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TRANSMIGRATION & NIRVANA
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to nothingness, it shall again restore you . . . You ask : Shall we then be always dying, and rising up from death? If so the Lord of all things had appointed, you would have to submit, though unwillingly, to the law of your creation ... And therefore after this there is neither death nor repeated resurrections, but we shall be the same that we are now, and still unchanged the servants of God, ever with God, clothed upon with the proper substance of eternity ; but the profane, and all who are not true worshippers of God, in like manner consigned to the punishment of everlasting fire ..."-(Tertullian) A.N.C.L. vol, X1. pp. 133-136.
“When the world, indeed, shall pass away, then the kingdom of heaven shall be opened.”-A.N.C.L. vol. xv. p. 581.
"Now all these things happened unto them for ensamples : and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come."-1 Cor. x. 11.
The expression the end or destruction of the world signifies only the end of the transmigratory career of the soul, so that those who have already attained Nirvana have had the ends of the world come upon them' in the language of the text, notwithstanding that. the world is still continuing. The text which reads:
"But many that are first shall be last; and the last shall be first."-Matt. xix. 30. is intelligible only on the supposition of a race that continues for some time, and where the beginning and the end both are not fixed.
"If you have respect for old age, be wise, now that you have reached life's sunset; and albeit at the close of life, acquire the knowledge of God, that the end of life may to you prove the begin. ning of salvation."—(Clement) A.N.C.L. vol. iv. p. 97.
The beginning of salvation' must also have a maturing and ending somewhere which can only be done through embodied life, which will be discarded for the divine life when the soul enters Nirvana, after having
