cause to-morrow we shall die;" to enjoy the pleasures of sense, and to gratify the carnal case of our bodies, because we shall shortly die, and never live more to experience either sorrow or happiness, misery or felicity.

I might yet farther shew in other respects, the great weight and necessity of this article of the resurrection of the body; but I shall wave them, seeing those already mentioned, sufficiently prove the belief thereof to be of the last and greatest consequence: upon which account it is most reasonable to imagine, that the apostles would not omit to require the assent of their converts unto this article at their baptism, seeing without the acknowledgment of this, they could not well be termed Christians, or professors of the Christian religion.

And besides this, there was yet something more, which might possibly oblige them to the constant repetition thereof, viz. the early and vigorous opposition which was made thereunto in their days, both by heathens and heretics.

The philosophers, who were the wisest and most thinking part amongst the Pagans, had at the best, but very obsure and uncertain notions of a resurrection; whence the [Acts xvii. 18.]"Epicurean and Stoick philosophers, who encountered St. Paul at Athens, when they heard of the resurrection, mocked him; some

saying, that he seemed to be a setter forth of strange Gods, because he preached unto them Jesus and the resurrection;" and as for the profaner and less considerate part of the heathens, they jeered at it, and derided it as a melancholy and idle fancy: and not only heathens, but also several false and pretended Christians, did betimes oppugn this necessary and momentous truth, as Hymenæus and Philetus, (2 Tim. ii. 18.]" who erring concerning the truth, said, that the resurrection was past already, and so overthrew the faith of some;" affirming probably, the same with those heretics mentioned by Tertullian, that the resurrection is to be understood in an allegorical sense, and that it is "no other than our baptismal renovation, wherein we shake off the death of ignorance, and arise from the grave 'of the old man alive unto God."

What trouble the apostles met with from these sort of men, and what difficulty they had to preserve the churches from the venom and contagion of so pestilential an heresy, may be easily gathered from the holy scriptures. Thessalonica and Corinth were two .churches founded by St. Paul; and yet we find him by [Thess. iv. 13.] epistle tacitly blaming the former for their ignorance of this necessary point, and establishing them in the firm belief thereof; and as for the latter, though he preached amongst them a year and

half, yet after he was gone from them; this Jeaven so infected them, that he was obliged in his first epistle to that church, to make a large [1 Cor. xv.] discourse, to prove unto them; and fix them in the belief of this great truth, that Christ is arisen; and that in God's appointed time we shall in the same manner likewise arise.

Wherefore this doctrine being so essential to Christianity, and having been withal so viblently stormed and attacked on every side, both by heathens and heretics, to the endangering of the purest primitive churches, we may from thence fairly conclude, that the apostles would not omit to require an assent thereto at baptism, but make use of that most sacred tye and highest obligation, to confirm and settle their converts in the belief of this necessary and fundamental article, the resurrection of the dead.

But, as the resurrection of the dead in general was primarily intended by this article, so also the kind thereof is farther declared, as is to be gathered from the very manner of its expression; which is not as in our translation, the resurrection of the body, but the resurrection of the flesh, as it is both in the Greek and Latin Sarkos anastasin, Carnis resurrectionem, being therein followed by the modern French and Dutch, in which word flesh, lycs a par

ticular force and emphasis, which hath often made me wonder, that our English translators should employ another more general word in the room thereof.

Now, that which occasioned the invariable mentioning of the term flesh in the primitive creeds, was this, there were several persons who did acknowledge the resurrection of the or of a body; for in the Latin and Greek, there is no difference between them; but, they would not grant, that the same body which now we have should be raised again, but instead thereof, shey imagined, that at the resurrection-day, there should be framed by the power of God, thin, subtil, æreal bodies, whereunto human souls shall be joined, instead of those gross, material, fleshly bodies, which they now actuate and inform. Now against these persons, the fathers and governors of the primitive church, chose to express this article by the resurrection of the flesh and not of the body; that latter word being capable of more subterfuges and equivocating explications than the former; of which, St. Je rom gives us an instance in the Origenists, who espoused this tenet; "they say," saith he," we believe the future resurrection of the body; which, if it be sincerely said, is a pure confession; but, because there are celestial and terrestrial bodies, and the air and athe

according to their natures, are called bodies, therefore they use the word body and not flesh; that whilst the orthodox hearing the word body, apprehended it to be flesh; the heretics understand it to be a spirit, which is their first evasion:" wherefore Ruffinus, whowas accused of this heresy, in the vindication of himself therefrom alledges, "that to remove all suspicion of his being tainted therewith, he had frequently affirmed, that not only the body, but that the flesh also should rise again.”

Various were the persons who embraceď this opinion: It seems that in the days of Clemens Romanus, there were some who espoused it, as is evident from this caution of his ;

let none of you say, that this flesh shall not be judged, or rise again; for as ye were called in the flesh, so shall ye come again in the flesh;" which notion was afterwards advanced by several others, but with the greatest advantage by the followers of Bardesanes and Origen, two of the greatest wits of their age: that the Bardesianists fell into this opinion, may be largely seen in the fifth dialogue that passes under the name of Origen, wherein this point is closely disputed between Marinus a Bardesianist, and Adamantius an orthodox Christian; in the beginning of which disputaion, Adamantius lays down as the common aith of the church," that this body with