Book 3 · Section 45

(45) What is the meaning of, "I will give this land to thee and to thy seed after thee, in which thou hast sojourned, namely all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession?" (#Ge 17:8). The letter of the promise is so clear that the language does not stand in need of any explanation whatever; but with respect to the inward meaning of it we must have recourse to an allegory of this kind. The mind which is endowed with virtue is rather a sojourner in the corporeal space allotted to it, than a regular inhabitant of it; for its real country is the air and the heaven; and the earth, and the earthly body in which it is said to sojourn, is only a colony; therefore the Father, conferring a benefit upon it, gives to it the sovereign authority over all the things of the earth for ever and ever, as he says himself, for an everlasting possession; so that it for the future shall not be governed by the body, but shall always be its master and ruler, having the body for its servant and attendant.