Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] It would otherwise be an abrupt and absurd thing to strike something off the roll of bodily things merely because it doesn't match the other bodily examples point for point. And where, then, would be the private distinctions of properties, through which the Creator's grandeur is stamped by the very diversity of his works, so that they might be as distinct as they are alike, as friendly as they are also rivals? Even the philosophers themselves declare that the universe is composed of opposites, following Empedocles' friendship and enmity. [2] So then, even if bodily things stand opposed to incorporeal ones, the bodily things themselves also differ so among themselves that the difference enlarges their species without changing their genus — so that they remain bodily, and yet there is such variety in the glory of God: varied as they are diverse, diverse as they have different senses for their qualities — some for these, others for those — different foods, some for these, others for those, these invisible, those visible, these heavy, those light. [3] They argue, moreover, that this further point proves the soul must be declared bodiless: that once it has departed, the bodies of the dead become heavier — when they ought to grow lighter, one body's worth of weight having been removed, if the soul were a body. 'What,' says Soranus, 'if people should deny the sea is a body, because outside the sea a ship becomes motionless and heavy?' How much stronger, then, must the body of the soul be, which afterward carries around so heavy a body with the lightest of motions! [4] As for its being invisible, that too is in keeping with the condition of its own body, the property of its substance, and even the nature of those to whom it happens to be invisible. Owls don't know the sun with their eyes; eagles endure it so well that they judge the true breeding of their own chicks by the boldness of their eyesight — and otherwise they won't rear the one who, as a degenerate, turns away from the sun's ray. [5] So a thing can be invisible to one creature and not to another, without that making it incorporeal, simply because its force doesn't act with equal strength on every eye. The sun is a body, being fire; but what the eagle will confess, the owl will deny, without thereby prejudicing the eagle's claim. Just so the soul's body may be invisible to flesh, perhaps, yet visible to spirit. That is how John, made in spirit of God, catches sight of the souls of the martyrs.