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A44433 Discourses, or, Sermons on several Scriptures by ... Ezekiel late Lord Bishop of London-Derry. Hopkins, Ezekiel, 1634-1690. 1691 (1691) Wing H2729; ESTC R31535 75,889 298

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World whose Minds were too deeply tinctur'd with contrary Notions that they look'd upon the Christian Religion as a Design rather to destroy Reason than to save the Soul accounting it a very absurd thing to believe in a crucified Saviour as being a Person weak and impotent or the future Resurrection as being a thing utterly impossible We find the Apostle to the Corinthians 1 Cor. 1.24 complaining that the Greeks who were then the great Masters of Wisdom and Learning esteemed a crucified Christ Foolishness and thought those Men little befriended by Reason that would depend for Life upon one that lost his own and venture to take off the Shamefulness of the Cross or to silence those Scoffs that were cast upon them for their Credulity who affirm the wonderful Resurrection of a dead Saviour and his glorious Triumph over Death and the Grave For this seemed to them no other than to solve an Absurdity by an Impossibility and make Reason more suspicious in that they judged the Fundamentals of Reason must be overthrown to make the Fundamentals of Christianity any way tolerable or possible Wherefore we find that even at Athens that great Concourse of Wits where all the Sect of Philosophers made their common Retreat yet when St. Paul preached to them Jesus and the Resurrection this Doctrine seem'd so absurd and foolish to them and so contrary to all Principles of right Reason that they forgot that Civility that usually is found in Men of inquisitive Spirits and brake out into open Reproaches and Revilings Act. 17.18 What will this Babler say because he preached to them Jesus and the Resurrection No doubt they wanted not very specious Arguments to urge against the Resurrection of the Body As first The Impossibility of a Recollection of the dispersed Particles of Men resolved into their Elements and scatter'd by the four Winds of Heaven though it might be very well retorted on the Epicureans who disputed with St. Paul against the Resurrection that it was not so unlikely a thing that there might be a Re-union of the scatter'd Parts of the same Man as the fortuitous Concourse of Attoms at the first Making of the World yet this Objection overbore and prevaild with Heathens that when they burnt the Bodies of Christians they cast their Ashes into the Rivers to confute their Hopes of ever being raised again from whenee they should be carried away into an unknown Ocean and there be made the Sport of Winds and Waves But what our Saviour says upon the same Occasion to the Sadduces may be said unto these Men You err Matth. 22.29 not knowing the Scriptures nor the Power of God For unless their Parts could be scatter'd beyond the reach of Omnipotency unless they could be ground so small as to scape the Knowledge and Care of God who ordereth and rangeth every Mote that plays up and down in the Sun-beams this Dispersion of the Body proves not the Impossibility of their Union because the Power and Providence of God will gather up every Dust and rally them together again into the same Place and Order as now they are Objection Another Argument against the Resurrection of the Body may be the various Changes dead Bodies undergo being first turn'd into Earth that again turn'd into Grass and Herbs that becoming Nourishment for other Men or Beasts that Nourishment again passing into their Substance making a kind of Transmigration of Bodies as Pythagoras would have there was of Souls which is very evident in the Case of Anthropomorphites and Men-Eaters who have of several parts of other Men's Bodies compounded their own And so the same Question may be demanded which the Sadduces asked our Saviour concerning the seven Brethren that married the same Woman whose Wife of the seven she should be at the Resurrection So here those Parts that belonged to so many Men to which of them belong they in the Resurrection without detriment to the rest Here the same Answer occurrs that Christ gave them Matth. 22.29 You err not knowing the Scriptures nor the Power of God who is the best Judge of Property and can resolve all those Parts by which any Nourishment hath been received by any other Creatures unto their own proper Bodies again And thus it appears these Arguments against the Resurrection of the Body amount not to prove the Impossibility of the Effect but only the Supernatural Almighty Power of the Efficient Wherefore granting the Resurrection impossible according to the Original Course of Natural Things yet when an Omnipotent Arm doth interpose which gives Laws unto it who dares to say the Creature may be brought to such a State of Dissolution as may out-reach the Dominion of the Almighty Creator Upon these Grounds it is that the Apostle urgeth Act. 26.8 why it should be thought a strange and incredible thing that God should raise the Dead and in the Text that he asserts the Resurrection of Christ And to prevent any fallacious Cavils against it he shews First Division of the Words That God raised him from the Dead and therefore it was not to be accounted a thing impossible since to God nothing could imply a Contradiction Secondly He doth not only assert the Possibility but the Impossibility of his final Continuance under the Power of Death The Grave that grasps and retains all other Mortals was not able to detain him who hath Immortality and Life dwelling in himself It was not possible he should be holden of it therefore God hath raised him up loosing the Pains of Death Whom God raised up Here is the Efficient Cause of Christ's Resurrection in the concurrent Action of the whole Trinity for all that God doth out of himself is ascribed to all the Three Persons Sometimes it is ascribed to the Father Act. 3.13 15. as the Apostle speaks The God of Abraham and of Isaac and of Jacob the God of our Fathers hath glorified his Son Jesus whom ye delivered up and denied the Holy One and the Just desiring a Murtherer and killed the Prince of Life whom God hath raised from the Dead Sometimes it is ascribed to the Son who by the infinite Power of his Divinity raised up his Humane Nature from the Grave So our Saviour himself tells us I lay down my Life of my self Joh. 3.18 I have power to lay it down and I have power to take it up again The same may be collected of the Holy Ghost from the Words of the Apostle Rom. 8.11 If the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the Dead dwell in you he that raised up Christ from the Dead shall also quicken your mortal Bodies by his Spirit Now if the Spirit of God can quicken our Bodies the same Spirit also can quicken the Body of Christ since it is the same Spirit that quickens both the Head and the Members Having loosed the Pains of Death In some Copies it is Having loosed the Pains of Hell which possibly gave