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Chapter XXV.—St. John, in the Apocalypse, Equally Explicit in Asserting the Same Great Doctrine.
In the Revelation of John, again, the order of these times is spread out to view, which “the souls of the martyrs” are taught to wait for beneath the altar, whilst they earnestly pray to be avenged and judged
(Rev 6:9-10):
(taught, I say, to wait), in order that the world may first drink to the dregs the plagues that await it out of the vials of the angels
(Rev 16),
and that the city of fornication may receive from the ten kings its deserved doom
(Rev 18),
and that the beast Antichrist with his false prophet may wage war on the Church of God;
and that, after the casting of the devil into the bottomless pit for a while
(Rev 20:2),
the blessed prerogative of the first resurrection may be ordained from the thrones
(Rev 20:4-6);
and then again, after the consignment of him to the fire, that the judgment of the final and universal resurrection may be determined out of the books
(Rev 20:12-14).
Since, then, the Scriptures both indicate the stages of the last times, and concentrate the harvest of the Christian hope in the very end of the world, it is evident, either that all which God promises to us receives its accomplishment then, and thus what the heretics pretend about a resurrection here falls to the ground;
or else, even allowing that a confession of the mystery (of divine truth)
is a resurrection, that there is, without any detriment to this view, room for believing in that which is announced for the end. It moreover follows, that the very maintenance of this spiritual resurrection amounts to a presumption in favour of the other bodily resurrection;
for if none were announced for that time, there would be fair ground for asserting only this purely spiritual resurrection. Inasmuch, however, as (a resurrection)
is proclaimed for the last time, it is proved to be a bodily one, because there is no spiritual one also then announced. For why make a second announcement of a resurrection of only one character, that is, the spiritual one, since this ought to be undergoing accomplishment either now, without any regard to different times, or else then, at the very conclusion of all the periods?
It is therefore more competent for us even to maintain a spiritual resurrection at the commencement of
a life of faith,
who acknowledge the full completion thereof at the end of the world.
Chapter XXVI.—Even the Metaphorical Descriptions of This Subject in the Scriptures Point to the Bodily Resurrection, the Only Sense Which Secures Their Consistency and Dignity.
To a preceding objection, that the Scriptures are allegorical, I have still one answer to make—that it is open to us also to defend the bodily character of the resurrection by means of the language of the prophets, which is equally figurative. For consider that primeval sentence which God spake when He called man
earth;
saying, “Earth thou art, and to earth shalt thou return”
(Gen 3:19).
In respect, of course, to his fleshly substance, which had been taken out of the ground, and which was the first to receive the name of man, as we have already shown, does not this passage give one instruction to interpret in relation to the
flesh
also whatever of wrath or of grace God has determined for the earth, because, strictly speaking, the earth is not exposed to His judgment, since it has never done any good or evil?
“Cursed,” no doubt, it was, for it drank the blood
of man
(Gen 4:11);
but even this was as a figure of homicidal flesh. For if the earth has to suffer either joy or injury, it is simply on man’s account, that he may suffer the joy or the sorrow through the events which happen to his dwelling-place, whereby he will rather have to pay the penalty which, simply on his account, even the earth must suffer. When, therefore, God even threatens the earth, I would prefer saying that He threatens the flesh: so likewise, when He makes a promise to the earth, I would rather understand Him as promising the flesh;
as in that passage of David: “The Lord is King, let the earth be glad”(Psa 97:1),—meaning the flesh of the saints, to which appertains the enjoyment of the kingdom of God. Then he afterwards says: “The earth saw and trembled;
the mountains melted like wax at the presence of the Lord,”—meaning, no doubt the flesh of the wicked;
and (in a similar sense)
it is written: “For they shall look on Him whom they pierced”
(Zech 12:10).
If indeed it will be thought that both these passages were pronounced simply of the element earth, how can it be consistent that it should shake and melt at the presence of the Lord, at whose royal dignity it before exulted?
So again in Isaiah, “Ye shall eat the good of the land”
(Isa 1:19),
the expression means the blessings which await the flesh when in the kingdom of God it shall be renewed, and made like the angels, and waiting to obtain the things “which neither eye hath seen, nor ear heard, and which have not entered into the heart of man”
(1 Cor 2:9).
Otherwise, how vain that God should invite men to obedience by the fruits of the field and the elements of this life, when He dispenses these to even irreligious men and blasphemers;
on a general condition once for all made to man, “sending rain on the good and on the evil, and making His sun to shine on the just and on the unjust!”
(Matt 5:45)
Happy, no doubt, is faith, if it is to obtain gifts which the enemies of God and Christ not only use, but even abuse, “worshipping the creature itself in opposition to the Creator”
(Rom 1:25)!
You will reckon, (I suppose)
onions and truffles among earth’s bounties, since the Lord declares that “man shall not live on bread alone”
(Matt 4:4)!
In this way the Jews lose heavenly blessings, by confining their hopes to earthly ones, being ignorant of the promise of heavenly bread, and of the oil of God’s unction, and the wine of the Spirit, and of that water of life which has its vigour from the vine of Christ. On exactly the same principle, they consider the special soil of Judæa to be that very holy land, which ought rather to be interpreted of the Lord’s flesh, which, in all those who put on Christ, is thenceforward the holy land;
holy indeed by the indwelling of the Holy Ghost, truly flowing with milk and honey by the sweetness of His assurance, truly Judæan by reason of the friendship of God. For “he is not a Jew which is one outwardly, but he who is one inwardly”
(Rom 2:28-29).
In the same way it is that both God’s temple and Jerusalem (must be understood)
when it is said by Isaiah: “Awake, awake, O Jerusalem!
put on the strength of thine arm;
awake, as in thine earliest time”
(Isa 2:9),
that is to say, in that innocence which preceded the fall into sin. For how can words of this kind of exhortation and invitation be suitable for that Jerusalem which killed the prophets, and stoned those that were sent to them, and at last crucified its very Lord?
Neither indeed is salvation promised to any one land at all, which must needs pass away with the fashion of the whole world. Even if anybody should venture strongly to contend that paradise is the holy land, which it may be possible to designate as the land of our first parents Adam and Eve, it will even then follow that the restoration of paradise will seem to be promised to the flesh, whose lot it was to inhabit and keep it, in order that man may be recalled thereto just such as he was driven from it.
Chapter XXVII.—Certain Metaphorical Terms Explained of the Resurrection of the Flesh.
We have also in the Scriptures
robes
mentioned as allegorizing the hope of the flesh. Thus in the Revelation of John it is said: “These are they which have not defiled their clothes with women”(Rev 3:4,
14:4),—indicating, of course, virgins, and such as have become “eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake”
(Matt 19:12).
Therefore they shall be “clothed in white raiment”
(Rev 3:5),
that is, in the bright beauty of the unwedded flesh. In the gospel even, “the wedding garment” may be regarded as the sanctity of the flesh
(Matt 22:11-12).
And so, when Isaiah tells us what sort of “fast the Lord hath chosen,” and subjoins a statement about the reward of good works, he says: “Then shall thy light break forth as the morning, and thy garments, shall speedily arise”
(Isa 58:8);
where he has no thought of cloaks or stuff gowns, but means the rising of the flesh, which he declared the resurrection of, after its fall in death. Thus we are furnished even with an allegorical defence of the resurrection of the body. When, then, we read, “Go, my people, enter into your closets for a little season, until my anger pass away”
(Isa 26:20),
we have in the closets graves, in which they will have to rest for a little while, who shall have at the end of the world departed this life in the last furious onset of the power of Antichrist. Why else did He use the expression
closets,
in preference to some other receptacle, if it were not that the flesh is kept in these closets or cellars salted and reserved for use, to be drawn out thence on a suitable occasion?
It is on a like principle that embalmed corpses are set aside for burial in mausoleums and sepulchres, in order that they may be removed therefrom when the Master shall order it. Since, therefore, there is consistency in thus understanding the passage (for what refuge of little closets could possibly shelter us from the wrath of God?),
it appears that
by the very phrase which he uses, “Until His anger pass away”
(Isa 26:20),
which shall extinguish Antichrist, he in fact shows that after that indignation the flesh will come forth from the sepulchre, in which it had been deposited previous to the
bursting out of the
anger. Now out of the closets nothing else is brought than that which had been put into them, and after the extirpation of Antichrist shall be busily transacted
the great process of
the resurrection.
Chapter XXVIII.—Prophetic Things and Actions, as Well as Words, Attest This Great Doctrine.
But we know that prophecy expressed itself by things no less than by words. By words, and also by deeds, is the resurrection foretold. When Moses puts his hand into his bosom, and then draws it out again dead, and again puts his hand into his bosom, and plucks it out living
(Exo 4:6-7),
does not this apply as a presage to all mankind?—inasmuch as those three signs
(Exo 4:3-4)
denoted the threefold power of God: when it shall, first, in the appointed order, subdue to man the old serpent, the devil
(Exo 4:6-7),
however formidable;
then, secondly, draw forth the flesh from the bosom of death
(Exo 4:6-7);
and then, at last, shall pursue all blood (shed)
in judgment
(Exo 4:9).
On this subject we read in the writings of the same prophet, (how that)
God says: “For your blood of your lives will I require of all wild beasts;
and I will require it of the hand of man, and of his brother’s hand”
(Gen 9:5).
Now nothing is required except that which is demanded back again, and nothing is thus demanded except that which is to be given up;
and that will of course be given up, which shall be demanded and required on the ground of vengeance. But indeed there cannot possibly be punishment of that which never had any existence. Existence, however, it will have, when it is restored in order to be punished. To the flesh, therefore, applies everything which is declared respecting the blood, for without the flesh there cannot be blood. The flesh will be raised up in order that the blood may be punished. There are, again, some statements (of Scripture)
so plainly made as to be free from all obscurity of allegory, and yet they strongly require their very simplicity to be interpreted. There is, for instance, that passage in Isaiah: “I will kill, and I will make alive”
(Isa 38:12-13,16).
Certainly His making alive is to take place after He has killed. As, therefore, it is by death that He kills, it is by the resurrection that He will make alive. Now it is the flesh which is killed by death;
the flesh, therefore, will be revived by the resurrection. Surely if killing means taking away life from the flesh, and its opposite, reviving, amounts to restoring life to the flesh, it must needs be that the flesh rise again, to which the life, which has been taken away by killing, has to be restored by vivification.
See also
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