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cause_n death_n nature_n sin_n 3,389 5 5.4793 4 true
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ID Title Author Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication) STC Words Pages
A25316 The evidence of things not seen, or, Diverse scriptural and philosophical discourses, concerning the state of good and holy men after death ... by that eminently learned divine Moses Amyraldus ; translated out of the French tongue by a Minister of the Church of England.; Discours de l'estat des fidèles après la mort. English. Amyraut, Moïse, 1596-1664.; Minister of the Church of England. 1700 (1700) Wing A3036; ESTC R7638 98,543 248

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it Touching the Body 't is beyond comparison more easy to tell what it will not be then what it will be For we see very clearly what things it must necessarily be delivered from but we do not see in the same manner the things wherewithal it must be endued on that very happy day There are in us two sorts of infirmities whereof the one are so very natural that we should have been subject to them though we had continued in the state of our integrity The others are so far natural that we are subject to them from the womb and from the first principles of our being and yet notwithstanding they have come upon us since the constitution of our nature and had never come into the world but in consequence of sin with regard to these last such as is the deformity of members the ugliness of the visage the want or weakness of any sense maladies wounds ill proportion of stature and to conclude liableness to death since they have no other cause nor original but sin it must necessarily be that sin being entirely and absolutely abolished all these infirmities will necessarily cease of themselves So that though we had nothing else to expect from the Resurrection it must however replace us in a condition not less excellent in what appertains to the constitution of the Body than was the condition of Adam at the hour of his Creation For 't is neither agreeable to the wisdom or mercy nor it may be to the justice of God that having absolved our whole and entire persons from all kind of sin by justification and having delivered our Souls from all evil habits by Sanctification he should notwithstanding leave on our Bodies some trace of those infirmities which had never come there but for the punishment of sin or which are necessary and indubitable dependances of it Imagine you then the most beautiful man upon earth and the most perfectly composed endued with the most lively and vigorous and exquisite senses that can be imagined free him from the danger of all kinds of incommodities in his health make his vigour always equal and flourishing and suppose you that no consequence of years can ever alter or change him and to conclude give him assurance that he shall continue so everlastingly and you will after a sort have conceived the first beginnings of the perfection which we expect in the happy Resurrection Touching the first sort of infirmities which are absolutely natural they consist in the desire of meat drink and sleep and in all those things which are either in some manner like unto them or depend upon them For without doubt Adam desired all this and this desire in a State so Holy and Perfect as was his is an indubitable argument of need and need a necessary consequence of the estate of nature in which he was placed and which the Holy Scripture expresses by this manner of speech he was made a living Soul that is to say that in this respect he was like to other Animals in which the living Soul which the Scripture also attributes unto them derives all these things in consequence to his being Now we ought also to be delivered from these kind of infirmities For the Heavens whither we aspire are not an Habitation agreable to these things although it be said that we shall be there at the Table with Abraham Isaac and Jacob that we shall there be satisfied with the fatness of the House of God and moistened with the Rivers of his pleasures that doth not mean nevertheless that we must make feasts there or to take it according to the Letter that Rivers of pleasure do actually run there But because as long as we are here below we conceive nothing almost but under the Images of things which we see the Scripture accommodating it self unto us as we do to Children doth as it were cover the Heavenly pleasure under the shadow of those that are earthly And as to what concerns generation For as much as it was not instituted in nature unless first of all for the multiplication of single persons for the peopling of the universe and afterwards for the preservation of the species when death removed the individuals the necessity of these two causes then ceasing 't is no wonder that our Saviour hath told us that in that respect we shall be like the Angels Now 't is no disadvantage to be deprived of these things when we have no need of them But to subsist in our being and to exercise perfectly the Operations which are agreeable to our most noble faculties and nevertheless to be delivered from that condition that makes all these base and wretched Actions of our Bodies absolutely necessary is without lying an Estate that ought to be judged very advantageous by those that are compounded more of Spirit than Body and have a Soul a little roused and generous if therefore you add this to those other perfections of which I have made mention you will yet much advance the excellence of that Estate whereof I have formed the Idea In the mean time all these infirmities have their root in us in that we have a Body compounded of the Elements in the same manner as are the Bodies of all other Animals and in that we are endued with a Soul sensitive and vegetative as they speak which hath faculties altogether like to the faculties of the Souls of beasts unless peradventure we be above them in some higher degree of perfection and this composition of the Elements and of a Soul vegetative and sensitive in the constitution of our essence is a cause that although the providence of God should hinder as it did in our integrity our being sick or wounded so it is that our Bodies in themselves would be capable of the impression of the causes of all these alterations and that although God should perpetually preserve us from death nevertheless the constitution of our Body in it self would be perishable and mortal for that the first man had been exempt from all these evil accidents and immortal if he had persevered in his innocence would have proceeded from the care of the Divine Providence and not from the temperature of his Body 'T is therefore necessary that although our Bodies be raised again and remade of the same matter of which they are now compounded the constitution of them must nevertheless be so changed that nothing must remain of all its natural qualities or of that Animal life which we have in common with Creatures endued with sense and destitute of Reason Let us therefore oppose a little those things that depend on this natural complexion of our Bodies to those qualities that are contrary unto them and so let us Endeavour to come to some knowledg of the perfection of the Estate that we expect our Bodies are now in their nature capable of all sorts of evil accidents and impressions which cause incommodity and grief unto them then they shall be so