VII.

and takes root, and grows there, is forever lost from CHAP. any higher use; so it is with the soul that, upon a deliberate choice, rejects the gospel, and chuses to remain in his natural state, after the common course of the world, and enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season.

13.

12. "If ye live after the flesh, ye shall die; but if Rom.vi through the Spirit ye mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live." Thus life and death is set before every individual soul, upon the most plain and reasonable terms.

13. As man, by his fall and apostacy from God, became flesh, so as to be wholly captivated by that inferior principle, or law in his members, by which he served himself, and no higher purpose; therefore, until the way of redemption was opened from that self-pleasing, and self-promoting nature, there never could be any resurrection.

14. And hence, through all the ages of corruption and depravity, the promise of God had respect to another seed. They which are the children of the flesh, Rom. in these are not the children of God; but the children of promise are counted for the seed.

8.

15. And as Christ Jesus was the first who died a final death unto sin, and did not his own will, but the will of his father; therefore he was the first-fruit of the Resurrection, the first-fruit unto God, with which he was well pleased. Every one in his own order, 1 Cor.xv. Christ the first-fruits, afterwards they that are Christ's 23. at his coming.

16. Herein then consists the true nature of the Resurrection: When man ceases from man, whose breath is in his nostrils; when he dies to himself and lives to God alone; when he ceases from his own works and does the work of God; when he renounces the will of the flesh, and is subject to the will of the Spirit; then he is raised from a death of sin to a life of righteousness; and this is his resurrection. Such is the seed which God hath chosen, to bring forth fruit unto himself, and such are the branches of the true vine, which he will purge, that they may 1 John bring forth more fruit.

17. But this precious doctrine of the Resurrection, like all others that were taught by Christ Jesus and

XV. 2

VIL

CHAP. his apostles, has been wholly perverted by Antichrist, and instead thereof, a false and senseless superstition has been imposed upon mankind, which would be too absurd to deserve any notice, had not those dark ages of antiquity, and antichristian authority, in which it was invented, given it a kind of sanction, from which the present age is not altogether released.

18. In direct opposition to the doctrine of Christ, it has been, and is yet maintained, that it is not the soul of man, but his natural body, which is the subWest- ject of the Resurrection :-That, "the souls of believers are, at their death, made perfect in holiness, and do immediately pass into glory, and their bodies, being still united to Christ, do rest in their graves till the Resurrection.”

minster

Catechism.

19. The inventors of this groundless doctrine, ought to have known that the souls of true believers never do die; and therefore, their being made perfect in holiness, and passing into glory, is not to be dated at their death, nor is it at any time, immediately, Eph. iv. but through the medium of the gospel, (by which they grow up, in ail things, into Christ) that they are made perfect in holiness.

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32.

20. Nor is it a dead corpse that is united to Christ, Mat. xxii. or to God, For God is not the God of the dead, but of the living. Besides, many of the dead bodies of believers were not suffered to be put into graves; and if they had been, the grave could never preserve a dead corpse from dissolving, and blending together with the common elements of the globe, being, in this respect, nothing superior to the bodies of other animals.

21. So that such an imaginary resurrection is altogether a lying vanity, in following which, the deceived soul forsakes its own mercy, and from which it must be delivered, or perish forever in its own corruption for God never promised to invert his own order of things, nor to revoke his own express declaration in this particular: Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.

22. And as that is not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural, and afterwards that which is spiritual and eternal; so the apostle's doctrine, from beginning to end, has the most plain and pointed al

VIL.

Jusion to the spiritual body, and spiritual world, and CHAP. not to that which is natural.

23. When the Sadducees, who denied the resurrection of the soul, and the very existence of the spiritual world, questioned with Jesus concerning the woman who had been the wife of seven husbands, whose wife she should be in the Resurrection? His answer was, "The children of this world marry, and Luke xx. are given in marriage: but they which shall be account- 34. ed worthy to obtain that world, and the resurrection. from the dead, neither marry, nor are given in marriage. Neither can they die any more: for they are equal unto the angels; and are the children of God, being the children of the Resurrection.

24. Observe, it was not after they had obtained that world, and the Resurrection, but whenever they were accounted worthy to obtain it ; that is, when they were begotten by the Word of faith, they began to crucify the flesh with its affections and lusts, to die unto sin, and to live unto God, and therefore could not die any more, being the children of the Resurrection.

25. Hence said Jesus, on another occasion, “ I am John xi the resurrection, and the life; he that believeth on 25. me, though he were dead, yet shall he live. And whosoever liveth, and believeth in me, shall never die. And again," I am the living bread which came John vi down from heaven: If any man eat of this bread, he 51,52,53. shall live forever." And again, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, if a man keep my saying, he shall never see death."

26. This was a great stumbling block to those who denied the Resurrection and the life. Hence said the deceived hypocrites, "Now we know that thou hast a devil.-Art thou greater than our father Abraham, which is dead? and the prophets are dead: whom makest thou thyself?"

27. Hence it is evident, that the true doctrine of the Resurrection was misunderstood and opposed, by a blind and superstitious priesthood, from the beginning for by these the common people were taught. 28. Nor was it truly understood even by the disciples of Christ, who had been misguided and corrupted by those blind guides, until they received the Ho

:

51. vi

VIII.

CHAP. ly Ghost, and came into the Resurrection themselves, being dead with Christ from the Rudiments of the Col. ii. 12, world, and risen with him, through the faith of the 20. i. 1. operation of God, who had raised him from the dead.

29. Then, and not till then, were all things brought to their remembrance which Jesus had taught them, and by which they understood the many infallible proofs, which they had received of the real resurrection of the Son of God, in the Spirit, and knew what his rising from the dead should mean.

30. And they never learned, nor taught to others, that Christ Jesus re-assumed the same natural appearance of sinful flesh, which was laid in a new tomb; for if they had, the most glaring contradictions must appear through the whole account. But they spake of his being quickened in the Epirit, and seen in the Spirit, and not in the flesh; therefore the contradiction falls upon those who deny his resurrection in the Spirit, and endeavour to prove that sin and the curse [for such he was made as to the flesh] were rased again to life everlasting.

1 Cor. v.

20.

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CHAPTER VIII.

The Subject continued.

T is clearly manifest, according to the sense of

respect to the resurrection of the natural body or tabernacle of Jesus, nor of any of his followers, inasmuch as it was testified that he was the first-begotten and first-born from the dead.

2. In the natural sense of a Resurrection, some had been raised from the dead, among the Jews, before Jesus; so that he could not be the first. Elisha had raised the widow's son; Lazarus had been raised, and the widow's son at Nain. So that if the apostles had intended to testify that the dead corpse of Jesus had been raised to life again, they had more sense of the truth than to say that he was the first

CHAP.

fruits of them that slept, or the first that should rise VIII. from the dead.

3. The truth is, that Christ did descend into the Acts xxvi state of the dead, by taking upon him the likeness of 23. sinful flesh, the state of those who were dead in trespasses and sins; and it was out of this state of death that he arose, and not again in the likeness of the same sinful flesh.

4. Who is he that ascended, but the same also that descended? It was not therefore his natural body that ascended, for this was brought forth by a natural woman; and as it never descended from heaven, so neither was it that which ascended.

Rom. Fi

Eph.ii. 6.

5. The apostles further testified that they were dead and buried, and risen with Christ, and sat to- 3,4. gether with him in heavenly places; therefore it must be a very great mistake to suppose that they had any reference to a natural death, (as it is called,) or to any carnal resurrection of the same natural body, when their very existence, like that of other men, must have contradicted their own testimony.

6. It would seem a wonderful argument with some, that it was the same wounded body of Jesus, that arose from the dead; because he appeared unto his disciples with his wounds, and eat and drank with them; while they are ignorant that his spiritual body' was capable of assuming any form or appearance that might encourage the faith of his disciples.

7. But how much soever the inconsistent inventions and false systems of Antichrist, may have blinded the minds of natural men; yet that order can nev→ er be inverted, in which God hath created things natural and spiritual, the one for time and temporal use, and the other for eternity.

8. The spiritual body, while in the natural, is confined to time, space, and natural things; but when separated, and released from it, the natural is of no further use; nor can they ever be reunited without the grossest subversion of every order and law of God.

9. And if the same natural body that was crucified of the Jews, arose from the dead, and could enter into the house when the doors were shut, why did not the same body come forth out of the tomb with

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