THE TWELFTH ARTICLE: "Life everlasting. Amen."

The end of all our desires, eternal life, is fittingly placed last among

those things to be believed; and the Creed says: "life everlasting. Amen."

They wrote this to stand against those who believe that the soul perishes

with the body. If this were indeed true, then the condition of man would be

just the same as that of the beasts. This agrees with what the Psalmist

says: "Man when he was in honor did not understand; he hath been compared

to senseless beasts, and made like to them."¹ The human soul, however, is

in its immortality made like unto God, and in its sensuality alone is it

like the brutes. He, then, who believes that the soul dies with the body

withdraws it from this similarity to God and likens it to the brutes.

Against such it is said: "They knew not the secrets of God, nor hoped for

the wages of justice, nor esteemed the honor of holy souls. For God created

man incorruptible, and to the image of His own likeness He made him."²