{"collection":"chr","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/chr/ecf/203/2030679.htm","path":"chr/ecf/203/2030679.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/chr/ecf/203/2030679.htm","text":"40. There are one or two more things on which he wishes condemnation to be passed. One is this: that these men say that the body is a prison, and like a chain round the soul; and that they assert that the soul does not depart, but returns to the place where it p. 457 originally was. Let me give quotations to show his opinion on this point also. In the second book of these Commentaries, on the passage \u201cFor this cause, I, Paul, the prisoner of Jesus Christ,\u201d he says, a little way down;\n\u201cThe Apostle in several passages calls the body the chain of the soul, because the soul is kept shut up as it were in a prison; and thus we may speak of Paul being kept close in the bonds of the body and does not return to be with Christ, so that preaching to the Gentiles may be perfectly accomplished.\u201d\nAnd again in the third book of these Commentaries, on the words, \u201cfor which I am an ambassador in chains,\u201d 2904 after some discussion of the passage, he speaks in the character of that \u2018other\u2019 which is himself:\n\u201cAnother contends that he speaks thus because of the 2905 body of our humiliation and the chain with which we are encompassed, so that we 2906 know not yet as we ought to know, and see 2907 by means of a mirror in a riddle: and that he will be able to disclose the mysteries of the Gospel only when he has cast off this chain and gone forth free from his prison. Yet perhaps even in chains that man may be considered as free who has his conversation in heaven, and of whom it may be said: 2908 \u201cYou are not in the prison nor in the flesh, but in the spirit, if so be that the spirit of God dwelleth in you.\u201d\nAnd in the Commentary on Paul\u2019s Epistle to Philemon, at the place where he says 2909 \u201cEpaphras my fellow-prisoner greeteth you,\u201d some way down he says:\n\u201cPossibly, however, as some think, a more recondite and mysterious view is set before us, namely, that the two companions had been captured and bound and brought down into this vale of tears.\u201d","title":"Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Ser. II, Vol. III: Life and Works of Rufinus with Jerome's Apology Against Rufinus.: The body as a prison.","type":"page"}