8. We read in the
Ecclesiastical History which Eusebius wrote in Greek, and Ruffinus
turned into the Latin tongue, of Martyr’s bodies in Gaul exposed
to dogs, and how the leavings of those dogs and bones of the dead
were, even to uttermost consumption, by fire burned up; and the
ashes of the same scattered on the river Rhone, lest any thing
should be left for any sort whatever of memorial.27292729 Which
thing must be believed to have been to no other end divinely
permitted, but that Christians should learn in confessing Christ,
while they despise this life, much more to despise sepulture. For
this thing, which with savage rage was done to the bodies of
Martyrs, if it could any whit hurt them, to impair the blessed
resting of their most victorious spirits, would assuredly not have
been suffered to be done. In very deed therefore it was declared,
that the Lord in saying, “Fear not them which kill the body, and
afterward have no more that they can do,”27302730 did not mean that He would not
permit them to do any thing to the bodies of His followers when
dead; but that whatever they might be permitted to do, nothing
should be done that could lessen the Christian felicity of the
departed, nothing thereof reach to their consciousness while yet
living after death; nothing avail to the detriment, no, not even of
the bodies themselves, to diminish aught of their integrity when
they should rise again.