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Dialogues
St Gregory the Dialogist, tr. P. W., 1608
Book 4, How the Soul is Said to Be Immortal and Never to Die: If It Be Punished with the…
GREGORY. Because there be two manner of lives, consequently also there be two manner of deaths.1 For one kind of life there is, by which we live in God, another which we received by our creation or generation: and therefore one thing it is to live blessedly, and another thing to live naturally. The soul, therefore, is both mortal and immortal: mortal, because it loseth the felicity of an happy life: and immortal, in that it always keepeth his natural life, which can never be lost, no, not when it is sentenced to perpetual death: for in that state, though it hath not a blessed life, yet it doth retain still the former being and natural life: by reason whereof it is enforced to suffer death without death, defect without defect, and end without end: seeing the death which it endureth is immortal, the defect which it suffereth never faileth, and the end which it hath is infinite, and without end.
PETER. What man is he, though never so holy, that, cometh to leave this mortal life, hath not just cause to fear the unspeakable sentence of damnation? for although he knoweth what he hath done, yet ignorant he is not, how straightly his works shall be examined and judged.
Notes
- Chapter XLV. p. 241. “Two manner of deaths,” duobus etiam modis mors debet intelligi. Cf. Rev. xxi. 8: “which is the second death.” Thus Dante speaks of the souls of the lost, che la seconda morte ciascun grida (Inf. i. 117).