1876 Such theories are developed in the Phedo of Plato; and constitute 6 étepoc tHv Adywv, criticized more fully below.
1877 Reading Soi, fj 10 EunaAn, instead of the corrupt doxety to EumaAww.
1878 6 mpdtEpos (Adyos). The second is mentioned below. “The same absurdity exists in the other of the two theories as well.” Obviously these two theories are those alluded to at the beginning of this last speech of Macrina, where, speaking of the heathen transmigration, she says, “While some of them extend this absurdity even to trees and shrubs, so that they consider their wooden life as corresponding and akin to humanity (i.e. 6 mpotépos Aéyos), others of them opine only thus much, that the soul exchanges one man for another man,” &c. (i.e. 6 €tepoc). In either case the soul is supposed to return from the dead body to heaven, and then by a fresh fall into sin there, to sink down again. The absurdity and the godlessness is just as glaring, Macrina says, in the last case (the Platonic soul-rotation) as in the first (Transmigration pure and simple). But the one point in both in contact with the Christian Resurrection is this, that the soul of the departed does assume another body.
On the Soul and the Resurrection.
marriage? But then, in this last case, the soul will have to wander about in the interval like a houseless vagabond, lapsed as it has from its heavenly surroundings, and yet, as it may happen in some cases, still without a body to receive it. But how, after that, can they imagine that the Deity exercises any superintendence over the world, referring as they do the begin- nings of human lives to this casual and meaningless descent of a soul. For all that follows must necessarily accord with the beginning; and so, if a life begins in consequence of a chance accident, the whole course of it!®”? becomes at once a chapter of accidents, and the attempt to make the whole world depend on a Divine power is absurd, when it is made by these men, who deny to the individualities in it a birth from the fiat of the Divine Will and refer the several origins of beings to encounters that come of evil, as though there could never have existed such a thing as a human life, unless a vice had struck, as it were, its leading note. If the beginning is like that, a sequel will most certainly be set in motion in accordance with that beginning. None would dare to maintain that what is fair can come out of what is foul, any more than from good can come its opposite. We expect fruit in ac- cordance with the nature of the seed. Therefore this blind movement of chance is to rule the whole of life, and no Providence is any more to pervade the world.
Nay, even the forecasting by our calculations will be quite useless; virtue will lose its value; and to turn from evil will not be worth the while. Everything will be entirely under the control of the driver, Chance; and our lives will differ not at all from vessels devoid of ballast, and will drift on waves of unaccountable circumstances, now to this, now to that incident of good or of evil. The treasures of virtue will never be found in those who owe their constitution to causes quite contrary to virtue. If God really superintends our life, then, confessedly, evil cannot begin it. But if we do owe our birth to evil, then we must go on living in complete uniformity with it. Thereby it will be shown that it is folly to talk about the “houses of correction” which await us after this life is ended, and the “just recompenses,” and all the other things there asserted, and believed in too, that tend to the suppression of vice: for how can a man, owing, as he does, his birth to evil, be outside its pale? How can he, whose very nature has its rise in a vice, as they assert, possess any deliberate impulse towards a life of virtue? Take any single one of the brute creation; it does not attempt to speak like a human being, but in using the natural kind of utterance sucked in, as it were, with its mother’s mil, it deems it no loss to be deprived of articulate speech. Just in the same way those who believe that a vice was the origin and the cause of their being alive will never bring themselves to have a longing after virtue, because it will be a thing quite foreign to their nature. But, as a fact’””’, they who by reflecting have cleansed the vision of their 1879 Kat’ abtov (i.e. Biov) d1€E050c. The Editions have kat’ abtév. Krabinger well translates by “percursatio.” Cf. Pheedrus, p. 247 A. 1880 ovvtpd@w 1881 dAAd ur introduces a fact into the argument (cf. Kai pry); Lat. “verum enimvero.”
On the Soul and the Resurrection.
soul do all of them desire and strive after a life of virtue. Therefore it is by that fact clearly proved that vice is not prior in time to the act of beginning to live, and that our nature did not thence derive its source, but that the all-disposing wisdom of God was the Cause of it: in short, that the soul issues on the stage of life in the manner which is pleasing to its Creator, and then (but not before), by virtue of its power of willing, is free to choose that which is to its mind, and so, whatever it may wish to be, becomes that very thing. We may understand this truth by the example of the eyes. To see is their natural state; but to fail to see results to them either from choice or from disease. This unnatural state may supervene instead of the natural, either by wilful shutting of the eyes or by deprivation of their sight through disease. With the like truth we may assert that the soul derives its constitution from God, and that, as we cannot conceive of any vice in Him, it is removed from any necessity of being vicious; that nevertheless, though this is the condition in which it came into being, it can be attracted of its own free will in a chosen direction, either wilfully shutting its eyes to the Good, or letting them be damaged!8*? by that insidious foe whom we have taken home to live with us, and so passing through life in the darkness of error; or, reversely, preserving undimmed its sight of the Truth and keeping far away from all weaknesses that could darken it.—But then some one will ask, “When and how did it come into being?” Now as for the question, how any single thing came into existence, we must banish it altogether from our discussion. Even in the case of things which are quite within the grasp of our understanding and of which we have sensible perception, it would be impossible for the speculative reason grasp the “how” of the production of the phenomenon; so much so, that even inspired and saintly men have deemed such questions insoluble. For instance, the Apostle says, “Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen are not made of things which do appear!®*4” He would not, I take it, have spoken like that, if he had thought that the question could be settled by any efforts of the reasoning powers. While the Apostle affirms that it is an object of his faith!®®° that it was by the will of God that the world itself and all which is therein was framed (whatever this “world” be that involves the idea of the whole visible and invisible creation), he has on the other hand left out of the investigation the “how” of this framing. Nor do I think that this point can ever be reached by any inquirers. The question presents, on the face of it, many insuperable difficulties. How, for instance, can a world of movement come from one that is at rest? how from the simple and undimensional that which shows dimension and compositeness? Did 1882 tov dpOaAuov BAartopéevyv 1883 Adyw.
1885 that it is an object of his faith, &c. In the Greek the peév contrasts the Apostle’s declaration on this point with his silence as to the “how.”
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it come actually out of the Supreme Being? But the fact that this world presents a difference in kind to that Being militates against!88° such a supposition. Did it then come from some other quarter? Yet Fait can contemplate nothing as quite outside the Divine Nature; for we should have to believe in two distinct and separate Principles, if outside the Creative Cause we are to suppose something else, which the Artificer, with all His skill, has to put under contribution for the formative processes of the Universe. Since, then, the Cause of all things is one, and one only, and yet the existences produced by that Cause are not of the pea arises same nature as its transcendent quality, an inconceivability of equal magnitude in both our suppositions, i.e. both that the creation comes straight out of the Divine Being, and that the universe owes its existence to some cause other than Him; for if created things are to be of the same nature as God, we must consider Him to be invested with the properties belonging to His creation; or else a world of matter, outside the circle of God’s substance, and equal, on the score of the absence in it of all beginning, to the eternity of the Self-existent One, will have to be ranged against Him: and this is in fact what the followers of Manes, and some of the Greek philosophers who held opinions of equal boldness with his, did imagine; and they raised this imagination into a system. In order, then, to avoid falling into either of these absurdities, which the inquiry into the origin of things involves, let us, follow- ing the example of the Apostle, leave the question of the “how” in each created thing, without meddling with it at all, but merely observing incidentally that the movement of God’s Will becomes at any moment that He pleases a fact, and the intention becomes at once realized in Nature'®*?; for Omnipotence does not leave the plans of its far-seeing skill in the state of unsubstantial wishes: and the actualizing ofa wish is Substance. In short, the whole world of existing things falls into two divisions: i.e. that of the intelligible, and that of the corporeal: and the intelligible creation does not, to begin with, seem to be in any way at variance with a spiritual Being, but on the contrary to verge closely upon Him, exhibiting as it does that absence of tangible form and of dimension which we rightly attribute to His transcendent nature. The corporeal creation’, on the other hand, must certainly be classed amongst 1886 militates against, &c.’AAN oby OuoAoyeitat (reading then, 6t1 10 EtepoyEvEG EXEL POG EKEivNV TA OVTA). Cf. Plato, Tim. 29 C, adtoi avtois obx OuoAoyovpEVOL Adyot, “theories that contradict each other.” This world cannot come out of the Supreme Being: its alien nature contradicts that. Krabinger’s translation is therefore wrong, “sed non constat:” and Oehler’s, “Aber das ist nicht angemacht.”
1888 Reading ion 51.
1890 The long Greek sentence, which begins here with a genitive absolute (tig S€ owpatiKis KTioEWws, K.T.A.), leading up to nothing but the anacoluthon mepi dv tooodtov k.t.A., has been broken up in translating. Doubtless this anacoluthon can be explained by the sentences linked on to the last words (t@ Adyw) of the genitive clause, which are so long as to throw that clause quite into the background. There is no need therefore to take the words On the Soul and the Resurrection.
specialities that have nothing in common with the Deity; and it does offer this supreme difficulty to the Reason; namely, that the Reason cannot see how the visible comes out of the invisible, how the hard solid comes out of the intangible, how the finite comes out of the infinite, how that which is circumscribed by certain proportions, where the idea of quantity comes in, can come from that which has no size, no proportions, and so on through each single circumstance of body. But even about this we can say so much: i.e. that not one of those things which we attribute to body is itself body; neither figure, nor colour, nor weight, nor extension, nor quantity, nor any other qualifying notion whatever; but every one of them is a category; it is the combination of them all into a single whole that constitutes body. Seeing, then, that these several qualifications which complete the particular body are grasped by thought alone, and not by sense, and that the Deity is a thinking being, what trouble can it be to such a thinking agent to produce the thinkables whose mutual combination generates for us the substance of that body? All this discussion, however, lies outside our present business. The previous question was,—If some souls exist anterior to their bodies, when and how do they come into existence? and of this question!*?!
, again, the part about the how, has been left out of our examination and has not been meddled with, as presenting impen- etrable difficulties. There remains the question of the when of the soul’s commencement of existence: it follows immediately on that which we have already discussed. For if we were to grant that the soul has lived previous to its body'®”” in some place of resort peculiar to itself, then we cannot avoid seeing some force in all that fantastic teaching lately discussed, which would explain the soul’s habitation of the body as a consequence of some vice. Again, on the other hand, no one who can reflect will imagine an after-birth of the soul, i.e. that it is younger than the moulding of the body; for every one can see for himself that not one where this anacoluthon begins, down to o@ua yivetat, as a parenthesis, with Krabinger and Oehler; especially as the words that follow yivetat are a direct recapitulation of what immediately precedes.
1891 Reading, as Dr. H. Schmidt conjectures, kai tovtov maAuy, cf. 205 C.
1892 Origen, Gregory’s master in most of his theology, did teach this very thing, the pre-existence of the soul: nor did he attempt to deny that some degree of transmigration was a necessary accompaniment of such teaching; only he would adjust the moral meaning of it. Cf. c. Celsum, Lib. iii. 75. “And even if we should treat (i e. med- ically) those who have caught the folly of the transmigration of souls from doctors who push down a reasoning nature into any of the unreasoning natures, or even into that which is insensate, how can any say that we shall not work improvement in their souls by teaching them that the bad do not have allotted to them by way of punishment that insensate or unreasoning state, but that what is inflicted by God upon the bad, be it pain or affliction, is only in the way of a very efficacious cure for them? This is the teaching of the wise Christian: he attempts to teach the simpler of his flock as fathers do the merest infants.” Not the theory itself, but the exaggeration of it, is here combated.
On the Soul and the Resurrection.
amongst all the things that are inanimate or soulless possesses any power of motion or of growth; whereas there is no question about that which is bred in the uterus both growing and moving from place to place. It remains therefore that we must think that the point of commencement of existence is one and the same for body and soul. Also we affirm that, just as the earth receives the sapling from the hands of the husbandman and makes a tree of it, without itself imparting the power of growth to its nursling, but only lending it, when placed within itself, the impulse to grow, in this very same way that which is secreted from aman for the planting of a man is itself to a certain extent a living being as much gifted with a soul and as capable of nourishing itself as that from which it comes!*?, If this offshoot, in its diminutiveness, cannot contain at first all the activities and the movements of the soul, we need not be surprised; for neither in the seed of corn is there visible all at once the ear. How indeed could anything so large be crowded into so small a space? But the earth keeps on feeding it with its congenial aliment, and so the grain becomes the ear, without changing its nature while in the clod, but only developing it and bringing it to perfection under the stimulus of that nourishment. As, then, in the case of those growing seeds the advance to 1894 4 in man’s formation the forces of his soul show themperfection is a graduated one selves in proportion to the size to which his body has attained. They dawn first in the foetus, in the shape of the power of nutrition and of development: after that, they introduce into the organism that has come into the light the gift of perception: then, when this is reached, they manifest a certain measure of the reasoning faculty, like the fruit of some matured plant, not growing all of it at once, but in a continuous progress along with the shooting up of that plant. Seeing, then, that that which is secreted from one living being to lay the foundations of another living being cannot itself be dead (for a state of deadness arises from the privation of life, and it cannot be that privation should precede the having), we grasp from these considerations the fact that in the compound which results from the joining of both (soul and body) there is a simultaneous passage of both into existence; the one does not come first, any more than the other comes after. But as to the number of souls, our reason must necessarily contemplate a stopping some day of its increase; so that Nature’s stream may not flow on for ever, pouring forward in her successive births and never staying that onward movement. The reason for our race having some day to come to a standstill is as follows, in our opinion: since every intellectual reality is fixed in a plenitude of its own, it is reasonable to expect that humanity’ °”” also will arrive at a goal (for in this respect also humanity is not to be parted from the intellectual world!®"*), so that we are to believe that 1894 Kata Adyov.
1895 This seems like a prelude to the Realism of the Middle Ages.
1896 Each individual soul represents, to Gregory’s view, a “thought” of God, which becomes visible by the soul being born. There will come a time when all these “thoughts,” which complete, and do not destroy, each On the Soul and the Resurrection.
it will not be visible for ever only in defect, as it is now: for this continual addition of after generations indicates that there is something deficient in our race.
Whenever, then, humanity shall have reached the plenitude that belongs to it, this on- streaming movement of production will altogether cease; it will have touched its destined bourn, and a new order of things quite distinct from the present precession of births and deaths will carry on the life of humanity. If there is no birth, it follows necessarily that there will be nothing to die. Composition must precede dissolution (and by composition I mean the coming into this world by being born); necessarily, therefore, if this synthesis does not precede, no dissolution will follow. Therefore, if we are to go upon probabilities, the life after this is shown to us beforehand as something that is fixed and imperishable, with no birth and no decay to change it.
The Teacher finished her exposition; and to the many persons sitting by her bedside the whole discussion seemed now to have arrived at a fitting conclusion. Nevertheless, fearing that if the Teacher’s illness took a fatal turn (such as did actually happen), we should have no one amongst us to answer the objections of the unbelievers to the Resurrection!®%, I still insisted.
The argument has not yet touched the most vital of all the questions relating to our Faith. I mean, that the inspired Writings, both in the New and in the Old Testament, declare most emphatically not only that, when our race has completed the ordered chain of its existence as the ages lapse through their complete circle!898 , this current streaming onward as generation succeeds generation will cease altogether, but also that then, when the com- pleted Universe no longer admits of further increase, all the souls in their entire number will come back out of their invisible and scattered condition into tangibility and light, the identical atoms (belonging to each soul) reassembling together in the same order as before; and this reconstitution of human life is called, in these Writings which contain God’s teaching, the Resurrection, the entire movement of the atoms receiving the same term as the raising up of that which is actually prostrate on the ground!8°?, other, will have completed the mArpwya (Humanity) which the Deity contemplates. This immediate apparition of a soul, as a “thought” of God, is very unlike the teaching of his master Origen: and yet more sober, and more scriptural.
1897 The situation here is, as Dr. H. Schmidt points out, just like that in the Pheedo of Plato, where all are satisfied with Socrates’ discourse, except Kebes and Simmias, who seize the precious moments still left, to bring forward an objection which none but their great Teacher could remove.
1898 meptodixryv: a better reading than mapodixrv, which most Codd. have.
1899 receiving the same term (cvvovopatouevns) as the raising up of that which is actually prostate on the ground (tod yewdous), i.e. the term dvdotaotc is extended by analogy to embrace the entire movement of the atoms. Though there is here of course an allusion to the elevation of the nature from the “earthly” to the “heavenly,” and perhaps to the raising of the body from the tomb, yet the primary meaning is that the term On the Soul and the Resurrection.
But, said she, which of these points has been left unnoticed in what has been said?
Why, the actual doctrine of the Resurrection, I replied.
And yet, she answered, much in our long and detailed discussion pointed to that.
Then are you not aware, I insisted, of all the objections, a very swarm of them, which our antagonists bring against us in connection with that hope of yours?
And [ at once tried to repeat all the devices hit upon by their captious champions to upset the doctrine of the Resurrection.
She, however, replied, First, I think, we must briefly run over the scattered proclamations of this doctrine in Holy Scripture; they shall give the finishing touch to our discourse. Ob- serve, then, that I can hear David, in the midst of his praises in the Divine Songs, saying at the end of the hymnody of the hundred and third (104th) Psalm, where he has taken for his theme God’s administration of the world, “Thou shalt take away their breath, and they shall die, and return to their dust: Thou shalt send forth Thy Spirit, and they shall be created: and Thou shalt renew the face of the earth.” He says that a power of the Spirit which works in all vivifies the beings into whom it enters, and deprives those whom He abandons of their life. Seeing, then, that the dying is declared to occur at the Spirit’s departure, and the renewal of these dead ones at His appearance, and seeing moreover that in the order of the statement the death of those who are to be thus renewed comes first, we hold that in these words that mystery of the Resurrection is proclaimed to the Church, and that David in the spirit of prophecy expressed this very gift which you are asking about. You will find this same 1900 also saying that “the God of the world, the Lord of everything that is, hath showed Himself to us, that we may keep the Feast amongst the decorators;” by prophet in another place that mention of “decoration” with boughs, he means the Feast of Tabernacle-fixing, which, avdotaoc is derived from its special use of raising from the ground one who lies prostrate (as a suppliant). Some of the elements of the body are supposed to be yew6n, i.e. mingled with their kindred earth. But though strictly the word &vdéotaotc should apply to them alone, it does not do so, but denotes more generally the movement of all the atoms to reform the body.
1900 Gregory quotes as usual the LXX. for this Psalm (cxviii. 27): O€0g KUPLOG, Karl EMEavEV NUiv’ ovotHoaoE THV EOPTHV Ev TOIS TUKACovOL EWS TOV KEPaTWV Tod Bvolactnpiov. [Krabinger has replaced ovotrjoacGe from one of his Codd. for the common ovotrjoao8a1; but if this is retained ote must be understood. Cf. Matt., Gr. Gr. §532.] The LXX. is rendered by the Psalterium Romanum “constitute diem in confrequentationibus.” So also Eusebius, Theodoret, and Chrysostom interpret. But the Psalterium Gallicanum reproduces the LXX. otherwise, i.e. in condensis, as Apollinaris and Jerome (in frondosis) also understand it. “Adorn the feast with green boughs, even to the horns of the altar”: Luther. “It is true that during the time of the second temple the altar of burnt offering was planted round about at the Feast of Tabernacles with large branches of osiers, which leaned over the edge of that altar”: Delitzsch (who however says that this is, linguistically, untenable). Gregory’s rendering differs from this only in making muxdovot masculine.
On the Soul and the Resurrection.
in accordance with Moses’ injunction, has been observed from of old. That lawgiver, I take it, adopting a prophet’s spirit, predicted therein things still to come; for though the decoration was always going on it was never finished. The truth indeed was foreshadowed under the type and riddle of those Feasts that were always occurring, but the true Tabernacle-fixing was not yet come; and on this account “the God and Lord of the whole world,” according to the Prophet’s declaration, “hath showed Himself to us, that the Tabernacle-fixing of this our tenement that has been dissolved may be kept for human kind”; a material decoration, that is, may be begun again by means of the concourse of our scattered atoms. For that word MUKAOLOS in its peculiar meaning signifies the Temple-circuit and the decoration which completes it. Now this passage from the Psalms runs as follows: “God and Lord hath showed Himself to us; keep the Feast amongst the decorators even unto the horns of the altar;” and this seems to me to proclaim in metaphors the fact that one single feast is to be kept by the whole rational creation, and that in that assembly of the saints the inferiors are to join the dance with their superiors. For in the case of the fabric of that Temple which was the Type it was not allowed to all who were on the outside of its circuit!”°!
to come within, but everything that was Gentile and alien was prohibited from entering; and of those, further, who had entered, all were not equally privileged to advance towards the centre; but only those who had consecrated themselves by a holier manner of life, and by certain sprinklings; and, again, not every one amongst these last might set foot within the interior of the Temple; the priests alone had the right of entering within the Curtain, and that only for the service of the sanctuary; while even to the priests the darkened shrine of the Temple, where stood the beautiful Altar with its jutting horns, was forbidden, except to one of them, who held the highest office of the priesthood, and who once a year, on a stated day, and unattended, passed within it, carrying an offering more than usually sacred and mystical. Such being the differences in connection with this Temple which you know of, it was clearly}? a repres- entation and an imitation of the condition of the spirit-world, the lesson taught by these material observances being this, that it is not the whole of the rational creation that can ap- proach the temple of God, or, in other words, the adoration of the Almighty; but that those who are led astray by false persuasions are outside the precinct of the Deity; and that from the number of those who by virtue of this adoration have been preferred to the rest and admitted within it, some by reason of sprinklings and purifications have still further privileges; and again amongst these last those who have been consecrated priests have privileges further still, even to being admitted to the mysteries of the interior. And, that one may bring into still clearer light the meaning of the allegory, we may understand the Word here as teaching this, that amongst all the Powers endued with reason some have been fixed like a 1901 Reading toic 2 wOev nepiPoAric 1902 Reading d5nAdvott On the Soul and the Resurrection.
Holy Altar in the inmost shrine of the Deity; and that again of these last some jut forward like horns, for their eminence, and that around them others are arranged first or second, according to a prescribed sequence of rank; that the race of man, on the contrary, on account of indwelling evil was excluded from the Divine precinct, but that purified with lustral water it re-enters it; and, since all the further barriers by which our sin has fenced us off from the things within the veil are in the end to be taken down, whenever the time comes that the tabernacle of our nature is as it were to be fixed up again in the Resurrection, and all the inveterate corruption of sin has vanished from the world, then a universal feast will be kept around the Deity by those who have decorated themselves in the Resurrection; and one and the same banquet will be spread for all, with no differences cutting off any rational creature from an equal participation in it; for those who are now excluded by reason of their sin will at last be admitted within the Holiest places of God’s blessedness, and will bind themselves to the horns of the Altar there, that is, to the most excellent of the transcendental Powers. The Apostle says the same thing more plainly when he indicates the final accord of the whole Universe with the Good: “That” to Him “every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth: And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father”: instead of the “horns,” speaking of that which is angelic and “in heaven,” and by the other terms signifying ourselves, the creatures whom we think of next to that; one festival of united voices shall occupy us all; that festival shall be the confession and the recognition of the Being Who truly Is. One might (she proceeded) select many other passages of Holy Scripture to establish the doctrine of the Resurrection. For instance, Ezekiel leaps in the spirit of prophecy over all the intervening time, with its vast duration; he stands, by his powers of foresight, in the actual moment of the Resurrection, and, as if he had really gazed on what is still to come, brings it in his description before our 1903 unfolded to an endless distance before him, and vast heaps eyes. He sawa mighty plain of bones upon it flung at random, some this way, some that; and then under an impulse from God these bones began to move and group themselves with their fellows that they once owned, and adhere to the familiar sockets, and then clothe themselves with muscle, flesh, and skin (which was the process called “decorating” in the poetry of the Psalms); a Spirit in fact was giving life and movement to everything that lay there. But as regards our Apostle’s description of the wonders of the Resurrection, why should one repeat it, seeing that it can easily be found and read? how, for instance, “with a shout” and the “sound of trumpets” (in the language of the Word) all dead and prostrate things shall be “changed?
1903 Ezek. xxxvii. 1-10.
1904 Gregory, as often, seems to quote from memory (bnaperpOrjoeo8an, but 1 Cor. xv. 52 dAAaynodpEba; and St. Paul says npeic dé, i.e. “we shall be changed,” in distinction from the dead generally, who “shall be raised incorruptible”). But the doctrine of a general resurrection, with or without change, is quite in harmony with the end of this treatise. Cf. p. 468.
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in the twinkling of an eye” into immortal beings. The expressions in the Gospels also I will pass over; for their meaning is quite clear to every one; and our Lord does not declare in word alone that the bodies of the dead shall be raised up again; but He shows in action the Resurrection itself, making a beginning of this work of wonder from things more within our reach and less capable of being doubted. First, that is, He displays His life-giving power in the case of the deadly forms of disease, and chases those maladies by one word of com- mand; then He raises a little girl just dead; then He makes a young man, who is already being carried out, sit up on his bier, and delivers him to his mother; after that He calls forth from his tomb the four-days-dead and already decomposed Lazarus, vivifying the prostrate body with His commanding voice; then after three days He raises from the dead His own human body, pierced though it was with the nails and spear, and brings the print of those nails and the spear-wound to witness to the Resurrection. But I think that a detailed mention of these things is not necessary; for no doubt about them lingers in the minds of those who have accepted the written accounts of them.