Lactantius,
Ante-Nicene Fathers Vol. VII, The Divine Institutes…
(1885)
“ We term that punishment the second death, which is itself also perpetual, as also is immortality. We thus define the first death: Death is the dissolution of the nature of living beings; or thus: Death is the separation of body and soul. But we thus define the second death: Death is the suffering of eternal pain ”
Lactantius,
Ante-Nicene Fathers Vol. VII, The Divine Institutes…
(1885)
“ Then God drove out the man from the garden, having passed sentence upon the sinner, that he might seek support for himself by labour. And He surrounded [15] the garden itself with fire, to prevent the approach of the man until He execute the last judgment on earth; and having removed death, recall righteous men, His worshippers, to the same place; as the sacred writers teach, and the Erythræan Sibyl, when she says: “But they who honour the true God inherit everlasting life, themselves inhabiting together paradise, the beautiful garden, for ever.” ”
Lactantius,
Ante-Nicene Fathers Vol. VII, The Divine Institutes…
(1885)
“ But neither can the blood be separated from the body, as moisture is from the earth; nor the vital heat from the breath, as fire from the air: so that of all things only two elements are found, the whole nature of which is included in the formation of our body. Man, therefore, was made from different and opposite substances, as the world itself was made from light and darkness, from life and death; and he has admonished us that these two things contend against each other in man: so that if the soul, which has its origin from God, gains the mastery, it is immortal, and lives in perpetual light ”
