Chapter LIX.—Our Flesh in the Resurrection Capable, Without Losing Its Essential Identity, of Bearing the Changed Conditions of Eternal Life, or of Death Eternal.

But, you object, the world to come bears the character of a different dispensation, even an eternal one; and therefore, you maintain, that the non-eternal substance of this life is incapable of possessing a state of such different features. This would be true enough, if man were made for the future dispensation, and not the dispensation for man. The apostle, however, in his epistle says, “Whether it be the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come; all are yours:”455    1 Cor. iii. 22. and he here constitutes us heirs even of the future world. Isaiah gives you no help when he says, “All flesh is grass;”456    Isa. xl. 7. and in another passage, “All flesh shall see the salvation of God.”457    Ver. 5. It is the issues of men, not their substances, which he distinguishes. But who does not hold that the judgment of God consists in the twofold sentence, of salvation and of punishment? Therefore it is that “all flesh is grass,” which is destined to the fire; and “all flesh shall see the salvation of God,” which is ordained to eternal life. For myself, I am quite sure that it is in no other flesh than my own that I have committed adultery, nor in any other flesh am I striving after continence. If there be any one who bears about in his person two instruments of lasciviousness, he has it in his power, to be sure, to mow down458    Demetere. “the grass” of the unclean flesh, and to reserve for himself only that which shall see the salvation of God. But when the same prophet represents to us even nations sometimes estimated as “the small dust of the balance,”459    Isa. xl. 15. and as “less than nothing, and vanity,”460    Ver. 17. The word is spittle, which the LXX. uses in the fifteenth verse for the “dust” of the Hebrew Bible. and sometimes as about to hope and “trust in the name”461    Isa. xlii. 4, Sept; quoted from the LXX. by Christ in Matt. xii. 21, and by St. Paul in Rom. xv. 12. and arm of the Lord, are we at all misled respecting the Gentile nations by the diversity of statement? Are some of them to turn believers, and are others accounted dust, from any difference of nature? Nay, rather Christ has shone as the true light on the nations within the ocean’s limits, and from the heaven which is over us all.462    An allusion to some conceits of the Valentinians, who put men of truest nature and fit for Christ’s grace outside of the ocean-bounded earth, etc. Why, it is even on this earth that the Valentinians have gone to school for their errors; and there will be no difference of condition, as respects their body and soul, between the nations which believe and those which do not believe.  Precisely, then, as He has put a distinction of state, not of nature, amongst the same nations, so also has He discriminated their flesh, which is one and the same substance in those nations, not according to their material structure, but according to the recompense of their merit.

CAPUT LIX.

Sed futurum, inquis, aevum alterius est dispositionis et aeternae; igitur hujus aevi substantiam non aeternam diversa possidere non posse. Plane, si homo propter 0881B dispositionem futuram, et non dispositio propter hominem. Sedenim Apostolus scribens (I Cor., III, 22): Sive mundus, sive vita, sive mors, sive futura, sive praesentia, omnia vestra sunt, eosdem constituit haeredes etiam futurorum. Nihil tibi largitur Esaias dicens (Is., XL, 5, 6): Omnis caro foenum; et alibi: Et videbit omnis caro salutare Domini . Exitus, non substantias distinxit. Quis enim judicium Dei non in sententia duplici statuit, salutis et poenae? Omnis igitur caro foenum, quae igni destinatur; et omnis caro videbit salutare Domini , quae saluti ordinatur. Ego me scio neque alia carne adulteria commisisse , neque nunc alia carne ad continentiam eniti. Si quis est bina pudenda circumferens, potest jam et demere foenum carnis immundae, et solam sibi reservare, 0881C quae visura sit Domini salutare. Sed cum idem Prophetes etiam nationes ostendat, nunc deputatas velut pulverem et salivam, nunc speraturas et credituras in nomen et in brachium Domini, numquid et de nationibus fallimur? et aliae quidem sunt crediturae, aliae in pulverem deputatae, ex diversitate substantiae? Sed et Christus intra oceanum, et de isto coelo quod nobis incubat , verum lumen nationibus offulsit ; et ipsi Valentiniani 0882A hic errare didicerunt; nec alia erit forma nationum credentium, nisi quae et non credentium, de carne, de anima. Sicut ergo easdem nationes non genere, sed sorte distinxit; ita et carnes, quae in ipsis nationibus una substantia est, non materia, sed mercede disjunxit.