Letters

³ To You, O Saviour Christ, do we Your creatures offer thanks that, when You were slain, You slew our mighty adversary. Before Your coming was there any being more miserable than man who cowering at the dread prospect of eternal death did but receive life that he might perish! For “death reigned from Adam to Moses even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam's transgression.” If Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob be in hell, who can be in the kingdom of heaven?

If Your friends— even those who had not sinned themselves— were yet for the sins of another liable to the punishment of offending Adam, what must we think of those who have said in their hearts “There is no God;” who “are corrupt and abominable” in their self-will, and of whom it is said “they are gone out of the way, they have become unprofitable; there is none that does good, no not one”? Even if Lazarus is seen in Abraham's bosom and in a place of refreshment, still the lower regions cannot be compared with the kingdom of heaven.

Before Christ's coming Abraham is in the lower regions: after Christ's coming the robber is in paradise. And therefore at His rising again “many bodies of the saints which slept arose, and were seen in the heavenly Jerusalem.” Then was fulfilled the saying: “Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give you light.” John the Baptist cries in the desert: “repent ye; for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” For “from the days of John the Baptist the kingdom of heaven suffers violence and the violent take it by force.” The flaming sword that keeps the way of paradise and the cherubim that are stationed at its doors are alike quenched and unloosed by the blood of Christ. It is not surprising that this should be promised us in the resurrection: for as many of us as living in the flesh do not live after the flesh, have our citizenship in heaven, and while we are still here on earth we are told that “the kingdom of heaven is within us.”