See, then, whether we ought to yield to one who, holding such opinions,
calumniates the Christians, and thus abandon a doctrine which explains
the difference existing among bodies as due to the different qualities,
internal and external, which are implanted in them. For we, too, know
that there are “bodies celestial, and bodies terrestrial;” and that “the
glory of the celestial is one, and the glory of the terrestrial
another;” and that even the glory of the celestial bodies is not alike:
for “one is the glory of the sun, and another the glory of the stars;”
and among the stars themselves, “one star differeth from another star in
glory.”[719] And therefore, as those who expect the resurrection of the
dead, we assert that the qualities which are in bodies undergo change:
since some bodies, which are sown in corruption, are raised in
incorruption; and others, sown in dishonour, are raised in glory; and
others, again, sown in weakness, are raised in power; and those which
are sown natural bodies, are raised as spiritual.[720] That the matter
which underlies bodies is capable of receiving those qualities which the
Creator pleases to bestow, is a point which all of us who accept the
doctrine of providence firmly hold; so that, if God so willed, one
quality is at the present time implanted in this portion of matter, and
afterwards another of a different and better kind. But since there are,
from the beginning of the world, laws[721] established for the purpose
of regulating the changes of bodies, and which will continue while the
world lasts, I do not know whether, when a new and different order of
things has succeeded[722] after the destruction of the world, and what
our Scriptures call the end[723] [of the ages], it is not wonderful that
at the present time a snake should be formed out of a dead man, growing,
as the multitude affirm, out of the marrow of the back,[724] and that a
bee should spring from an ox, and a wasp from a horse, and a beetle from
an ass, and, generally, worms from the most of bodies. Celsus, indeed,
thinks that this can be shown to be the consequence of none of these
bodies being the work of God, and that qualities (I know not whence it
was so arranged that one should spring out of another) are not the work
of a divine intelligence, producing the changes which occur in the
qualities of matter.
Footnote 719:
Cf. 1 Cor. xv. 41, etc.
Footnote 720:
Cf. 1 Cor. xv. 44.
Footnote 721:
ὁδοὶ.
Footnote 722:
καινῆς διαδεξαμένης ὁδοῦ καὶ ἀλλοίας, etc. For διαδεξαμένης,
Boherellus would read διαδεξομένης. Cf. Origen, _de Princip._ iii. c.
v.
Footnote 723:
συντέλεια.
Footnote 724:
Cf. Pliny, x. c. 66: “Anguem ex medullâ hominis spinæ gigni accepimus
a multis.” Cf. also Ovid, _Metamorphos._ xv. fab. iv.