VI. Second plague: the sensitive part common with brutes is stripped away; Hebrews 4:12; mind, soul, body
VI. The second plague of the soul in death is that which snatches from her that part which is common to us with the brutes. That we may understand this privation, some things from others' opinions seem here to be repeated. Paul in Hebrews 4:12 has a division of soul and spirit, from which one may conjecture that the ancients did not altogether foolishly philosophize who constituted three things in the human being — mind, soul, and body — of which they also affirmed the two latter to be mortal.
Nor did Gregory of Nyssa in On the Soul and Resurrection seem to derogate anything from the immortality of the human soul when the irascible and concupiscible parts were said to perish: inasmuch as they are not of the essence of the soul but adventitious from without and as it were placed on the soul's boundary, he shows by these reasons: (1) Whatever is alien from God is also alien from the definition of the soul, which admits nothing except what is proper. (2) Reason fights against these and segregates itself from them as far as it may; but nature does not wage civil war. (3) These have causes from the body, as anger from the heat of blood. Compare Ambrose, On Paradise, chapters 1 and 2. Origen places the same division on Matthew 24:51: He divides him, he says, when his spirit indeed returns to God who gave it, but the soul goes with its body into gehenna. But the just man is not divided, but his soul goes with the spirit to the heavenly kingdoms. To this looks what Jerome writes on Ephesians chapter 5, that he nowhere reads of the death of the spirit, frequently of the soul.
Latin
VI. Secunda animae in morte plaga est, quae partem illam, quae est nobis cum brutis communis, illi eripit. Quam privationem ut intelligamus, nonnulla nobis ex aliorum opinionibus hic repetenda videntur. Paulus Heb. 4.12. habet divisionem animae & spiritus, ex quo licet conjicere, non omnino inepte philosophatos veteres, qui tria in homine constituebant, mentem, animam & corpus, quorum duo posteriora mortalia etiam affirmabant. Neque enim animae humanae immortalitati quicquam derogare visum Gregorio Nysseno de anima & resurrectione, cum ta thymika kai epithymetika interire dicerentur: utpote quae non ex animae essentia esse, sed extrinsecus advenientia, & quasi posita in animae confinio, his ostendat rationibus: 1. Quicquid a Deo alienum, id etiam ab animae definitione, quae nihil admittit nisi proprium. 2. Ratio contra haec pugnat, ab his se segregat quantum licet. Natura autem civile bellum non exercet. 3. Habent ista causas ex corpore, ut iracundia fervore sanguinis. Confer Ambrosium de paradiso cap. 1. & 2. Eandem divisionem Origenes in Matth. 24.51. ita ponit: Dividit eum, inquiens, quando spiritus quidem ejus revertitur ad Deum, qui dedit eum, anima autem cum corpore suo vadit in gehennam. Justus autem non dividitur, sed anima ejus vadit cum spiritu ad regna coelestia. Huc spectat quod Hieronymus in cap. 5. Ephes. scribit, se spiritus mortem nequaquam legere, animae frequenter.