Now, what teacher or doctor shall discover to us that which God has concealed? The question respecting place is equally senseless and futile; because we know that the soul has no dimensions like the body. The blessed assemblage of holy spirits being called the bosom of Abraham, teaches us that it is enough for us, at the close of this pilgrimage, to be received by the common Father of believers, and to participate with him in the fruit of his faith. In the mean while, as the Scripture uniformly commands us to look forward with eager expectation to the coming of Christ, and defers the crown of glory which awaits us till that period, let us be content within these limits which God prescribes to us—that the souls of pious men, after finishing their laborious warfare, depart into a state of blessed rest, where they wait with joy and pleasure for the fruition of the promised glory; and so, that all things remain in suspense till Christ appears as the Redeemer. And there is no doubt that the condition of the reprobate is the same as Jude assigns to the devils, who are confined and bound in chains till they are brought forth to the punishment to which they are doomed. VII. Equally monstrous is the error of those who imagine that souls will not resume the bodies which at present belong to them, but will be furnished with others altogether different. It was the very futile reasoning of the Manichæans, that it is absurd to expect that the flesh which is so impure will ever rise again. As if there were no impurity attached to the souls, which they nevertheless encouraged to entertain hopes of a heavenly life. It was therefore just as if they had maintained, that any thing infected with the contagion of sin is incapable of being purified by the power of God; for that reverie, that the flesh was created by the devil, and therefore naturally impure, I at present forbear to notice; and only observe, that whatever we have in us now unworthy of heaven, will not hinder the resurrection. In the first place, when Paul exhorts believers to “cleanse” themselves “from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit,”[647] thence follows the judgment he elsewhere denounces, “that every one” shall “receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad;”[648] with which agrees another passage, “that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body.”[649] Wherefore in another place, he prays to God that the whole person may “be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ,” even the “body,” as well as the “soul and spirit.”[650] And no wonder; for that those bodies which God has dedicated as temples for himself, should sink into corruption, without any hope of resurrection, would be absurd in the extreme. What is to be concluded from their being members of Christ?[651] from God’s enjoining every part of them to be sanctified to himself, requiring