“Et diversi motus propositi earum (rationabilium subsistentiarum) ad unius mundi consonantiam competenter atque utiliter aptarentur, dum aliæ juvari indigent, aliæ juvare possunt, aliæ vero proficientibus certamina atque agones movent, in quibus eorum probabilior haberetur industria, et certior post victoriam reparati gradus statio teneretur, quæ per difficultates laborantium constitisset.” Footnote 152: Jer. xxiii. 24. Footnote 153: Isa. lxvi. 1. Footnote 154: Matt. v. 34. Footnote 155: Acts xvii. 28. Footnote 156: 2 Mac. vii. 28. Footnote 157: _Hermæ Past._ B. ii.; cf. Apostolic Fathers (Ante-Nicene Library), p. 349. Footnote 158: Ps. cxlviii. 5. CHAPTER II. ON THE PERPETUITY OF BODILY NATURE. 1. On this topic some are wont to inquire whether, as the Father generates an uncreated Son, and brings forth a Holy Spirit, not as if He had no previous existence, but because the Father is the origin and source of the Son or Holy Spirit, and no anteriority or posteriority can be understood as existing in them; so also a similar kind of union or relationship can be understood as subsisting between rational natures and bodily matter. And that this point may be more fully and thoroughly examined, the commencement of the discussion is generally directed to the inquiry whether this very bodily nature, which bears the lives and contains the movements of spiritual and rational minds, will be equally eternal with them, or will altogether perish and be destroyed. And that the question may be determined with greater precision, we have, in the first place, to inquire if it is possible for rational natures to remain altogether incorporeal after they have reached the summit of holiness and happiness (which seems to me a most difficult and almost impossible attainment), or whether they must always of necessity be united to bodies. If, then, any one could show a reason why it was possible for them to dispense wholly with bodies, it will appear to follow, that as a bodily nature, created out of nothing after intervals of time, was produced when it did not exist, so also it must cease to be when the purposes which it served had no longer an existence.