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CHAPTER XXVIII.

Of other Relations.

Besides the before-mentioned relations, there are infinite others, some whereof I shall mention.

resurrection of the same body, on Mr. Locke's grounds, is from the idea of identity.' To which our author answers: The reason of believing any article of the Christian faith is its being a part of divine revelation. On this ground I believed it before I ever thought of those propositions, and not from my idea of identity. But I thought that you undertook to make out that my notion of ideas was inconsistent with this article of the Christian faith. The resurrection of the dead I acknowlege to be an article of the Christian faith; but that the resurrection of the same body is so, I confess I do not yet know. In the New Testament our Saviour and the apostles preach the resurrection of the dead, but I do not remember in the New Testament any such expression as the resurrection of the body, where the general resurrection is spoken of; but where the resurrection of some particular persons, on our Saviour's resurrection, is mentioned, the words are, Many bodies of the saints which slept arose ;' of which way of speaking a reason is given in these words, ' appeared to many,' i. e. those who slept appeared, so as to be known to be risen. It was necessary that they should come in such bodies as might appear to be the same they had before, that they might be known to those to whom they appeared; and it is probable that their bodies were not yet dis solved; and therefore it is particularly said here, differently from what is said of the general resurrection, that their bodies arose. 'But your lordship endeavors to prove it must be the same body. Granting that you have proved that it must be, will you say that he holds what is inconsistent with an article of faith, who having never seen your lordship's reasons, believes what the Scriptures propose to him, viz. That the dead shall be raised, without determining whether it shall be with the same bodies or no? Your lordship argues it must be the same body, which as you explain it is not the same particles of matter which were united at the point of death, or that the sinner had at the time of his sin; but the same material substance which was vitally united to the soul here; i. e. as I understand it, the same particles which were some time or other united to his soul during the present life.

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'Your first argument is from the words, All that are in the graves shall hear his voice,' &c. Whence you argue, that this cannot only be said of what was united to the soul in life, because a different substance cannot be said to be in the graves and to come out of them. According to this, the soul, unless it be in the grave, will make no part of the person that is raised, unless, as your lordship argues against me, you can make it out, that a sub

1. The first I shall name is some one simple idea, which being capable of degrees, affords an occasion of

stance, which never was in the grave, can come out of it, or that the soul is no substance. This interpretation, also, is not easily reconciled to your saying, you do not mean by the same body the same individual particles which were united at the point of death; yet you can mean no other, because you say that no substance can come out but what was in the grave. Your lordship expressly says, that our Saviour's words are to be understood of the substance of that body to which the soul was at any time united, and not to those individual particles that are in the grave which being put together, seems to me to say, that our Saviour's words are to be understood of those particles only that are in the grave; and not of those particles only which are in the grave, but of others also, which have at any time been vitally united to the soul, but never were in the grave.

Your lordship next quotes the words of St. Paul: For we must all appear before the judgment-seat of Christ, that every one may receive the things done in his body,' &c. To which your lordship subjoins the question, Can these words be understood of any other material substance, but that body in which these things were done? Answer, St. Paul does not say he shall have the same body when he suffers that he had when he sinned. The body which he had at fifteen was his body, so was the body which he had at fifty, but it was not the same body. He that at threescore is broken on the wheel for a murder he committed at twenty, is punished for what he did in his body, though the body he has, is not the same individual body that he had forty years ago.

But to your lordship's farther question, Can these words be understood of any other material substance but that body in which these things were done? I answer, they may, because your lordship says, That you do not say the same particles of matter, which the sinner had at the very time of the commission of his sins, shall be raised at the last day. And your lordship gives this reason for it For then a long sinner must have a vast body, considering the continual spending of particles by perspiration. Now, if the apostle's words cannot be understood of any other material substance but that body in which these things were done; and no body, on the change of some particles, is the same body; it follows that either the sinner must have all the same particles united to his soul when he is raised that he had united to his soul when he had sinned, or else the words cannot be understood to mean the same body in which the things were done.

Your lordship thinks it suffices to make the same body, to have, not all, but no other particles of matter but such as were sometime united to the soul. But such a body is no more the same body, than that is the same body in which half or three quarters of the same particles that made it up, are wanting. For example, a sinner has lived a hundred years. What must his

comparing the subject wherein it is, to another, in respect of that simple idea; v. g. whiter, sweeter,

body at the resurrection consist of? Not of all the particles that were ever united to his soul; for that, your lordship says, would make the body too vast: it suffices that it consists of some of the particles that were united to the soul during life, and none others. But, according to this account, his body at the resurrection will be no more the same body in which things were done in the distant parts of his life, than that is the same body in which half or three quarters of the individual matter that made it up then is now wanting.

Again, your lordship says, that you do not say that the same individual particles shall make up the body at the resurrection, which were united at the point of death, for there must be a great alteration and attenuation of them in a lingering disease: because your lordship thinks these particles of a wasted body too few for such a vigorous body as your lordship proportions out in your thoughts to men at the resurrection; and therefore some portion of the particles formerly united to the soul shall be re-assumed, but not all, to avoid making his body too vast. But, pray, my lord, what must an embryo do, who, dying soon after the soul is united to the body, has no particles of matter to make up his body to the size which your lordship seems to require in bodies at the resurrection?

By these and a few other like consequences, one may see what service they do to religion who make articles of faith about the resurrection of the same body, where the Scripture says nothing, or if it does it is with a reprimand. 1 Cor. xv. 35, &c. It suffices that the dead shall be raised. He that believes this must be acquitted from being guilty of any thing inconsistent with the article of the resurrection of the dead.

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But your lordship asks, How could it be said, if any other substance be joined to the soul at the resurrection, as its body, that they were the things done in or by the body? Answer, Just as it may be said of a man, at a hundred years old, that the murder or drunkenness he was guilty of at twenty, were things done in the body.

Your lordship adds, And St. Paul's dispute about the manner of raising the body might soon have ended, if there were no necessity of the same body. Answer, When I understand what argument there is in these words to prove the resurrection of the same body, I shall know what to say to it.

The next text of Scripture you bring for the same body is, If there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not raised;' from which your lordship argues, It seems then other bodies are to be raised as his was. Other dead are as certainly raised; but I see not how it follows that they shall be raised with the same body: for if other bodies are raised as his was, then every man shall be raised with the same lineaments he had

bigger, &c. These relations may be called propor

tional.

at the time of his death, even with his wounds yet open, if he had any.

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The case I think far different betwixt our Saviour and those to be raised at the last day: 1. His body saw not corruption: to give him then another body, had been to destroy his body, and to frame a new one without need. But why with the remaining particles of a man's body long since mouldered into dust, other new particles, mixed with them, may not serve to make his body again, as well as the mixture of new particles of matter did, in the compass of his life, make his body, no reason can be given ; since whatever matter is vitally united to his soul is his body as much as is that which was united to it when he was born. The figure and lineaments of our Saviour's body, even to his wounds, were to be kept in his raised body to be a conviction to his disciples. But at the last day, when all men are raised, there will be no need to be assured of any one particular man's resurrection it is enough that every one shall appear before the judgment-seat of Christ, to receive according to what he had done in his former life.

2.

. Your lordship asks, Were they, who saw our Saviour after his resurrection, witnesses only of some material substance then united to his soul? I beg your lordship to consider whether our Saviour was known to be the same man by his soul that could not be seen, or by his body that could be seen. But because one man cannot know another but by outward visible lineaments, will your lordship argue that the great Judge shall not be able to know who is who, unless he gives to every one of them a body of the same figure and particles he had in his former life?

But your lordship farther says that the apostle insists on the resurrection of Christ, not merely as an argument of the possibility of ours, but of the certainty of it. Answer, No doubt the resurrection of Christ is a proof of the certainty of our resurrection; but it is not therefore a proof of the resurrection of the same body.

Your lordship quotes St. Paul, But some men say, How are the dead raised, and with what body do they come?" He then shows, you say, that the seminal parts of plants are wonderfully improved by the ordinary providence of God, in the manner of their vegetation. Answer, I do not understand what it is for the seminal parts of plants to be wonderfully improved by the ordinary providence of God in the way of vegetation, or I should better see how this tends to the proof of the resurrection of the same body. It continues, They sow bare grain of wheat or some other grain; but God giveth it a body,' &c. Here, says your lordship, is an identity of the material substance supposed. To me it appears that a diversity of substance is supposed: for St. Paul saith, That which thou sowest, thou sowest not that body that shall be.' From which the argument seems to stand thus:

2. Another occasion of comparing things together is their origin, which being not afterwards to be alter

If the body that is put in the earth in sowing is not that body that shall be, then the body that is put in the grave is not the same body that shall be.

'But your lordship proves it to be the same body by the Greek words to tolov oŵua, which you translate, that proper body which belongs to it. Answer, By those words I formerly understood that in the production of wheat and other grain from seed God continued every species distinct. Your lordship says, These words prove that to every plant of wheat, and to every grain of wheat produced in it, is given the proper body that belongs to it, which is the same body with the grain that was sown. Answer, I do not understand how one individual grain can be the same with twenty, fifty, or a hundred grains. But your lordship proves it by saying, Every seed has that body in little which is afterwards so much enlarged; and in grain the seed is corrupted before its germination; but it hath its proper organical parts which make it the same body with that which it grows up to. For although grain be not divided into lobes, as other seeds are, yet it hath been found that those seminal parts may be discerned in them which grow up to that body which we call corn. In which words your lordship supposes that a body may be enlarged a hundred-fold, and yet continue the same body; which I cannot understand. But if it could be so, yet I do not think that your lordship will say that every inconceivably small grain of the hundred grains contained in the plant is the same with that grain which contains the whole plant; for then it will follow that one grain is the same with a hundred, and a hundred the same with one. For consider what St. Paul here speaks of, that which is sown and dies; i. e. the grain sown in the field. He says of it, that it is not the body which shall be. The two bodies of which St. Paul here speaks, are that which is sown, and that which shall be. Which of these is that invisible seminal plant, of which your lordship speaks? Not the grain that is sown, for that the apostle says must die; but this little embryonated plant dies not. Or does your lordship mean the body that shall be? But by these words St. Paul cannot be supposed to denote this embryonated plant, for that is contained in the seed that is sown, and could not be spoken of as the body that shall be. Therefore I cannot see what use it is to introduce this third body which St. Paul mentions not.

'Your lordship goes on: St. Paul indeed saith, that we sow not the body that shall be, but he speaks not of the identity, but the perfection of it. Here my understanding fails me again; for I cannot understand St. Paul to say that the grain which was sown at seed time is the same with every grain that springs from it; and I never thought of any seminal parts so wonderfully improved by the providence of God, whereby the same plant should produce itself.

'Your lordship's next words are, And although there be such a

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