Book 3, Chapter 25 (2)

IV. The remark we have made, that in proving the resurrection, our minds should be directed to the infinite power of God, is briefly suggested in these words of Paul: “Who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself.”[631] It would therefore be extremely unreasonable here, to consider what could possibly happen in the ordinary course of nature, when the object proposed to us is an inestimable miracle, the magnitude of which absorbs all our faculties. Yet Paul adduces an example from nature to reprove the folly of those who deny the resurrection. “Thou fool,” says he, “that which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die.”[632] He tells us that seed sown displays an image of the resurrection, because the corn is reproduced from putrefaction. Nor would it be a thing so difficult to believe, if we paid proper attention to the miracles which present themselves to our view in all parts of the world. But let us remember, that no man will be truly persuaded of the future resurrection, but he who is filled with admiration, and ascribes to the power of God the glory that is due to it. Transported with this confidence, Isaiah exclaims, “Thy dead men shall live; together with my dead body shall they arise; awake and sing, ye that dwell in dust.”[633] Surrounded by desperate circumstances, he has recourse to God, the Author of life, unto whom, as the Psalmist says, “belong the issues from death.”[634] Even reduced to a state resembling a dead carcass more than a living man, yet relying on the power of God, just as if he were in perfect health, Job looks forward without any doubts to that day. “I know,” says he, “that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth,” there to display his power; “and though after my skin, worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God; whom I shall see for myself, and not another.”[635] For though some persons employ great subtilty to pervert these texts, as if they ought not to be understood of the resurrection, they nevertheless confirm what they wish to destroy; since holy men, in the midst of calamities, seek consolation from no other quarter than from the similitude of the resurrection; which more fully appears from a passage in Ezekiel.[636] For when the Jews rejected the promise of their restoration, and objected, that there was no more probability of a way being opened for their return, than of the dead coming forth from their sepulchres, a vision is presented to the prophet, of a field full of dry bones, and God commands them to receive flesh and nerves. Though this figure is intended to inspire the people with a hope of restoration, he borrows the argument for it from the resurrection; as it is to us also the principal model of all the deliverances which believers experience in this world. So Christ, after having declared that the voice of the gospel communicates life, in consequence of its rejection by the Jews, immediately adds, “Marvel not at this; for the hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, and shall come forth.”[637] After the example of Paul, therefore, let us even now triumphantly exult in the midst of our conflicts, that he who has promised us a life to come “is able to keep that which we have committed to him;” and thus let us glory that “there is laid up for us a crown of righteousness, which the righteous Judge shall give us.”[638] The consequence of this will be, that all the troubles we suffer will point us to the life to come, “seeing it is a righteous thing with God,” and agreeable to his nature, “to recompense tribulation to them that trouble us, and to us who are” unjustly “troubled, rest, when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed, with his mighty angels, in flaming fire.”[639] But we must remember what immediately follows, that “he shall come to be glorified in his saints, and to be admired in all them that believe,” because they believe the gospel.

V. Now, though the minds of men ought to be continually occupied with the study of this subject, yet as if they expressly intended to abolish all remembrance of the resurrection, they have called death the end of all things, and the destruction of man. For Solomon certainly speaks according to a common and received opinion, when he says, “A living dog is better than a dead lion.”[640] And again: “Who knows whether the spirit of man goeth upward, and the spirit of the beast goeth downward?”[641] This brutish stupidity has infected all ages of the world, and even forced its way into the Church; for the Sadducees had the audacity publicly to profess, that there is no resurrection, and that souls are mortal. But that none might be excused by this gross ignorance, the very instinct of nature has always set before the eyes of unbelievers an image of the resurrection. For what is the sacred and inviolable custom of interring the dead, but a pledge of another life? Nor can it be objected that this originated in error; for the rites of sepulture were always observed among the holy fathers; and it pleased God that the same custom should be retained among the Gentiles, that their torpor might be roused by the image of the resurrection thereby set before them. Though this ceremony produced no good effects upon them, yet it will be useful to us, if we wisely consider its tendency; for it is no slight refutation of unbelief, that all united in professing a thing that none of them believed. But Satan has not only stupefied men’s minds, to make them bury the memory of the resurrection together with the bodies of the dead, but has endeavoured to corrupt this point of doctrine by various fictions, with an ultimate view to its total subversion. Not to mention that he began to oppose it in the days of Paul, not long after arose the Millenarians, who limited the reign of Christ to a thousand years. Their fiction is too puerile to require or deserve refutation. Nor does the Revelation, which they quote in favour of their error, afford them any support; for the term of a thousand years, there mentioned,[642] refers not to the eternal blessedness of the Church, but to the various agitations which awaited the Church in its militant state upon earth. But the whole Scripture proclaims that there will be no end of the happiness of the elect, or the punishment of the reprobate. Now, all those things which are invisible to our eyes, or far above the comprehension of our minds, must either be believed on the authority of the oracles of God, or entirely rejected. Those who assign the children of God a thousand years to enjoy the inheritance of the future life, little think what dishonour they cast on Christ and his kingdom. For if they are not invested with immortality, neither is Christ himself, into the likeness of whose glory they will be transformed, received up into immortal glory. If their happiness will have any end, it follows that the kingdom of Christ, on the stability of which it rests, is temporary. Lastly, either these persons are extremely ignorant of all Divine things, or they are striving, with malignant perverseness, to overturn all the grace of God and power of Christ; and these can never be perfectly fulfilled till sin is abolished, and death swallowed up, and eternal life completely established. But the folly of being afraid that too much cruelty is attributed to God, if the reprobate are doomed to eternal punishment, is even evident to the blind. Will the Lord do any injury by refusing the enjoyment of his kingdom to persons whose ingratitude shall have rendered them unworthy of it? But their sins are temporary. This I grant; but the majesty of God, as well as his justice, which their sins have violated, is eternal. Their iniquity, therefore, is justly remembered. Then the punishment is alleged to be excessive, being disproportioned to the crime. But this is intolerable blasphemy, when the majesty of God is so little valued, when the contempt of it is considered of no more consequence than the destruction of one soul. But let us pass by these triflers; lest, contrary to what we have before said, we should appear to consider their reveries as worthy of refutation.

VI. Beside these wild notions, the perverse curiosity of man has introduced two others. Some have supposed that the whole man dies, and that souls are raised again together with bodies; others, admitting the immortality of souls, suppose they will be clothed with new bodies, and thereby deny the resurrection of the flesh. As I have touched on the former of these notions in the creation of man, it will be sufficient again to apprize my readers, that it is a brutish error, to represent the spirit, formed after the image of God, as a fleeting breath which animates the body only during this perishable life, and to annihilate the temple of the Holy Spirit; in short, to despoil that part of us in which Divinity is eminently displayed, and the characters of immortality are conspicuous, of this property; so that the condition of the body must be better and more excellent than that of the soul. Very different is the doctrine of Scripture, which compares the body to a habitation, from which we depart at death; because it estimates us by that part of our nature which constitutes the distinction between us and the brutes. Thus Peter, when near his death, says, “Shortly I must put off this my tabernacle.”[643] And Paul, speaking of believers, having said that “if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building in the heavens,” adds that “whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord.”[644] Unless our souls survive our bodies, what is it that is present with God when separated from the body? But the apostle removes all doubt when he says that we are “come to the spirits of just men made perfect.”[645] By which expression he means, that we are associated with the holy fathers, who, though dead, still maintain the same piety with us, so that we cannot be members of Christ without being united with them. If souls separated from bodies did not retain their existence so as to be capable of glory and felicity, Christ would not have said to the thief, “To-day shalt thou be with me in paradise.”[646] Supported by such undeniable testimonies, let us not hesitate, after the example of Christ, when we die, to commend our spirits to God; or, like Stephen, to resign them to the care of Christ, who is justly called the faithful “Shepherd and Bishop of souls.” Over-curious inquiry respecting their intermediate state is neither lawful nor useful. Many persons exceedingly perplex themselves by discussing what place they occupy, and whether they already enjoy the glory of heaven, or not. But it is folly and presumption to push our inquiries on unknown things beyond what God permits us to know. The Scripture declares that Christ is present with them, and receives them into paradise, where they enjoy consolation, and that the souls of the reprobate endure the torments which they have deserved; but it proceeds no further. Now, what teacher or doctor shall discover to us that which God has concealed? The question respecting place is equally senseless and futile; because we know that the soul has no dimensions like the body. The blessed assemblage of holy spirits being called the bosom of Abraham, teaches us that it is enough for us, at the close of this pilgrimage, to be received by the common Father of believers, and to participate with him in the fruit of his faith. In the mean while, as the Scripture uniformly commands us to look forward with eager expectation to the coming of Christ, and defers the crown of glory which awaits us till that period, let us be content within these limits which God prescribes to us—that the souls of pious men, after finishing their laborious warfare, depart into a state of blessed rest, where they wait with joy and pleasure for the fruition of the promised glory; and so, that all things remain in suspense till Christ appears as the Redeemer. And there is no doubt that the condition of the reprobate is the same as Jude assigns to the devils, who are confined and bound in chains till they are brought forth to the punishment to which they are doomed.

VII. Equally monstrous is the error of those who imagine that souls will not resume the bodies which at present belong to them, but will be furnished with others altogether different. It was the very futile reasoning of the Manichæans, that it is absurd to expect that the flesh which is so impure will ever rise again. As if there were no impurity attached to the souls, which they nevertheless encouraged to entertain hopes of a heavenly life. It was therefore just as if they had maintained, that any thing infected with the contagion of sin is incapable of being purified by the power of God; for that reverie, that the flesh was created by the devil, and therefore naturally impure, I at present forbear to notice; and only observe, that whatever we have in us now unworthy of heaven, will not hinder the resurrection. In the first place, when Paul exhorts believers to “cleanse” themselves “from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit,”[647] thence follows the judgment he elsewhere denounces, “that every one” shall “receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad;”[648] with which agrees another passage, “that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body.”[649] Wherefore in another place, he prays to God that the whole person may “be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ,” even the “body,” as well as the “soul and spirit.”[650] And no wonder; for that those bodies which God has dedicated as temples for himself, should sink into corruption, without any hope of resurrection, would be absurd in the extreme. What is to be concluded from their being members of Christ?[651] from God’s enjoining every part of them to be sanctified to himself, requiring their tongues to celebrate his name, their hands to be lifted up with purity to him,[652] and their bodies altogether to be presented to him as “living sacrifices?”[653] This part of our nature therefore being dignified with such illustrious honour by the heavenly Judge, what madness is betrayed by a mortal man, in asserting it to be reduced to ashes without any hope of restoration! And Paul, when he gives us this exhortation, “Glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s,”[654] certainly does not countenance consigning to eternal corruption that which he asserts to be consecrated to God. Nor is there any point more clearly established in Scripture, than the resurrection of our present bodies. “This corruptible,” says Paul, “must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.”[655] If new bodies were to be formed by God, what would become of this change of quality? If it had been said, that we must be renewed, the ambiguity of the expression might have given occasion for cavil: now, when he particularly designates the bodies that surround us, and promises that they shall be “raised in incorruption,” it is a sufficient denial of the formation of new ones. “He could not indeed,” says Tertullian, “have spoken more expressly, unless he had held his own skin in his hand.” Nor will any cavil evade the declaration of Isaiah, cited by the apostle, respecting Christ as the future Judge of the world: “As I live, saith the Lord, every knee shall bow to me;”[656] for he plainly declares to the persons addressed by him, that they shall be obliged to give an account of their lives; which would not be reasonable, if new bodies were to be placed at the tribunal. There is no obscurity in the language of Daniel: “Many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.”[657] For God does not collect fresh materials from the four elements for the fabrication of men, but calls the dead out of their sepulchres. And this the plainest reason dictates. For if death, which originated in the fall of man, be adventitious, and not necessary to our nature, the restoration effected by Christ belongs to the same body which was thus rendered mortal. From the ridicule of the Athenians, when Paul asserted the resurrection, it is easy to infer the nature of his doctrine; and that ridicule is of no small weight for the confirmation of our faith. The injunction of Christ also is worthy of attention: “Fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul; but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.”[658] For there would be no reason for this fear, if the body which we now carry about were not liable to punishment. Another of Christ’s declarations is equally plain: “The hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, and shall come forth, they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life, and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation.”[659] Shall we say that souls rest in graves, and will there hear the voice of Christ, and not rather that bodies at his command will return to the vigour they had lost? Besides, if we are to receive new bodies, where will be the conformity between the Head and members? Christ rose; was it by making himself a new body? No, but according to his prediction, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”[660] The mortal body which he before possessed, he again assumed. For it would have conduced but little to our benefit, if there had been a substitution of a new body, and an annihilation of that which had been offered as an atoning sacrifice. We must, therefore, maintain the connection stated by the apostle—that we shall rise, because Christ has risen;[661] for nothing is more improbable, than that our body, in which “we bear about the dying of the Lord Jesus,”[662] should be deprived of a resurrection similar to his. There was an illustrious example of this immediately on Christ’s resurrection, when “the graves were opened, and many bodies of the saints which slept arose.”[663] For it cannot be denied, that this was a prelude, or rather an earnest, of the final resurrection, which we expect; such as was exhibited before in Enoch and Elias, whom Tertullian speaks of as “the candidates of the resurrection,” because they were taken into the immediate care of God, with an entire exemption from corruption in body and soul.