awarded as public honours and distinguished privileges, he to whom the senate and the people vote even sacrifices! Oh, what ju- dicial sentences for gods to pronounce, as men's recompense after death! They are more mendacious than any human judgments; they are contemptible as punishments, disciiAr. XXXIV.]
A TREATISE ON THE SOUL.
gusting as rewards; such as the worst of men could never fear, nor the best desire; such in- deed, as criminals will aspire to, rather than saints, — the former, that they may escape more speedily the world's stern sentence, — the latter that they may more tardily incur it. How well, (forsooth), O ye philosophers do you teach us, and how usefully do you advise us, that after death rewards and punishments fall with lighter weight! whereas, if any judg- ment awaits souls at all, it ought rather to be supposed that it will be heavier at the conclu- sion of life than in the conduct ' thereof, since nothing is more complete than that which comes at the very last — nothing, moreover, is more complete than that which is especially divine. Accordingly, God's judgment will be more full and complete, because it will be pronounced at the very last, in an eternal ir- revocable sentence, both of punishment and of consolation, (on men whose) souls are not to transmigrate into beasts, but are to return into their own proper bodies. And all this once for all, and on " that day, too, of which the Father only knoweth; " ^ (only knoweth,) in order that by her trembling expectation faith may make full trial of her anxious sin- cerity, keeping her gaze ever fixed on that day, in her perpetual ignorance of it, daily fearing that for which she yet daily hopes.
CHAP. XXXIV. — THESE VAGARIES STIMULATED SOME PROFANE CORRUPTIONS OF CHRISTIAN- ITY. THE PROFANITY OF SIMON MAGUS CONDEMNED.
No tenet, indeed, under cover of any heresy has as yet burst upon us, embodying any such extravagant fiction as that the souls of human beings pass into the bodies of wild beasts; but yet we have deemed it necessary to attack and refute this conceit, as a consistent sequel to the preceding opinions, in order that Homer in the peacock might be got rid of as effect- ually as Pythagoras in Euphorbus; and in order that, by the demolition of the metempsy- chosis and fnetensomatosis by the same blow, the ground might be cut away which has furnished no inconsiderable support to our heretics. There is the (infamous) Simon of Samaria in the Acts of the Apostles, who chaffered for the Holy Ghost: after his condemnation by Him, and a vain remorse that he and his money must perish together,^ he applied his energies to the destruction of the truth, as if to console himself with revenge. Besides the support with which his own magic arts fur- * In administratioae, 2 Mark xiii. 32.
nished him, he had recourse to imposture, and purchased a Tyrian woman of the name of Helen out of a brothel, with the same money which he had offered for the Holy Spirit, — a traffic worthy of the wretched man. He actually feigned himself to be the Supreme Father, and further pretended that the woman was his own primary conception, wherewith he had purposed the creation of the angels and the archangels; that after she was pos- sessed of this purpose she sprang forth from the Father and descended to the lower spaces, and there anticipating the Father's design had produced the angelic powers, which knew nothing of the Father, the Creator of this world; that she was detained a prisoner by these from a (rebellious) motive very like her own, lest after her departure from them they should appear to be the offspring of another being; and that, after being on this account exposed to every insult, to prevent her leav- ing them anywhere after her dishonour, she was degraded even to the form of man, to be confined, as it were, in the bonds of the flesh. Having during many ages wallowed about in one female shape and another, she became the notorious Helen who was so ruinous to Priam, and afterwards to the eyes of Stesicho- rus, whom, she blinded in revenge for his lampoons, and then restored to sight to re- ward him for his eulogies. After wandering about in this way from body to body, she, in her final disgrace, turned out a viler Helen still as a professional prostitute. This wench, therefore, was the lost sheep, upon whom the Supreme Father, even Simon, descended, who, after he had recovered her and brought her back — ^whether on his shoulders or loins I cannot tell — cast an eye on the salvation of man, in order to gratify his spleen by liber- ating them from the angelic powers. More- over, to deceive these he also himself assumed a visible shape; and feigning the appearance of a man amongst men, he acted the part of the Son in Judea, and of the Father in Sama- ria. O hapless Helen, what a hard fate is yours between the poets and the heretics, who have blackened your fame sometimes with adultery, sometimes with prostitution! Only her rescue from Troy is a more glorious affair than her extrication from the brothel. There were a thousand ships to remove her from Troy; a thousand pence were probably more than enough to withdraw her from the stews. Fie on you, Simon, to be so tardy in seeking her out, and so inconstant in ransoming her! How different from Menelaus! As soon as he has lost her, he goes in pursuit of her; she is no sooner ravished than he begins his search; after a ten years' conflict he boldly A TREATISE ON THE SOUL.
[chap. XXXV.
rescues her: there is no lurking, no deceiv- ing, no cavilhng. I am really afraid that he was a much better " Father," who laboured so much more vigilantly, bravely, and perse- veringly, about the recovery of his Helen.
CHAP. XXXV. — THE OPINIONS OF CARPOCRATES, ANOTHER OFFSET FROM THE PYTHAGOREAN DOGMAS, STATED AND CONFUTED.
However, it is not for you alone, (Simon), that the transmigration philosophy has fabri- cated this story. Carpocrates also makes equally good use of it, who was a magician and a fornicator like yourself, only he had not a Helen.' And why should he not? since he asserted that souls are reinvested with bodies, in order to ensure the overthrow by all means of divine and human truth. For, (according to his miserable doctrine, ) this life became consummated to no man until all those blemishes which are held to disfigure it have been fully displayed in its conduct; because there is nothing which is accounted evil by nature, but simply as men think of it. The transmigration of human souls, therefore, into any kind of heterogeneous bodies, he thought by all means indispensable, whenever any depravity whatever had not been fully perpetrated in the early stage of life's passage. Evil deeds (one may be sure) appertain to life. Moreover, as often as the soul has fallen short as a defaulter in sin, it has to be recalled to existence, until it " pays the utmost farthing," "" thrust out from time to time into the prison of the body. To this effect does he tamper with the whole of that allegory of the Lord which is extremely clear and simple in its meaning, and ought to be from the first understood in its plain and natural sense. Thus our " adversary " (therein mentioned ^ ) is the heathen man, who is walking with us along the same road of life which is common to him and ourselves. Now " we must needs go out of the world," * if it be not allowed us to have conversation with them. He bids us, therefore, show a kindly disposition to such a man. " Love your enemies," says He, " pray for them that curse you," s lest such a man in any transaction of business be irritated by any unjust conduct of yours, and " deliver thee to the judge" of his own (nation*), and you be thrown into prison, and be detained in its close and narrow cell until you have liqui- dated all your debt against him.^ Then, ' For Carpocrates, see Irenaus, i. 24; Eusebius, H. E. iv. 7; Epiphan. Har. 27.
again, should you be disposed to apply the term "adversary" to the devil, you are ad- vised by the (Lord's) injunction, "while you are in the way with him," to make even with him such a compact as may be deemed com- patible with the requirements of your true faith. Now the compact you have made re- specting him is to renounce him, and his pomp, and his angels. Such is your agree- ment in this matter. Now the friendly un- derstanding you will have to carry out must arise from your observance of the compact: you must never think of getting back any of the things which you have abjured, and have restored to him, lest he should summon you as a fraudulent man, and a transgressor of your agreement, before God the Judge (for in this light do we read of him, in another passage, as "the accuser of the brethren,"^ or saints, where reference is made to the actual practice of legal prosecution); and lest this Judge deliver you over to the angel who is to execute the sentence, and he commit you to the prison of hell, out of which there will be no dismissal until the smallest even of your delinquencies be paid off in the period before the resurrection. 9 What can be a more fitting sense than this? What a truer interpretation?
If, however, according to Carpocrates, the soul is bound to the commission of all sorts of crime and evil conduct, what must we from his system understand to be its " adversary " and foe? I suppose it must be that better mind which shall compel it by force to the performance of some act of virtue, that it may be driven from body to body, until it be found in none a debtor to the claims of a virtuous life. This means, that a good tree is known by its bad fruit — in other words, that the doc- trine of truth is understood from the worst possible precepts. I apprehend '° that here- tics of this school seize with especial avidity the example of Elias, whom they assume to have been so reproduced in John (the Baptist) as to make our Lord's statement sponsor for their theory of transmigration, when He said, " Elias is come already, and they knew him not; " " and again, in another passage, " And if ye will receive it, this is Elias, which was for to come." '^ Well, then, was it really in a Pythagorean sense that the Jews approached John with the inquiry, " Art thou Elias? " '^ and not rather in the sense of the divine pre- ^ Rev. xii. lo.
9 Mora resurrection is. For the force of this phrase, as appar- ently implying a doctrine of purgatory, and an explanation of Tertullian s teaching on this point, see Bp. Kaye on Tertulliau, pp. 328, 329. [See p. 59, supra.] '° Spero.
CHAP. XXXVII,] A TREATISE ON THE SOUL.
diction, "Behold, I will send you Elijah" the Tisbite? ' The fact, however, is, that their metempsychosis, or transmigration theory, signifies the recall of the soul which had died long before, and its return to some other body. But Elias is to come again, not after quitting life (in the way of dying), but after his translation (or removal without dying); not for the purpose of being restored to the body, from which he had not departed, but for the purpose of revisiting the world from which he was trans- lated; not by way of resuming a life which he had laid aside, but of fulfilling prophecy, — really and truly the same man, both in re- spect of his name and designation, as well as of his unchanged humanity. How, there- fore, could John be Elias? You have your answer in the angel's announcement: "And he shall go before the people," says he, " in the spirit and power of Elias " — not (observe) in his soul and his body. These substances are, in fact, the natural property of each in- dividual; whilst "the spirit and power" are bestowed as external gifts by the grace of God, and so may be transferred to another person according to the purpose and will of the Al- mighty, as was anciently the case with respect to the spirit of Moses. - chap. xxxvi. — the main points of our author's subject, on the sexes of the human race.
For the discussion of these questions we abandoned, if I remember rightly, ground to which we must now return. We had estab- lished the position that the soul is seminally placed in man, and by human agency, and that its seed from the very beginning is uni- form, as is that of the soul also, to the race of man; (and this we settled) owing to the rival opinions of the philosophers and the heretics, and that ancient saying mentioned by Plato (to which we referred above). ^ We now pursue in their order the points which follow from them. The soul, being sown in the womb at the same time as the body, re- ceives likewise along with it its sex; and this indeed so simultaneously, that neither of the two substances can be alone regarded as the cause of the sex. Now, if in the semination of these substances any interval were admissible in their conception, in such wise that either the flesh or the soul should be the first to be conceived, one might then ascribe an especial sex to one of the substances, owing to the difference in the time of the impregnations, so that either the flesh would impress its sex 3 In ch. xxviii. at the beginning.
upon the soul, or the soul upon the sex; even as Apelles (the heretic, not the painter*) gives the priority over their bodies to the souls of men and women, as he had been taught by Philumena, and in consequence makes the flesh, as the later, receive its sex from the soul. They also who make the soul supervene after birth on the flesh predetermine, of course, the sex of the previously formed soul to be male or female, according to (the sex of) the flesh. But the truth is, the seminations of the two substances are inseparable in point of time, and their effusion is also one and the same, in consequence of which a community of gender is secured to them; so that the course of nature, whatever that be, shall draw the line (for the distinct sexes). Certainly in this view we have an attestation of the method of the first two formations, when the male was moulded and tempered in a completer way, for Adam was first formed; and the woman came far behind him, for Eve was the later formed. So that her flesh was for a long time without specific form (such as she afterwards assumed when taken out of Adam's side); but she was even then herself a living being, be- cause I should regard her at that time in soul as even a portion of Adam. Besides, God's afflatus would have animated her too, if there had not been in the woman a transmission from Adam of his soul also as well as of his flesh.
CHAP. XXXVII. ON the FORMATION AND STATE OF THE EMBRYO. ITS RELATION WITH THE SUBJECT OF THIS TREATISE.
Now the entire process of sowing, forming, and completing the human embryo in the womb is no doubt regulated by some power, which ministers herein to the will of God, whatever may be the method which it is ap- pointed to employ. Even the superstition of Rome, by carefully attending to these points, imagined the goddess Ale?>iona to nourish the foetus in the womb; as well as (the goddesses) Nona and Decima, called after the most critical months of gestation; and Partula, to manage and direct parturition; and Lucina, to bring the child to the birth and light of day. We, on our part, believe the angels to ofliciate herein for God. The embryo there- fore becomes a human being in the womb from the moment that its form is completed. The law of Moses, indeed, punishes with due pen- alties the man who shall cause abortion, inas- much as there exists already the rudiment of a human being, s which has imputed to it even 4 See above, ch. xxiii.
5 Causa hominis.
A TREATISE ON THE SOUL.
[chap. XXXVIII.
now the condition of life and death, since it is already liable to the issues of both, although, by living still in the mother, it for the most part shares its own state with the mother. I must also say something about the period of the soul's birth, that I may omit nothing incidental in the whole process. A mature and regular birth takes place, as a general rule, at the commencement of the tenth month. They who theorize respecting num- bers, honour the number ten as the parent of all the others, and as imparting perfection to the human nativity. For my own part, I prefer viewing this measure of time in refer- ence to God, as if implying that the ten months rather initiated man into the ten command- ments; so that the numerical estimate of the time needed to consummate our natural birth should correspond to the numerical classifi- cation of the rules of our regenerate life. But inasmuch as birth is also completed with the seventh month, I more readily recognize in this number than in the eighth the honour of a numerical agreement with the sabbatical period; so that the month in which God's im- age is sometimes produced in a human birth, shall in its number tally with the day on which God's creation was completed and hallowed. Human nativity has sometimes been allowed to be premature, and yet to occur in fit and perfect accordance ^\i\\2in hebdomad ox seven- fold number, as an auspice of our resurrec- tion, and rest, and kingdom. The ogdoad, or eightfold number, therefore, is not con- cerned in our formation;' for in the time it represents there will be no more marriage.* We have already demonstrated the conjunc- tion of the body and the soul, from the con- cretion of their very seminations to the com- plete formation of the foetus. We now main- tain their conjunction likewise from the birth onwards; in the first place, because they both grow together, only each in a different man- ner suited to the diversity of their nature — the flesh in magnitude, the soul in intelligence — the flesh in material condition, the soul in sensibility. We are, however, forbidden to suppose that the soul increases in substance, lest it should be said also to be capable of diminution in substance, and so its extinction even should be believed to be possible; but its inherent power, in which are contained all its natural peculiarities, as originally implanted in its being, is gradually developed along with the flesh, without impairing the germinal basis of the substance, which it re- « The ogdoad, or number eighty mystically representing " hea- ven" where they do not marry.
a Beyond the hebdomad comes the resurrection, on which see Matt. xxii. go.
ceived when breathed at first into man. Take a certain quantity of gold or of silver — a rough mass as yet: it has indeed a compact condi- tion, and one that is more compressed at the moment than it will be; yet it contains within its contour what is throughout a mass of gold or of silver. When this mass is afterwards extended by beating it into leaf, it becomes larger than it was before by the elongation of the original mass, but not by any addition thereto, because it is extended in space, not increased in bulk; although in a way it is even increased when it is extended: for it may be increased in form, but not in state. Then, again, the sheen of the gold or the silver, which when the metal was only in block was inherent in it no doubt really, but yet only obscurely, shines out in developed lustre. Afterwards various modifications of shape accrue, according to the feasibility in the material which makes it yield to the ma- nipulation of the artisan, who yet adds nothing to the condition of the mass but its configura. tion. In like manner, the growth and devel- opments of the soul are to be estimated, not as enlarging its substance, but as calling forth its powers.
CHAP. XXXVIII. ON THE GROWTH OF THE SOUL. ITS MATURITY COINCIDENT WITH THE MATURITY OF THE FLESH IN MAN.
Now we have already ^ laid down the princi- ple, that all the natural properties of the soul which relate to sense and intelligence are in- herent in its very substance, and spring from its native constitution, but that they advance by a gradual growth through the stages of life and develope themselves in different ways by accidental circumstances, according to men's means and arts, their manners and customs their local situations, and the influences of the Supreme Powers;* but in pursuance of that aspect of the association of body and soul which we have now to consider, we main- tain that the puberty of the soul coincides with that of the body, and that they attain both together to this full growth at about the four- teenth year of life, speaking generally, — the former by the suggestion of the senses, and the latter by the growth of the bodily mem- bers; and (we fix on this age) not because, as Asclepiades supposes, reflection then begins, nor because the civil laws date the commence- ment of the real business of life from this period, but because this was the appointed' order from the very first. For as Adam ano Eve felt that they must cover their naked- 3 See above, in ch. xx. 4Se« above, in ch. xxiy.
/ CHAP. XXXIX.]
A TREATISE ON THE SOUL.
ness after their knowledge of good and evil, so we profess to have the same discernment of good and evil from the time that we expe- rience the same sensation of shame. Now from the before-mentioned age (of fourteen years) sex is suffused and clothed with an es- pecial sensibility, and concupiscence employs the ministry of the eye, and communicates its pleasure to another, and understands the natural relations between male and female, and wears the fig-tree apron to cover the shame which it still excites, and drives man out of the paradise of innocence and chastity, and in its wild pruriency falls upon sins and unnatural incentives to delinquency; for its impulse has by this time surpassed the ap- pointment of nature, and springs from its vicious abuse. But the strictly natural con- cupiscence is simply confined to the desire of those aliments which God at the beginning conferred upon man. " Of every tree of the garden," He s^ays, "ye shall freely eat;"' and then again to the generation which fol- lowed next after the flood He enlarged the grant; " Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you; behold, as the green herb have I given you all these things,"^ — where He has regard rather to the body than to the soul, although it be in the interest of the soul also. For we must remove all occasion from the caviller, who, because the soul apparently wants aliments, would insist on the soul's be- ing from this circumstance deem.ed mortal, since it is sustained by meat and drink and after a time loses its vigour when they are withheld, and on their complete removal ulti- mately droops and dies. Now the point we must keep in view is not merely which par- ticular faculty it is which desires these (ali- ments), but also for what end; and even if it be for its own sake, still the question remains. Why this desire, and when felt, and how long? Then again there is the consideration, that it is one thing to desire by natural instinct, and another thing to desire through necessity; one thing to desire as a property of being, another thing to desire for a special object. The soul, therefore, will desire meat and drink — for itself indeed, because of a special necessity; for the flesh, however, from the nature of its properties. For the flesh is no doubt the house of the soul, and the