1. But this also we believe to be future, through the just judgment of God, in which the just are to be separated from the wicked forever, not only by merits but also by places, in such a way that now neither do the rewarded end their reward, nor the damned their punishment; since for this reason incorruption and immortality will be given even to the bodies of the wretched, so that neither may they themselves end their eternal punishment, nor may the immortal punishment consume them, but punish them. But for this reason are the bodies of the just endowed with blessed incorruption and immortality: that both they themselves may remain in glory, and in them eternal glory may remain. 1. This judgment, which we say is to be between just and unjust men, we believe to have been made between holy angels and unclean ones.
For though both had been created without sin, and happily appointed to serve their God, certain of them, depraved by their own will, would not remain what they had been made; and when they had hostilely lifted themselves up against their Creator in the pride of deadly arrogance, they were cast down from the supernal region of heaven (Isa. 14:13). These the divine sentence condemned to such a punishment, that, because they would not persevere when they could, they neither will to be repaired nor are able to be. Since it was a mark of their prevarication that they were struck by the animadversion of an irrevocable judgment; and it surely pertained to a most just damnation, that they lost both the will and the capacity of returning;
just as, on the contrary, it was a mark of the will of the holy angels, that, while the evil ones fell of their own accord, they themselves remained in their dignity; and by a divine and just judgment it was brought about, that the will of remaining with their God became a voluntary and happy necessity of persevering. And therefore, because they neither ever sinned nor can now sin, having once been made partakers of that contemplative life, they insatiably behold the author of their own blessedness, and, by the merit of their stability made happy forever, they are secure of their own abiding. They who perceive the highest and most solid joy, which they insatiably enjoy, from the divine contemplation, and serve their God indefatigably and lovingly;