Primitive Christian Worship: Or, The Evidence of Holy Scripture and the Church, Against the Invocation of Saints and Angels, and the Blessed Virgin MaryTyler, James Endell
Religion
Primitive Christian Worship: Or, The Evidence of Holy Scripture and the Church, Against the Invocation of Saints and Angels, and the Blessed Virgin Mary
Tyler, James Endell
Christian saints -- Cult; Mary, Blessed Virgin, Saint -- Devotion to; Worship -- History -- Early church, ca. 30-600
The next question (76) runs thus: "If the retribution of our deeds does
not take place before the resurrection, what advantage accrued to the
thief that his soul was introduced into paradise; especially since
paradise is an object of sense, and the substance of the soul is not an
object of sense?
"Answer. It was an advantage to the thief entering into paradise to
learn by fact the benefits of the faith by which he was deemed worthy of
the assembly of the {103} saints, in which he is kept till the day of
judgment and restitution; and he has the perception of paradise by that
which is called intellectual perception, by which souls see both
themselves and the things under them, and moreover also the angels and
demons. For a soul doth not perceive or see a soul, nor an angel an
angel, nor a demon a demon; except that according to the said
intellectual perception they see both themselves and each other, and
moreover also all corporeal objects." [Page 470.]
On this same point I must here subjoin a passage from one of Justin's
own undisputed works. In his Dialogue with Trypho the Jew, sect. 5, he
says, "Nevertheless I do not say that souls all die; for that were in
truth a boon to the wicked. But what? That the souls of the pious remain
somewhere in a better place, and the unjust and wicked in a worse,
waiting for the time of judgment, when it shall be: thus the one
appearing worthy of God do not die any more; and the others are punished
as long as God wills them both to exist and to be punished." [Page 107.]
Not only so; Justin classes among renouncers of the faith those who
maintain the doctrine which is now acknowledged to be the doctrine of
the Church of Rome, and to be indispensable as the groundwork of the
adoration of saints. In his Trypho, sect. 80, he states his sentiment
thus strongly: "If you should meet with any persons called Christians,
who confess not this, but dare to blaspheme the God of Abraham, the God
of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, and say there is no resurrection of the
dead ([Greek: nekron]), but that their souls, at the very time of their
death, are taken up into heaven; do not regard them as Christians."
[Page 178.] {104}
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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