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Translated by P. E. Pusey
St Cyril of Alexandria Resources Online and in Print
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This Part: 128 Pages
Page 55
11. Another. The race of the Israelites spread forth into a multitude great and innumerable. And indeed justly marvellous at this does the hierophant Moses pray saying to them, And behold ye are this day as the stars of heaven for multitude: the Lord God of your fathers make you a thousand times so many more as ye are. But if it were punishment to the souls of men to be in the world with bodies, and they must needs so be, and not bare of them, Moses' saying will be found to be verily a curse, not a blessing. But it is not so, it was made as a blessing: the embodiment therefore is not of the nature of punishment.
12. Another. To those who attempt to ask amiss God endures not to give. And an unlying witness to us will be the disciple of the Saviour, saying, Ye ash and receive not, because ye ash amiss. If then it were a punishment to a soul to be embodied, how would not one with reason say that Hannah the wife of Elkanah missed widely of what was fit, when she so instantly poured her prayer unto God and asked for a man child. For she was asking for the downfall of a soul and its descent into a body. How then came God to give her the holy Samuel as her son, if it were wholly of necessity that a soul should sin, in order that so, entangled with a body, it might fulfil the woman's request. And yet God gave, to Whom it is inherent to give only good things and, by readily assenting to her, He frees her request from all blame. Hence embodiment is not a result of sin, nor yet of the nature of punishment as some say.
13. Another. If the body has been given as a punishment to the soul of man, what induced Hezekiah the king of Jerusalem, although good and wise, to deprecate not without bitter tears the death of the body, and to shrink from putting off the instrument of his punishment, and to beseech that he might be honoured with an increase of years, although he surely ought, if he were really good, not to have deprecated death, but to have thought it a burden to be entangled with a body and to have acknowledged this rather than the other as a favour. And how did God promise him as a favour saying, Behold I will add unto thy days fifteen years, albeit the promise was an addition of punishment, not a mode of kindness, if these set forth the truth? Yet the promise from above was a gift and the addition a kindness. Hence the embodiment is not a punishment to souls.
14. Another. If the body is given to the soul of man in the light of punishment, what favour did God repay to the Eunuch who brought up Jeremiah out of the dungeon, saying, I will give thy life for a prey and will save thee from the Chaldeans? For He should rather have let him die that He might also honour him, releasing him from the prison and punishment. What tell me did He give to the young men of Israel, in delivering them from the flame and from the cruelty of the Babylonians? why did He rescue the wise Daniel from the cruelty of the lions? But verily He doeth these things in kindness and is glorified because of them. The dwelling in the flesh is not then of the nature of punishment, in order that honour and punishment at God's hands may not be one and the same.
15. Another. Paul teaching us that there shall be in due time an investigation before the Divine Judgment-seat of each man's life says, For we must all appear before the judgement-seat of Christ, that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he done, whether it be good or bad. But if it be only for the things done in the body that a man either receiveth punishment at the hands of the Judge, or is accounted worthy of befitting reward, and no mention is made of prior sins, nor any charge previous to his birth gone into: how had the soul any pre-existence, or how was it humbled in consequence of sin, as some say, seeing that its time with flesh is alone marked out, for that the things alone that were done in it are gone into?
Reference address : https://www.elpenor.org/cyril-alexandria/john-commentary.asp?pg=55
