Testimonia

{"author":null,"backreferences":[{"context_html":"<p>But they should not have been so led astray, I will not say\r\nby their ignorance, but by their obstinacy, as to contradict\r\nthemselves so frequently; for they maintain, with all their\r\nvaunted might, that in order to the happiness of the soul, it\r\nmust abandon not only its earthly body, but every kind of\r\nbody. And yet they hold that the gods, whose souls are most\r\nblessed, are bound to everlasting bodies, the celestials to fiery\r\nbodies, and the soul of Jove himself (or this world, as they\r\nwould have us believe) to all the physical elements which\r\ncompose this entire mass reaching from earth to heaven. For\r\nthis soul Plato believes to be extended and diffused by musical\r\nnumbers,<a id=\"FNanchor_596_596\"></a><a class=\"fnanchor pginternal\" href=\"#Footnote_596_596\">[596]</a> from the middle of the inside of the earth, which\r\ngeometricians call the centre, outwards through all its parts\r\nto the utmost heights and extremities of the heavens; so that\r\nthis world is a very great and blessed immortal animal, whose\r\nsoul has both the perfect blessedness of wisdom, and never\r\nleaves its own body, and whose body has life everlasting<span class=\"pagenum\"><a id=\"Page_540\">[Pg 540]</a></span>\r\nfrom the soul, and by no means clogs or hinders it, though\r\nitself be not a simple body, but compacted of so many and so\r\nhuge materials. Since, therefore, they allow so much to their\r\nown conjectures, why do they refuse to believe that by the\r\ndivine will and power immortality can be conferred on earthly\r\nbodies, in which the souls would be neither oppressed with\r\nthe burden of them, nor separated from them by any death,\r\nbut live eternally and blessedly? Do they not assert that\r\ntheir own gods so live in bodies of fire, and that Jove himself,\r\ntheir king, so lives in the physical elements? If, in order to\r\nits blessedness, the soul must quit every kind of body, let\r\ntheir gods flit from the starry spheres, and Jupiter from earth\r\nto sky; or, if they cannot do so, let them be pronounced\r\nmiserable. But neither alternative will these men adopt. For,\r\non the one hand, they dare not ascribe to their own gods a\r\ndeparture from the body, lest they should seem to worship\r\nmortals; on the other hand, they dare not deny their happiness,\r\nlest they should acknowledge wretches as gods. Therefore,\r\nto obtain blessedness, we need not quit every kind of\r\nbody, but only the corruptible, cumbersome, painful, dying,—not\r\nsuch bodies as the goodness of God contrived for the first\r\nman, but such only as man's sin entailed.</p>","headings":["THE WORKS OF AURELIUS AUGUSTINE,","BOOK THIRTEENTH.","ARGUMENT."],"marker_anchor":null,"paragraph_id":"pg45304-paragraph-930"}],"canonical_references":[],"date_end":null,"date_start":null,"deduplication_fingerprint":"a003085a07a7c3a31f2189bcd31f01d2a7cc48731dc4363d30ceb50f69fa5e51","edition_title":"The City of God, Volume I","edition_translators":["Marcus Dods","George Wilson (Book IV)","J. J. Smith (Books V-VIII)"],"edition_year":1871,"explicit_reference_candidates":[],"headings":[],"id":"pg45304-Footnote_596_596","license_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html","public_import_allowed":false,"record_kind":"original-editor-translator-note","review_required":["work and recension attribution","original-work chronology","Bible reference numbering and citation kind","English edition rights and attribution"],"review_status":"needs_review","rights_evidence":"Provider catalog reports public domain in the USA. Original transcription title leaves state T. & T. Clark, Edinburgh, 1871; printed translator allocation retained. Gutenberg credits Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries without an exact scan identifier. Full provider license preserved with acquired original; republication and per-work metadata remain unreviewed.","source_anchor":"Footnote_596_596","source_ebook":45304,"source_html":"<div class=\"footnote\">\n<p><a id=\"Footnote_596_596\"></a><a class=\"pginternal\" href=\"#FNanchor_596_596\"><span class=\"label\">[596]</span></a> On these numbers see Grote's <i>Plato</i>, iii. 254.</p></div>","source_sha256":"d89e9a2b80bb59f394f0fb1bf313b39fab162f06af6642166d62c5912c1195f1","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/45304/pg45304-images.html#Footnote_596_596","text_sha256":"072488df318cb52278961d8d04ee626b2fc9d5d1029e5407693f6cbcd0988b43","verified":false,"work_id":null}

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