d who have seen them
sensibly, corporeally, and palpably, although of an aerial color and
consistency. He defines the soul[393] a breath sent from God,
immortal, and having body and form. Speaking of the fictions of the
poets, who have asserted that souls were not at rest while their
bodies remain uninterred, he says all this is invented only to inspire
the living with that care which they ought to take for the burial of
the dead, and to take away from the relations of the dead the sight of
an object which would only uselessly augment their grief, if they kept
it too long in their houses; _ut instantia funeris et honor corporum
servetur et moeror affectuum temperetur_.

St. Irenaeus[394] teaches, as a doctrine received from the Lord, that
souls not only subsist after the death of the body--without however
passing from one body into another, as those will have it who admit
the metempsychosis--but that they retain the form and remain near this
body, as faithful guardians of it, and remember naught of what they
have done or not done in this life. These fathers believed, then, in
the return of souls, their apparition, and their attachment to their
body; but we do not adopt their opinion on the corporeality of souls;
we are persuaded that they can appear with God's permission,
independently of all matter and of any corporeal substance which may
belong to them.

As to the opinion of the soul being in a state of unrest while its
body is not interred, that it remains for some time near the tomb of
the body, and appears there in a bodily form; those are opinions which
have no solid foundation, either in Scripture or in the traditions of
the Church, which teach us that directly after death the soul is
presented before the judgment-seat of God, and is there destined to
the place that its good or bad actions have deserved.

Footnotes:

[369] Joseph Bell. Jud. lib. iii c. 25.

[370] Deut. xxi. 23.

[371] Homer, Iliad, XXIV.

[372] Origenes contra Celsum, p. 97.

[373] Origenes in Joan. ix. &c. Theophylac. ibid.

[374] Tertull. lib. de Anima.

[375] Origenes contra Cels. lib. ii.

[376] Bereseith Rabbae. c. 22. Vide Menasse de Resurrect. Mort.

[377]
"Parete precanti
Non in Tartareo latitantem poscimus antro,
Assuetamque diu tenebris; modo luce fugata
Descendentem animam primo pallentis hiatu
Haeret adhuc orci."
_Lucan, Pharsal._ 16.

[378] Porphyr. de Ab