soul is the temporary inhabitant of the flesh. The desire, then, of the lodger will arise from the temporary cause and the special necessity which his very designation suggests, — with a view to benefit and improve the place of his temporary abode, while sojourning in it; not with the view, certainly, of being himself the foundation of the house, or himself its walls, or himself its support and roof, but simply and solely with the view of being accommodated and housed, since he could not receive such accommodation except in a sound and well- built house. (Now, applying this imagery to the soul,) if it be not provided with this accom- modation, it will not be in its power to quit its dwelling-place, and for want of fit and proper resources, to depart safe and sound, in possession, too, of its own supports, and the aliments which belong to its own proper condition, — namely immortality, rationality, sensibility, intelligence, and freedom of the will.
CHAP. XXXIX. THE EVIL SPIRIT HAS MARRED THE PURITY OF THE SOUL FROM THE VERY BIRTH.
All these endowments of the soul which are bestowed on it at birth are still obscured and depraved by the malignant being who, in the beginning, regarded them with envious eye, so that they are never seen in their spontane- ous action, nor are they administered as they ought to be. For to what individual of the human race will not the evil spirit cleave, ready to entrap their souls from the very portal of their birth, at which he is invited to be present in all those superstitious processes which accompany childbearing? Thus it comes to pass that all men are brought to the birth with idolatry for the midwife, whilst the very wombs that bear them, still bound with the fillets that have been wreathed before the idols, declare their offspring to be consecrated to demons: for in parturition they invoke the aid of Lucina and Diana; for a whole week a table is spread in honour of Juno; on the last day the fates of the horoscope ^ are in- voked; and then the infant's first step on the ground is sacred to the goddess Statina. After this does any one fail to devote to idolatrous service the entire head of his son, or to take out a hair, or to shave off the whole with a razor, or to bind it up for an offering, or seal it for sacred use — in behalf of the clan, of the ancestry, or for public devotion? On this principle of early possession it was that Socrates, while yet a boy, was found by the spirit of the demon. Thus, too, is it that to all persons their genii are assigned, which is only another name for demons. Hence in no case (I mean of the heathen, of course) is there any nativity which is pure of idolatrous superstition. It was from this circumstance that the apostle said, that when either of the 3 Fata Scribunda.
A TREATISE ON THE SOUL.
[chap. xli.
parents was sanctified, the children were holy;' and this as much by the prerogative of the (Christian) seed as by the discipHne of the institution (by baptism and Christian education). " Else," says he, " were the chil- dren unclean" by birth: ' as if he meant us to understand that the children of believers were designed for holiness, and thereby for salvation; in order that he might by the pledge of such a hope give his support to matrimony, which he had determined to maintain in its integrity. Besides, he had certainly not forgotten what the Lord had so definitively stated: " Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the king- dom of God; " ^ in other words, he cannot be holy.
CHAP. XL. THE BODY OF MAN ONLY ANCIL- LARY TO THE SOUL IN THE COMMISSION OF EVIL.
Every soul, then, by reason of its birth, has its nature in Adam until it is born again in Christ; moreover, it is unclean all the while that it remains without this regeneration; ^ and because unclean, it is actively sinful, and suffuses even the flesh (by reason of their conjunction) with its own shame. Now al- though the flesh is sinful, and we are forbid- den to walk in accordance with it,'* and its works are condemned as lusting against the spirit, s and men on its account are censured as carnal,* yet the flesh has not such ignominy on its own account. For it is not of itself that it thinks anything or feels anything for the purpose of advising or commanding sin. How should it, indeed? It is only a ministering thing, and its ministration is not like that of a servant or familiar friend — animated and human beings; but rather that of a vessel, or something of that kind: it is body, not soul. Now a cup may minister to a thirsty man; and yet, if the thirsty man will not apply the cup to his mouth, the cup will yield no min- istering service. Therefore the differentia, or distinguishing property, of man by no means lies in his earthy element; nor is the flesh the human person, as being some faculty of his soul, and a personal quality; but it is a thing of quite a different substance and dif- ferent condition, although annexed to the soul as a chattel or as an instrument for the ofiices of life. Accordingly the flesh is blamed in the Scriptures, because nothing is done by the soul without the flesh in operations of con- 'John iii. $.
cupiscence, appetite, drunkenness, cruelty, idolatry, and other works of the flesh, — oper- ations, I mean, which are not confined to sen- sations, but result in effects. The emotions of sin, indeed, when not resulting in effects, are usually imputed to the soul: "Whosoever lookethonawoman to lust after, hath already in his heart committed adultery with her."^ But what has the flesh alone, without the soul, ever done in operations of virtue, righteous- ness, endurance, or chastity? What absurd- ity, however, it is to attribute sin and crime to that substance to which you do not assign any good actions or character of its own! Now the party which aids in the commission of a crime is brought to trial, only in such a way that the principal offender who actually com- mitted the crime may bear the weight of the penalty, although the abettor too does not escape indictment. Greater is the odium which falls on the principal, when his officiaLj are punished through his fault. He is beaten with more stripes who instigates and orders the crime, whilst at the same time he who obeys such an evil command is not acquitted.
CHAP. XLI. NOTWITHSTANDING THE DEPRAV- ITY OF man's soul by ORIGINAL SIN, THERE IS YET LEFT A BASIS WHEREON DIVINE GRACE CAN WORK FOR ITS RECOVERY BY SPIRITUAL REGENERATION.
There is, then, besides the evil which su- pervenes on the soul from the intervention of the evil spirit, an antecedent, and in a certain sense natural, evil which arises from its cor- rupt origin. For, as we have said before, the corruption of our nature is another nature having a god and father of its own, namely the author of (that) corruption. Still there is a portion of good in the soul, of that original, divine, and genuine good, which is its proper nature. For that which is derived from God is rather obscured than extinguished. It can be obscured, indeed, because it is not God; extinguished, however, it cannot be, because it comes from God. As therefore light, when intercepted by an opaque body, still remains, although it is not apparent, by rea- son of the interposition of so dense a body; so likewise the good in the soul, being weighed down by the evil, is, owing to the obscuring character thereof, either not seen at all, its light being wholly hidden, or else only a stray beam is there visible where it struggles through by an accidental outlet. Thus some men are very bad, and some very good; but yet the souls of all form but one genus: even in the worst there is something good, and in the best CHAP. XLIll.]
A TREATISE ON THE SOUL.
there is something bad. For God alone is without sin; and the only man without sin is Christ, since Christ is also God. Thus the divinity of the soul bursts forth in prophetic forecasts in consequence of its primeval good; and being conscious of its origin, it bears testimony to God (its author) in exclamations such as: Good God! God kno7vs! and Good- bye!^ Just as no soul is without sin, so neither is any soul without seeds of good. Therefore, when the soul embraces the faith, being renewed in its second birth by water and the power from above, then the veil of its former corruption being taken away, it beholds the light in all its brightness. It is also taken up (in its second birth) by the Holy Spirit, just as in its first birth it is embraced by the un- holy spirit. The flesh follows the soul now wedded to the Spirit, as a part of the bridal portion — no longer the servant of the soul, but of the Spirit. O happy marriage, if in it there is committed no violation of the nuptial vow!
CHAP. XLII. — SLEEP, THE MIRROR OF DEATH, AS INTRODUCTORY TO THE CONSIDERATION OF DEATH.
It now remains (that we discuss the subject) of death, in order that our subject-matter may terminate where the soul itself completes it; although Epicurus, indeed, in his pretty widely known doctrine, has asserted that deatn does not appertain to us. Tliat, says he, which is dissolved lacks sensation; and that which is without sensation is nothing to us. Well, but it is not actually death which suffers dissolution and lacks sensation, but the human person who experiences death. Yet even he has admitted suffering to be incidental to the being to whom action belongs. Now, if it is in man to suffer death, which dissolves the body and destroys the senses, how absurd to say that so great a susceptibility belongs not to man! With much greater precision does Seneca say: "After death all comes to an end, even (death) itself." From which position of his it must needs follow that death will ap- pertain to its own self, since itself comes to an end; and much more to man, in the ending of whom amongst the " all,'' itself also ends. Death, (says Epicurus) belongs not to us; then at that rate, life belongs not to us. For cer- tainly, if that which causes our dissolution have no relation to us, that also which com- pacts and composes us must be unconnected with us. If the deprivation of our sensation be nothing to us, neither can the acquisition of sensation have anything to do with us.
» Deo coramendo — God be wf ye. De Test. c. ii. p. 176, supra.
The fact, however, is, he who destroys the very soul, (as Epicurus does), cannot help de- stroying death also. As for ourselves, indeed, (Christians as we are), we must treat of death just as we should of the posthumous life and of some other province of the soul, (assuming) that we at all events belong to death, if it does not pertain to us. And on the same principle, even sleep, which is the very mirror of death, is not alien from our subject-matter.
CHAP. XLIII. SLEEP A NATURAL FUNCTION AS SHOWN BY OTHER CONSIDERATIONS, AND BY THE TESTIMONY OF SCRIPTURE.
Let us therefore first discuss the question of sleep, and afterwards in what way the soul encounters- death. Now sleep is certainly not a supernatural thing, as some philosophers will have it be, when they suppose it to be the result of causes which appear to be above nature. The Stoics affirm sleep to be "a temporary suspension of the activity of the senses; " ^ the Epicureans define it as an in- termission of the animal spirit; Anaxagoras and Xenophanes as a weariness of the same; Empedocles and Parmenides as a cooling down thereof; Strato as a separation of the (soul's) connatural spirit; Democritus as the soul's indigence; Aristotle as the interrup- tion "of the heat around the heart. As for myself, I can safely say that I have never slept in such a way as to discover even a sin- gle one of these conditions.. Indeed, we can- not possibly believe that sleep is a weariness; it is rather the opposite, for it undoubtedly removes weariness, and a person is refreshed by sleep instead of being fatigued. Besides, sleep is not always the result of fatigue; and even when it is, the fatigue continues no longer. Nor can I allow that sleep is a cool- ing or decaying of the animal heat, for our bodies derive warmth from sleep in such a way that the regular dispersion of the food by means of sleep could not so easily go on if there were too much heat to accelerate it un- duly, or cold to retard it, if sleep had the al- leged refrigerating influence. There is also the further fact that perspiration indicates an over-heated digestion; and digestion is pred- icated of us as a process of concoction, which is an operation concerned with heat and not with cold. In like manner, the immortality of the soul precludes belief in the theory that sleep is an intermission of the animal spirit, or an indigence of the spirit, or a separation of the (soul's) connatural spirit. The soul per- ishes if it undergoes diminution or intermis- 2 Decurrat.
4 Marcorem, " the aecay."
A TREATISE ON THE SOUL.
[CHAf. XLIII.
sion. Our only resource, indeed, is to agree with the Stoics, by determining the soul to be a temporary suspension of the activity of the senses, procuring rest for the body only, not for the soul also. For the soul, as being ahvays in motion, and always active, never succumbs to rest, — a condition which is alien to immortality: for nothing immortal admits any end to its operation; but sleep is an end of operation. It is indeed on the body, which is subject to mortality, and on the body alone, that sleep graciously bestows ' a cessa- tion from work. He, therefore, who shall doubt whether sleep is a natural function, has the dialectical experts calling in question the whole difference between things natural and supernatural — so that what things he sup- posed to be beyond nature he may, (if he likes,) be safe in assigning to nature, which indeed has made such a disposition of things, that they may seemingly be accounted as be- yond it; and so, of course, all things are nat- ural or none are natural, (as occasion re- quires.) With us (Christians), however, only that can receive a hearing which is suggested by contemplating God, the Author of all the things which we are now discussing. For we believe that nature, if it is anything, is a rea- sonable work of God. Now reason presides over sleep; for sleep is so fit for man, so use- ful, so necessary, that were it not for it, not a soul could provide agency for recruiting the body, for restoring its energies, for ensuring its health, for supplying suspension from work and remedy against labour, and for the legitimate enjoyment of which day departs, and night provides an ordinance by taking from all objects their very colour. Since, then, sleep is indispensable to our life, and health, and succour, there can be nothing pertaining to it which is not reasonable, and which is not natural. Hence it is that physi- cians banish beyond the gateway of nature everything which is contrary to what is vital, healthful, and helpful to nature; for those maladies which are inimical to sleep — mala- dies of the mind and of the stomach — they have decided to be contrariant to nature, and by such decision have determined as its corol- lary that sleep is perfectly natural. More- over, when they declare that sleep is not nat- ural in the lethargic state, they derive their conclusion from the fact that it is natural when it is in its due and regular exercise. For every natural state is impaired either by de- fect or by excess, whilst it is maintained by its proper measure and amount. That, there- fore, will be natural in its condition which I Adulatur.
may be rendered non-natural by defect or by excess. Well, now, what if you were to re- move eating and drinking from the conditions of nature? if in them lies the chief incentive to sleep. It is certain that, from the very beginning of his nature, man was impressed with these instincts (of sleep).'' If you receive your instruction from God, (you will find) that the fountain of the human race, Adam, had a taste of drowsiness before having a draught of repose; slept before he laboured, or even before he ate, nay, even before he spoke; in order that men may see that sleep is a natural feature and function, and one which has actually precedence over all the natural faculties. From this primary instance also we are led to trace even then the image of death in sleep. For as Adam was a figure of Christ, Adam's sleep shadowed out the death of Christ, who was to sleep a mortal slumber, that from the wound inflicted on His side might, in like manner (as Eve was formed), be typified the church, the true mother of the living. This is why sleep is so salutary, so rational, and is actually formed into the model of that death which is general and common to the race of man. God, in- deed, has willed (and it may be said in pass- ing that He has, generally, in His dispensations brought nothing to pass without such types and shadows) to set before us, in a man- ner more fully and completely than Plato's example, by daily recurrence the outlines of man's state, especially concerning the begin- ning and the termination thereof; thus stretch- ing out the hand to help our faith more readily by types and parables, not in words only, but also in things. He accordingly sets before your view the human body stricken by the friendly power of slumber, prostrated by the kindly necessity of repose immoveable in position, just as it lay previous to life, and just as it will lie after life is past: there it lies as an attestation of its form when first mould- ed, and of its condition when at last buried — awaiting the soul in both stages, in the former previous to its bestowal, in the latter after its recent withdrawal. Meanwhile the soul is circumstanced in such a manner as to seem to be elsewhere active, learning to bear future absence by a dissembling of its presence for the moment. We shall soon know the case of Hermotimus. But yet it dreams in the in- terval. Whence then its dreams? The fact is, it cannot rest or be idle altogether, nor does it confine to the still hours of sleep the nature of its immortality. It proves itself to possess a constant motion; it travels over land CHAP. XL V.J A TREATISE ON THE SOUL.
and sea, it trades, it is excited, it labours, it plays, it grieves, it rejoices, it follows pur- suits lawful and unlawful; it shows what very great power it has even without the body, how well equipped it is with members of its own, although betraying at the same time the need it has of impressing on some body its activity again. Accordingly, when the body shakes off its slumber, it asserts before your eye the resurrection of the dead by its own resumption of its natural functions. Such, therefore, must be both the natural reason and the reasonable nature of sleep. If you only regard it as the image of death, you ini- tiate faith, you nourish hope, you learn both how to die and how to live, you learn watch- fulness, even while you sleep.
CHAP. XLIV. — THE STORY OF HERMOTIMUS, AND THE SLEEPLESSNESS OF THE EMPEROR NERO. NO SEPARATION OF THE SOUL FROM THE BODY UNTIL DEATH.
With regard to the case of Hermotimus, they say that he used to be deprived of his soul in his sleep, as if it wandered away from his body like a person on a holiday trip. His wife betrayed the strange peculiarity. His enemies, finding him asleep, burnt his body, as if it were a corpse: when his soul returned too late, it appropriated (I suppose) to itself the guilt of the murder. However the good citizens of Clazomenae consoled poor Hermo- timus with a temple, into which no woman ever enters, because of the infamy of this wife. Now why this story? In order that, since the vulgar belief so readily holds sleep to be the separation of the soul from the body, credulity should not be encouraged by this case of Hermotimus. It must certainly have been a much heavier sort of slumber: one would presume it was the nightmare, or perhaps that diseased languor which Soranus suggests in opposition to the nightmare, or else some such malady as that which the fable has fastened upon Epimenides, who slept on some fifty years or so. Suetonius, how- ever, informs us that Nero never dreamt, and Theopompus says the same thing about Thra- symedes; but Nero at the close of his life did with some difficulty dream after some exces- sive alarm. iVhat indeed would be said, if the case of Hermotimus were believed to be such that the repose of his soul was a state of actual idleness during sleep, and a positive separation from his body? You may conjecture it to be anything but such a licence of the soul as admits of flights awa}' from the body with- out death, and that by continual recurrence, as if habitual to its state and constitution.
If indeed such a thing were told me to have happened at any time to the soul — resembling a total eclipse of the sun or the moon — I should verily suppose that the occurrence had been caused by God's own interposition, for it would not be unreasonable for a man to receive admonition from the Divine Being either in the way of warning or of alarm, as by a flash of lightning, or by a sudden stroke of death; only it would be much the more natural conclusion to believe that this process should be by a dream, because if it must be supposed to be, (as the hypothesis we are re- sisting assumes it to be,) not a dream, the oc- currence ought rather to happen to a man whilst he is wide awake.
CHAP. XLV. — DREAMS, AN INCIDENTAL EFFECT OF THE soul's ACTIVITY. ECSTASY.
We are bound to expound at this point what is the opinion of Christians respecting dreams, as incidents of sleep, and as no slight or tri- fling excitements of the soul, which we have declared to be always occupied and active owing to its perpetual movement, which again is a proof and evidence of its divine quality and immortality. When, therefore, rest ac- crues to human bodies, it being their own especial comfort, the soul, disdaining a repose which is not natural to it, never rests; and since it receives no help from the limbs of the body, it uses its own. Imagine a gladiator without his instruments or arms, and a char- ioteer without his team, but still gesticulating the entire course and exertion of their respec- tive employments: there is the fight, there is the struggle; but the effort is a vain one. Nevertheless the whole procedure seems to be gone through, although it evidently has not been really effected. There is the act, but not the effect. This power we call ecstasy, in which the sensuous soul stands out of itself, in a way which even resembles mad- ness.' Thus in the very beginning sleep was inaugurated by ecstasy: " And God sent an ecstasy upon Adam, and he slept. "'' The sleep came on his body to cause it to rest, but the ecstasy fell on his soul to remove rest: from that very circumstance it still hap- pens ordinarily (and from the order results the nature of the case) that sleep is combined with ecstasy. In fact, with what real feeling, and anxiety, and suffering do we experience joy, and sorrow, and alarm in our dreams! Whereas we should not be moved by any such emotions, by what would be the merest fan-