Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] As far as the philosophers go, this is enough, since as far as our own people go it's more than enough — for them the soul's corporeality will shine out from the gospel itself. A certain man's soul, in the underworld, suffers, is punished in flame, is tormented in his tongue, and begs, from the finger of a happier soul, the comfort of a drop of water. [2] Do you suppose that scene of the poor man's rejoicing exit and the rich man's grieving one is only an image? And what is that name Lazarus doing there, if the thing isn't real? But even if we are to take it as an image, it will still stand as testimony to the truth. For if the soul had no body, the image of the soul could not accommodate the image of a body, nor would Scripture be lying about bodily limbs if there were none there to lie about. [3] And what, in fact, is that thing which is carried off to the underworld after its divorce from the body, which is detained there, which is kept in reserve for the day of judgment, to which even Christ, in dying, descended (to the souls of the patriarchs, I take it) — if the soul is nothing beneath the earth? For it is nothing, unless it is a body; incorporeality is exempt from every kind of custody, immune both to punishment and to comfort. Whatever it is that is punished or comforted — that will be a body; I'll come back to this more fully and at a better moment. [4] So then, if the soul experiences in advance any torment or comfort in that prison or wayside inn of the underworld, be it amid flame or resting against Abraham's chest, the soul's corporeality will stand proven. Incorporeality suffers nothing, having nothing through which it could suffer; or if it does have something through which to suffer, that something will be a body. For to the exact degree that everything bodily is capable of suffering, to that same degree whatever is capable of suffering is bodily.