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Chapter XXVIII.—Why to Be Dissolved.

To this Peter replied:  “Since we have promised not to run away from your blasphemies, we endure them patiently, for you shall yourself render an account for the things that you speak.  Listen now, therefore.  If indeed that heaven which is visible and transient had been made for its own sake, there would have been some reason in what you say, that it ought not to be dissolved.  But if it was made not for its own sake, but for the sake of something else, it must of necessity be dissolved, that that for which it seems to have been made may appear.  As I might say, by way of illustration, however fairly and carefully the shell of the egg may seem to have been formed, it is yet necessary that it be broken and opened, that the chick may issue from it, and that may appear for which the form of the whole egg seems to have been moulded.  So also, therefore, it is necessary that the condition of this world pass away, that that sublimer condition of the heavenly kingdom may shine forth.”