Testimonia

{"author":null,"backreferences":[{"context_html":"<p>If it is considered unseemly to emend anything which Plato\r\nhas touched, why did Porphyry himself make emendations,<span class=\"pagenum\"><a id=\"Page_427\">[Pg 427]</a></span>\r\nand these not a few? for it is very certain that Plato wrote\r\nthat the souls of men return after death to the bodies of\r\nbeasts.<a id=\"FNanchor_429_429\"></a><a class=\"fnanchor pginternal\" href=\"#Footnote_429_429\">[429]</a> Plotinus also, Porphyry's teacher, held this opinion;<a id=\"FNanchor_430_430\"></a><a class=\"fnanchor pginternal\" href=\"#Footnote_430_430\">[430]</a>\r\nyet Porphyry justly rejected it. He was of opinion that\r\nhuman souls return indeed into human bodies, but not into\r\nthe bodies they had left, but other new bodies. He shrank\r\nfrom the other opinion, lest a woman who had returned into\r\na mule might possibly carry her own son on her back. He\r\ndid not shrink, however, from a theory which admitted the\r\npossibility of a mother coming back into a girl and marrying\r\nher own son. How much more honourable a creed is that\r\nwhich was taught by the holy and truthful angels, uttered by\r\nthe prophets who were moved by God's Spirit, preached by\r\nHim who was foretold as the coming Saviour by His forerunning\r\nheralds, and by the apostles whom He sent forth,\r\nand who filled the whole world with the gospel,—how much\r\nmore honourable, I say, is the belief that souls return once\r\nfor all to their own bodies, than that they return again and\r\nagain to divers bodies? Nevertheless Porphyry, as I have\r\nsaid, did considerably improve upon this opinion, in so far, at\r\nleast, as he maintained that human souls could transmigrate\r\nonly into human bodies, and made no scruple about demolishing\r\nthe bestial prisons into which Plato had wished to cast\r\nthem. He says, too, that God put the soul into the world\r\nthat it might recognise the evils of matter, and return to the\r\nFather, and be for ever emancipated from the polluting contact\r\nof matter. And although here is some inappropriate\r\nthinking (for the soul is rather given to the body that it may\r\ndo good; for it would not learn evil unless it did it), yet he\r\ncorrects the opinion of other Platonists, and that on a point\r\nof no small importance, inasmuch as he avows that the soul,\r\nwhich is purged from all evil and received to the Father's\r\npresence, shall never again suffer the ills of this life. By\r\nthis opinion he quite subverted the favourite Platonic dogma,\r\nthat as dead men are made out of living ones, so living men\r\nare made out of dead ones; and he exploded the idea which\r\nVirgil seems to have adopted from Plato, that the purified\r\nsouls which have been sent into the Elysian fields (the poetic<span class=\"pagenum\"><a id=\"Page_428\">[Pg 428]</a></span>\r\nname for the joys of the blessed) are summoned to the river\r\nLethe, that is, to the oblivion of the past,</p>","headings":["THE WORKS OF AURELIUS AUGUSTINE,","BOOK TENTH.","ARGUMENT."],"marker_anchor":null,"paragraph_id":"pg45304-paragraph-744"}],"canonical_references":[],"date_end":null,"date_start":null,"deduplication_fingerprint":"1f06809d0490b8280ac134493839ad862de426e85b1393c237c6165c30b5ac53","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_429_429","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_429_429","source_ebook":45304,"source_html":"<div class=\"footnote\">\n<p><a id=\"Footnote_429_429\"></a><a class=\"pginternal\" href=\"#FNanchor_429_429\"><span class=\"label\">[429]</span></a> Comp. Euseb. <i>Præp. Evan.</i> xiii. 16.</p></div>","source_sha256":"d89e9a2b80bb59f394f0fb1bf313b39fab162f06af6642166d62c5912c1195f1","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/45304/pg45304-images.html#Footnote_429_429","text_sha256":"e6674a23302efaab8d71efda50db3d5b603416a691eeb12626fcc3a40bcf7f6a","verified":false,"work_id":null}

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