On the Making of Man

earth and necessarily decayed: the thing was one to turn from, as the dissolved body under the constraint of nature changed to offensiveness.131 At this point the doubted fact of the general resurrection is brought to proof by a more manifest miracle; for one is not raised from severe sickness, nor brought back to life when at the last breath⁠—nor is a child just dead brought to life, nor a young man about to be conveyed to the tomb released from his bier; but a man past the prime of life, a corpse, decaying, swollen, yea already in a state of dissolution, so that even his own kinsfolk could not suffer that the Lord should draw near the tomb by reason of the offensiveness of the decayed body there enclosed, brought into life by a single call, confirms the proclamation of the resurrection, that is to say, that expectation of it as universal, which we learn by a particular experience to entertain. For as in the regeneration of the universe the Apostle tells us that “the Lord Himself will descend with a shout, with the voice of the archangel,”132 and by a trumpet sound raise up the dead to incorruption⁠—so now too he who is in the tomb, at the voice of command, shakes off death as if it were a sleep, and ridding himself from the corruption that had come upon his condition of a corpse, leaps forth from the tomb whole and sound, not even hindered in his egress by the bonds of the grave-cloths round his feet and hands.

Are these things too small to produce faith in the resurrection of the dead? or dost thou seek that thy judgment on this point should be confirmed by yet other proofs? In truth the Lord seems to me not to have spoken in vain to them of Capernaum, when He said to Himself, as in the person of men, “Ye will surely say unto me this proverb, ‘Physician, heal thyself.’ ”133 For it behoved Him, when He had accustomed men to the miracle of the resurrection in other bodies, to confirm His word in His own humanity. Thou sawest the thing proclaimed working in others⁠—those who were about to die, the child which had just ceased to live, the young man at the edge of the grave, the putrefying corpse, all alike restored by one command to life. Dost thou seek for those who have come to death by wounds and bloodshed? does any feebleness of life-giving power hinder the grace in them? Behold Him Whose hands were pierced with nails: behold Him Whose side was transfixed with a spear; pass thy fingers through the print of the nails; thrust thy hand into the spear-wound;134 thou canst surely guess how far within it is likely the point would reach, if thou reckonest the passage inwards by the breadth of the external scar; for the wound that gives admission to a man’s hand, shows to what depth within the iron entered. If He then has been raised, well may we utter the Apostle’s exclamation, “How say some that there is no resurrection of the dead?”135

Since, then, every prediction of the Lord is shown to be true by the testimony of events, while we not only have learnt this by His words, but also received the proof of the promise in deed, from those very persons who returned to life by resurrection, what occasion is left to those who disbelieve? Shall we not bid farewell to those who pervert our simple faith by “philosophy and vain deceit,”136 and hold fast to our confession in its purity, learning briefly through the prophet the mode of the grace, by his words, “Thou shalt take away their breath and they shall fail, and turn to their dust. Thou shalt send forth Thy Spirit and they shall be created, and Thou shalt renew the face of the earth;”137 at which time also he says that the Lord rejoices in His works, sinners having perished from the earth: for how shall anyone be called by the name of sin, when sin itself exists no longer?

XXVI

That the resurrection is not beyond probability.138

There are, however, some who, owing to the feebleness of human reasoning, judging the Divine power by the compass of our own, maintain that what is beyond our capacity is not possible even to God. They point to the disappearance of the dead of old time, and to the remains of those who have been reduced to ashes by fire; and further, besides these, they bring forward in idea the carnivorous beasts, and the fish that receives in its own body the flesh of the shipwrecked sailor, while this again in turn becomes food for men, and passes by digestion into the bulk of him who eats it: and they rehearse many such trivialities, unworthy of God’s great power and authority, for the overthrow of the doctrine, arguing as though God were not able to restore to man his own, by return139 through the same ways.

But we briefly cut short their long circuits of logical folly by acknowledging that dissolution of the body into its component parts does take place, and not only does earth, according to the Divine word, return to earth, but air and moisture also revert to the kindred element, and there takes place a return of each of our components to that nature to which it is allied; and although the human body be dispersed among carnivorous birds, or among the most savage beasts by becoming their food, and although it pass beneath the teeth of fish, and although it be changed by fire into vapour and dust, wheresoever one may in argument suppose the man to be removed, he surely remains in the world; and the