9. In this way, accordingly, we are to suppose that at the consummation and restoration of all things, those who make a gradual advance, and who ascend [in the scale of improvement], will arrive in due measure and order at that land, and at that training which is contained in it, where they may be prepared for those better institutions to which no addition can be made. For, after His agents and servants, the Lord Christ, who is King of all, will Himself assume the kingdom; _i.e._, after instruction in the holy virtues, He will Himself instruct those who are capable of receiving Him in respect of His being wisdom, reigning in them until He has subjected them to the Father, who has subdued all things to Himself, _i.e._ that when they shall have been made capable of receiving God, God may be to them all in all. Then accordingly, as a necessary consequence, bodily nature will obtain that highest condition[768] to which nothing more can be added. Having discussed, up to this point, the quality of bodily nature, or of spiritual body, we leave it to the choice of the reader to determine what he shall consider best. And here we may bring the third book to a conclusion. Footnote 745: Finis omnium: “bonorum” understood. Footnote 746: Gen. i. 26. Footnote 747: Gen. i. 27, 28. Footnote 748: Imago. Footnote 749: Similitudo. Footnote 750: Cf. 1 John iii. 2. Footnote 751: Cf. John xvii. 24, cf. 21. Footnote 752: Ex simili unum fieri. Footnote 753: Jerome, in his Epistle to Avitus, No. 94, has the passage thus: “Since, as we have already frequently observed, the beginning is generated again from the end, it is a question whether then also there will be bodies, or whether existence will be maintained at some time without them when they shall have been annihilated, and thus the life of incorporeal beings must be believed to be incorporeal, as we know is the case with God. And there is no doubt that if all the bodies which are termed visible by the apostle, belong to that sensible world, the life of incorporeal beings will be incorporeal.” And a little after: “That expression, also, used by the apostle, ‘The whole creation will be freed from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God’ (Rom. viii. 21), we so understand, that we say it was the first creation of rational and incorporeal beings which is not subject to corruption, because it was not clothed with bodies; for wherever bodies are, corruption immediately follows. But afterwards it will be freed from the bondage of corruption, when they shall have received the glory of the sons of God, and God shall be all in all.” And in the same place: “That we must believe the end of all things to be incorporeal, the language of the Saviour Himself leads us to think, when He says, ‘As I and Thou are one, so may they also be one in us’ (John xvii. 21). For we ought