Pastoral Rule, Dialogues & Letters 102

For that the soul lives after the death of the flesh, reason is manifest, but blended with faith. For almighty God created three living spirits: one which is not covered by flesh; another which is covered by flesh, but does not die with the flesh; a third which is covered by flesh, and dies with the flesh. The spirit which is not covered by flesh is that of the angels; the spirit which is covered by flesh, but does not die with the flesh, is that of men; the spirit which is covered by flesh, and dies with the flesh, is that of beasts of burden and of all brute animals. Man therefore, as he was created in the middle, so as to be lower than the angel, higher than the beast, so has something common with the highest, something common with the lowest: namely, the immortality of the spirit with the angel, but the mortality of the flesh with the beast;

until the glory of the resurrection shall absorb even that mortality of the flesh, and, by cleaving to the spirit, the flesh be preserved forever, because the spirit itself also, by cleaving to the flesh, is preserved unto God. Yet this flesh does not perfectly fail even in the reprobate amid their torments, because it ever subsists by failing; so that those who have sinned in spirit and flesh, ever essentially living, may in both flesh and spirit die without end. PETER: All that you say is pleasing to the reason of the faithful. But I ask you, since you distinguish the spirits of men and of beasts of burden with so great a distinction, what is it that Solomon says: 'I said in my heart concerning the sons of men, that God would prove them, and show them to be like the beasts;

for this reason the destruction of man and of beasts is one, and the condition of both is equal' (Eccl. III, 18)? Still pursuing that same sentence of his subtly, he adds: 'As man dies, so also do these die; all things breathe alike, and man has nothing more than the beasts' (Ibid., 19). To which words he still subjoins a general definition, saying: 'All are subject to vanity, and all go to one place; of earth they were made, and into earth they return alike' (Ibid.).