Previously Unpublished Works, Fascicle 1

"A terrible promise for the disobedient," as the same author says. Cicero, Hermes Trismegistus, Socrates, and many others speak expressly about these promises. For this reason, Cicero says in the first book of his Tusculan Disputations Tusculan Disputations, book 1, chapter 30: "There are two paths and two courses for men. Those who have kept themselves pure and chaste, and who had the least contagion with their bodies, would find their human life changed into a divine one The original text uses "imitati" (imitated), but the translation follows the suggested reading "mutari" (changed). For these, an easy return to the one from whom they had come, namely to God, lies open." However, those who had contaminated themselves with human vices would find themselves cut off from the counsel of God.

And Hermes Trismegistus original: "Hermes Mercurius" says the following in the book On the Divine Nature Compare Augustine, City of God, book 8, chapters 23 and 24: "When the departure of the soul from the body has occurred, then the examination of its choice and merit passes into the highest power. The power that finds the soul pious and just allows it to remain in places suitable for itself. But if it sees a soul so forgotten because of the stains and vices of sins, it thrusts it down from on high to the depths. It delivers the soul to be driven by eternal punishments. Thus, the eternity of the soul works against it, because it is subjected to an eternal punishment by an immortal sentence. Therefore, recognize that we must fear and be careful not to be entangled in these things. For those who do not believe will be forced to believe after their sins, not by words but by examples, and not by threats but by the very suffering of punishments."

Ethicus and Alchimus 25 b 2. say in their books In the cited book, page 6 that "the wicked are destined to suffer in hell with the devil." This is so that "the impious may see the most savage and furious author of death, whom they followed into many useless and harmful desires." Also, "the just will deserve to see the Lord their God, Christ their King," as was said before.

But one might ask whether they could have knowledge of the eternal promise as I have described it. They could know it in a universal sense, regarding the question of what these things are and what kind they are. However, they could not know it in particular or through proper discipline. This is chiefly because of sins that cloud natural knowledge concerning God, happiness, and other related matters. It is also because of the contagion of the body. Philosophers show this sufficiently. Avicenna especially does so in his Roots of Moral Philosophy, where after many points he concludes Metaphysics, book 9, chapter 7: "Our disposition toward those things is like the disposition of a deaf man who has never heard. In his deprivation, he is incapable of imagining the delights of sound."