Fragmenta in evangelium Matthaei

In these matters, Elijah does not seem to me to be spoken of as the soul, so that I do not fall into the doctrine of metensomatosis, which is foreign to the Church of God, neither handed down by the apostles nor indicated anywhere in the Scriptures. For it is contrary to the statement that "the visible things are temporary" and that this age will suffer an end, and also to the fulfillment of "heaven and earth will pass away" and "the form of this world passes away" and "the heavens will be destroyed" along with what follows. For if (by hypothesis) the same soul can come to be in the body twice in the state from the beginning to the end of the world, for whatever reason it might come to be in it, if it came to be in the body twice because of sin, why will it not also be in it three times and more often, with the punishments for this life and the sins committed in it being assigned only in this way (according to metensomatosis)? If this is granted as a consequence, there will perhaps be no time when a soul is not metensomatosed. For always, because of previous sins, it will dwell in the body, and thus there will be no place for the destruction of the world, according to which "heaven and earth will pass away." But if (according to this hypothesis) it is granted that the completely sinless one will no longer come into a body through generation, after how much time do you think one soul that is completely pure and not in need of metensomatosis will be found? Yet even so, some one soul is always being removed from the fixed number of souls.

and the soul no longer enters a body, generation will at some point cease, as if after some infinite time, when the world has come to rest upon one or two or a few more individuals, after whom, when they too have been perfected, the world will be destroyed, since there will be no more souls entering bodies. This does not please Scripture; for it knows a multitude of sinners at the time of the world’s destruction. This is clear when one examines together the passage, “But when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?” as we find it stated in Matthew thus: “Just as the days of Noah, so will be the presence of the Son of Man; for as they were in the days of the flood,” and so forth. For those then, the exaction of sins will not be in metensomatosis; for if those who are still sinning are taken up, they will either be punished by another mode of punishment along with this (and according to this, there will be two general modes of punishment: one in metensomatosis, and the other outside such a body—and let them state the causes and differences of these), or they will not be punished, as those left behind at the consummation suddenly cast off their sins, or (which is better) there is one mode of punishment for those who have sinned in a body: to suffer outside it, in the state of this life, according to the worth of their sins. Each of these, for one able to see into the matters, is subversive of metensomatosis.

If those who introduce metensomatosis, the Greeks (as placing consequences consistent with their own premises), necessarily do not wish the world to be destroyed, it is time for them as well, having looked at the manifest scriptures that the world will be destroyed, either to disbelieve them or to fabricate interpretations concerning the events of the consummation; which, even if they wish to do, they will not be able.