3. The Apostle also, though he has not said it in so many words, has yet given us to understand, like a good master and spiritual husbandman calling forth the faculties of his disciples by the hidden seeds of doctrine, that our souls are of a better creation and a more excellent nature. For when he says that _the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly but by reason of Him Who hath subjected the same in hope, because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the sons of God_, he shews that the grace of souls is not small, seeing that by their strength and excellence mankind rises to the adoption of the sons of God, having within itself that which is given to it to make it in the likeness and image of God. For souls are not perceived by truth, nor are they seen by the bodily eye, wherefore they bear upon them the likeness of this incorporeal and invisible nature, and excel in their substance corporeal and sensible qualities. _For the things that are seen are temporal_, they represent and are united to things that are temporal, but the things that are not seen are united to the Eternal and Chief Good, _in Him they live and move and have their being_, and suffer not themselves, if they are wise, to be separated or divided from Him. Sidenote: 2 Cor. v. 4. Sidenote: Wisd. ix. 15. Sidenote: 2 Cor. v. 7, 8. 4. Every soul therefore, seeing herself shut up in the prison-house of the body, if it be not debased by her connexion with this earthly habitation, groans under the burthen of the body to which she is joined; _for the corruptible body presseth down the soul, and the earthy tabernacle weigheth down the mind that museth upon many things_, knowing also that she walks _by faith not by sight_, she is willing _to be absent from the body to be present with the Lord_. Sidenote: Ib. 10. 5. Let us consider then how _the creature hath been made subject to vanity, not_ indeed _willingly_, but by the Divine ordinance, which has appointed that our souls should be united to our bodies on account of their hopes, in order that, hoping for good, they should make themselves worthy of a heavenly recompense. _For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that every one may receive the things belonging to the body[178]._ Every man’s soul must therefore consider that she will be rewarded according to deserts of life. And he says well _the things belonging to the body_, that is to say, the body which was assigned to her to govern, that if she have governed it well she may receive the reward for the sake of which she was subjected in hope, but if ill, she may be punished, forasmuch as she did not trust in God, nor aspire to that adoption of sons, and to the liberty of true glory. Sidenote: 2 Cor. v. 4. Sidenote: Ps. cxliv. 4. Sidenote: Ib. xxxix. 6.