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Cuestiones Finales 2
Cuestiones Finales 2
http://www.documentacatholicaomnia.eu/03d/0160-0220,_Tertullianus,_De_Resurrectione_Car-
nis_[Schaff],_EN.pdf
pg. 12-13
It would suffice to say, indeed, that there is not a soul that can at all procure salvation, ex-
cept it believe whilst it is in the flesh, so true is it that the flesh is the very condition on
which salvation hinges. And since the soul is, in consequence of its salvation, chosen to
the service of God, it is the flesh which actually renders it capable of such service. The
flesh, indeed, is washed, in order that the soul may be cleansed; the flesh is anointed, that
the soul may be consecrated; the flesh is signed (with the cross), that the soul too may be
fortified; the flesh is shadowed with the imposition of hands, that the soul also may be il-
luminated by the Spirit; the flesh feeds on the body and blood of Christ, that the soul like -
wise may fatten on its God. They cannot then be separated in their recompense, when
they are united in their service. Those sacrifices, moreover, which are acceptable to God—
I mean conflicts of the soul, fastings, and abstinences, and the humiliations which are an-
nexed to such duty—it is the flesh which performs again and again7341 to its own especial
suffering. Virginity, likewise, and widowhood, and the modest restraint in secret on the
marriage-bed, and the one only adoption7342 of it, are fragrant offerings to God paid out
of the good services of the flesh. Come, tell me what is your opinion of the flesh, when it
has to contend for the name of Christ, dragged out to public view, and exposed to the ha-
tred of all men; when it pines in prisons under the cruellest privation of light, in banish-
ment from the world, amidst squalor, filth, and noisome food, without freedom even in
sleep, for it is bound on its very pallet and mangled in its bed of straw; when at length be-
fore the public view it is racked by every kind of torture that can be devised, and when fi-
nally it is spent beneath its agonies, struggling to render its last turn for Christ by dying for
Him—upon His own cross many times, not to say by still more atrocious devices of tor-
ment. Most blessed, truly, and most glorious, must be the flesh which can repay its Master
Christ so vast a debt, and so completely, that the only obligation remaining due to Him is,
that it should cease by death to owe Him more—all the more bound even then in grati-
tude, because (for ever) set free.
Caro salutis est cardo. De que cum anima Deo alligatur, ipsa est quae efficit ut anima alligari possit.
Scilicet caro abluitur, ut anima emaculetur; caro ungitur, ut anima consecretur; caro signatur, ut et
anima muniatur; caro manus impositione adumbratur, ut et anima spiritu illuminetur; caro corpo-
re et sanguine Christi vescitur, ut et anima de Deo saginetur. Non possunt ergo separari in merce-
de, quas opera coninungit.
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