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Chapter uncertain; original source section: Chapter 23
Complete historical editorial footnotes. These notes retain the original edition’s wording; individual note authors are unspecified.
English translation and editorial credits: Henry Austin Wilson (translator and notes), Joseph Hirst Lupton (editorial revision assistance), Henry Wace (editor).
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Otherwise Chap. xxiii. The title in the Bodleian ms. of the Latin version is:—“That when the generation of man is finished, time also will come to an end.” Some mss. of the Latin version make the first few words part of the preceding chapter.
Editorial footnote · The Making of Man, Chapter uncertain; original source section: Chapter 23, editorial note cite_note-1 · Original source
XXII. To those who say, “If the resurrection is a thing excellent and good, how is it that it has not happened already, but is hoped for in some periods of time?”
This Realism is expressed even more strongly in the De Animâ et Resurrectione.
Editorial footnote · The Making of Man, Chapter uncertain; original source section: Chapter 23, editorial note cite_note-3 · Original source
3. Well, whether our answer is near the truth of the matter, the Truth Itself may clearly know; but at all events what occurs to our intelligence is as follows. I take up then once more in my argument our first text:—God says, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness, and God created man, in the image of God created He him.” Accordingly, the Image of God, which we behold in universal humanity, had its consummation then; but Adam as yet was not; for the thing formed from the earth is called Adam, by etymological nomenclature, as those tell us who are acquainted with the Hebrew tongue—wherefore also the apostle, who was specially learned in his native tongue, the tongue of the Israelites, calls the man “of the earth” χοϊκός, as though translating the name Adam into the Greek word.
Ps. lxxxiv. 11 (LXX.).
Editorial footnote · The Making of Man, Chapter uncertain; original source section: Chapter 23, editorial note cite_note-14 · Original source
7. Let him therefore wait for that time which is necessarily made co-extensive with the development of humanity. For even Abraham and the patriarchs, while they had the desire to see the promised good things, and ceased not to seek the heavenly country, as the apostle says, are yet even now in the condition of hoping for that grace, “God having provided some better thing for us,” according to the words of Paul, “that they without us should not be made perfect.” If they, then, bear the delay who by faith only and by hope saw the good things “afar off” and “embraced them,” as the apostle bears witness, placing their certainty of the enjoyment of the things for which they hoped in the fact that they “judged Him faithful Who has promised,” what ought most of us to do, who have not, it may be, a hold upon the better hope from the character of our lives? Even the prophet’s soul fainted with desire, and in his psalm he confesses this passionate love, saying that his “soul hath a desire and longing to be in the courts of the Lord,” even if he must needs be rejected to a place amongst the lowest, as it is a greater and more desirable thing to be last there than to be first among the ungodly tents of this life; nevertheless he was patient of the delay, deeming, indeed, the life there blessed, and accounting a brief participation in it more desirable than “thousands” of time—for he says, “one day in Thy courts is better than thousands”—yet he did not repine at the necessary dispensation concerning existing things, and thought it sufficient bliss for man to have those good things even by way of hope; wherefore he says at the end of the Psalm, “O Lord of hosts, blessed is the man that hopeth in Thee.”