternal death; to create him out of nothing to take his place in the World, only that when he has taken it he may perish. For, on the only rational theory of creation, its purpose was that things non-existent should come into being, not that things existing should cease to be.

9. In immortalitatis spem assurgit Hilarius. Hanc ratio ipsa ei suadet.---Suberat autem omnibus his naturalis adhuc sensus, ut pietatis professionem spes aliqua incorruptae beatitudinis aleret, quam sancta de Deo opinio et boni mores quodam victricis militiae 0031B stipendio mererentur. Neque enim fructus aliquis esset, bene de Deo opinari: cum omnem sensum mors perimeret, et occasus quidam naturae deficientis aboleret. Porro autem non esse hoc dignum Deo ratio ipsa suadebat, deduxisse eum in hanc participem consilii prudentiaeque vitam hominem sub defectione vivendi et aeternitate moriendi: ut in id tantum non exsistens substitueretur, ne substitutus exsisteret; cum constitutionis nostrae ea sola esse ratio intelligeretur, ut quod non esset esse coepisset, non ut quod coepisset esse non esset.