But the philosophers against whom we are defending the city of God, that is, His Church, think they have good cause to deride us, because we say that the separation of the soul from the body is to be held as part of man's punishment. For they suppose that the blessedness of the soul is complete only when it is entirely stripped of the body, and returns to God a pure and simple, and, as it were, naked soul. On this point, if I found nothing in their own literature to refute this opinion, I would be forced to demonstrate laboriously that it is not the body, but the corruptibility of the body, which is a burden to the soul. This is the point of that sentence of Scripture we quoted in an earlier book, “For the corruptible body presses down the soul.”⁠a The word corruptible is added to show that the soul is burdened, not by any body whatever, but by the body such as it has become in consequence of sin. And even though the word had not been added, we could understand nothing else. But when Plato most expressly declares that the gods who are made by the Supreme have immortal bodies, and when he introduces their Maker himself, promising them as a great favor that they would remain in their bodies eternally, and never be released from them by any death, why do these adversaries of ours, for the sake of troubling the Christian faith, pretend to be ignorant of what they quite well know, and even prefer to contradict themselves rather than lose an opportunity of contradicting us? Here are Plato's words, as Cicero has translated them, in which he introduces the Supreme addressing the gods He had made, and saying, “You who are sprung from a divine stock, consider of what works I am the parent and author. These (your bodies) are indestructible as long as I will it; although all that is composed can be destroyed. But it is wicked to dissolve what reason has joined together. But, since you have been born, you cannot indeed be immortal and indestructible; yet you shall by no means be destroyed, nor shall any fates consign you to death, and prove superior to my will, which is a stronger assurance of your perpetuity than those bodies to which you were joined when you were born.” Plato, you see, says that the gods are both mortal by the connection of the body and soul, and yet are made immortal by the will and decree of their Maker. If, therefore, it is a punishment to the soul to be connected with any body whatever, why does God address them as if they were afraid of death, that is, of the separation of soul and body? Why does He seek to reassure them by promising them immortality, not by virtue of their nature, which is composite and not simple, but by virtue of His invincible will, by which He can bring it about that things born do not die, and things compounded are not dissolved, but are preserved eternally? Whether this opinion of Plato's about the stars is true or not, is another question. For we cannot at once grant to him that these luminous bodies or globes, which by day and night shine on the earth with the light of their bodily substance, have also intellectual and blessed souls which animate each its own body, as he confidently affirms of the universe itself, as if it were one huge animal, in which all other animals were contained. But this, as I said, is another question, which we have not undertaken to discuss at present. Only this much I thought it right to bring forward, in opposition to those who so pride themselves on being, or on being called Platonists, that they blush to be Christians, and who cannot bear to be called by a name which the common people also bear, for fear of cheapening the philosophers' circle, which is proud in proportion to its exclusiveness. These men, seeking a weak point in the Christian doctrine, select for attack the eternity of the body, as if it were a contradiction to contend for the blessedness of the soul, and to wish it to be always resident in the body, bound, as it were, in a lamentable chain; and this although Plato, their own founder and master, affirms that it was granted by the Supreme as a favor to the gods He had made, that they should not die, that is, should not be separated from the bodies with which He had connected them.