By al which we see mutual offices, and communion of good workes amongst good men aliue and dead, which is called Communion of Saints.
Ministerie of Angels.Communion of Saints. And herein Angels lacked not their offices. Gen. 3, 24For God set Cherubins to keep the gate of Paradise, that neither man should enter, being justly expelled for sinne, nor diuels, li. 11. de Gen. ad lit. c. 40.as S. Augustin noteth, lest they should take fruit of the tree of life, and giuing it to men, allure them to more sinne. And now Honour of Saints.Saints being exalted to Angels glorie, haue like honourable offices towards other men, as Angels haue. Gen. 4.Yea the bloud of Abel vniustly shed by Cain, and iustly to be reuenged by God, sheweth the peculiar honour, which God bestoweth vpon his Saints, for their vertues and merits in this life, & especially in their death. For Psal. 115.Precious in the sight of our Lord, is the death of his Saints.
General Iudgement.Hence also is proued, that seeing in this life the good are afflicted and the bad oftentimes prosper temporally, there must needs be another Court of exact Iustice, and another Reaconing day, wherin euerie one shal receiue according as they haue done good or euil. Which was sufficiently intimated by Gods discussing and manifesting Abels and Cains deserts, which were hidden before, and in part rewarding them accordingly, yet reseruing the ful reward of the one, and punishment of the other to the next world. Iudge of the world.Of the Iudge and his sentence Enoch (alleadged by S. Iude the Apostle) prophicied cleerly, saying: Epis. Iuda. v. 14.Behold our Lord commeth in his holy thousands, to doe iudgement against al, and to reproue al the impious of al the workes of their impietie, wherby they haue donne impiously, and of al the hard things which impious sinners haue spoken against him. Thus holy Enoch preached touching the wicked, which thought there was no Iudgement to come, nor Iudge to be feared.
At this Iudgement al shal appeare in bodie and soule returning to life. For that Resurrection.Al men shal rise from death is proued by the immortalitie of mans soule, which God did not make nor produce of corruptible matter, but immediately breathed into his face the breath of life, and man became a liuing soule. So the soule being immortal, and hauing a natural inclination to the bodie, mans natural perfection requireth the coniunction of bodie and soule. For neither soule nor bodie separated is a man, but both ioyned in one subsistence are a man, in so much that mankind should perish, except the bodies shal rise againe, and liue with the soules. And then shal the bodies be qualified according to the state of the soules, happie or miserable for euer.
Gen. 5.Of Euerlasting life.Eternal life the translation of Enoch is a figure. For seeing God preserueth his corruptible bodie so long from death and infirmitie, it is a token and manifest signe, that by the same powre of God the bodies of men shal at last day, after that al men are once dead, rise againe, and remaine with the soules for euer: The good in The blessed in eternal ioy.
The wicked in endless paine.Eternal ioy, the wicked in Eternal paine. Both signified by the custodie of the gate of Paradise by Angels; Gen. 3, 24.who for euer keep out those, that are stil defiled with sinne, and so they depart into fire euerlasting, and
