Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume VIII/Pseudo-Clementine Literature/The Clementine Homilies/Homily II/Chapter 13

by Anonymous

Chapter XIII.—Future Rewards and Punishments.

“For there is every necessity, that he who says that God is by His nature righteous, should believe also that the souls of men are immortal:  for where would be His justice, when some, having lived piously, have been evil-treated, and sometimes violently cut off, while others who have been wholly impious, and have indulged in luxurious living, have died the common death of men?  Since therefore, without all contradiction, God who is good is also just, He shall not otherwise be known to be just, unless the soul after its separation from the body be immortal, so that the wicked man, being in hell,^[1] as having here received his good things, may there be punished for his sins; and the good man, who has been punished here for his sins, may then, as in the bosom of the righteous, be constituted an heir of good things.  Since therefore God is righteous, it is fully evident to us that there is a judgment, and that souls are immortal.

Footnotes

1. Lit. Hades.