If the universe is too slight a figure of the resurrection, if creation signifies nothing of the kind, because its several parts are said not so much to die as to cease, and are thought not to be revived but reshaped, take the fullest and strongest example of this hope,⁠a since it is a living thing, subject both to life and to death. I mean that bird found only in the East, famous for its uniqueness, prodigious in its posterity, which willingly makes its own funeral and so renews itself, departing and succeeding itself at an end that is a birthday: again a phoenix where there is none any more, again itself which is no longer, another and the same. What could be more expressive and more to the point for this cause? Or of what else is it such a proof? God too says in His Scriptures: “For you shall flourish like the phoenix,”⁠b that is, out of death, out of the funeral, so that you may believe that the substance of the body can be recovered even from fire. The Lord declared that we are worth more than many sparrows: if not more than phoenixes too, it is no great thing. (Matthew 10:33) But shall men perish once for all, while the birds of Arabia are sure of their resurrection?