Of the resurrection of the body.
THIS the Quakers do positively deny; Mr. Penn makes nonsense of it, and worse; he compares it to transubstantiation, nay, to the Alcoran. In short, says he1, if the complete happiness of the soul rests in a reunion to a carnal body, for such it is sown, then never cry out upon the Turks' Alcoran; for such a heaven, and the joys of it, suit admirably well with such a resurrection.
If the reader thinks (as I did when I first read this) that Mr. Penn meant this only of such a gross conceit of the resurrection, as if our bodies should be in the same frail condition as now, and addicted to sensualities; if the reader thinks thus, as I did, (for what else could any one think?) he will be, to his astonishment, undeceived, as I was, in reading what follows.
No Christian ever held that there was not a great change of the body in its qualities at the resurrec tion; It is sown in weakness, in corruption; it is raised in incorruption, and in power, &c. And therefore, if Mr. Penn meant no more than as above said, he would dispute against no Christian. But, alas! as you will find, they deny any resurrection at all of that body which is sown; that they leave wholly neglected for ever in its dust.
Some of them suppose a perfectly new body will be made for the soul; but others, that the soul it self is the spiritual body which is mentioned 1 Cor. xv. 44, and, consequently, that there is no other resurrection than at each particular person's death, when the soul, which they call the spiritual body, is freed from the natural body, never more to meet again.
And in consequence of this, these believe no general resurrection; no, nor some of them any end of the world, every man's resurrection being, as they suppose, perfected at his death, though obtained in measure before.
But let us return to Mr. Penn. In his book above quoted in the margin (Reas. against Rail. p. 134.) he is answering this material objection; That if it be a new body which is made for the soul, then there is no resurrection of the body; for that does not rise again which never lay down.
And when St. Paul says, I Cor. xv. 42, (speaking of the resurrection of the body,) that it is sown in corruption, and it is raised in incorruption, &c. this cannot be true, unless it be the same it, that is, the same body which is spoke of in both branches of the comparison. The objection is in these words; If the it in the text be not the same body, how can it be called a resurrection? for that supposeth the same.
I answer, says Mr. Penn, If a thing can yet be the same, and notwithstanding changed, for shame let us never make so much stir against the doctrine of transubstantiation; for the absurdity of it is rather outdone than equalled by this carnal resurrection.
First, The church of Rome owes Mr. Penn thanks for so very kind a representation of transubstantiation, as to make it stand upon a better foot than the resurrection of the body, which is an article in our creed, and received by the catholic church in all ages.
Secondly, This is answering one objection with another.
But, thirdly, As to his objection: Cannot he ap prehend a thing to be changed in many of its quali ties, and yet remain the same in its substance? for that is the present question; quite contrary to that of transubstantiation, which supposes a change of the substance, the qualities or accidents remaining the same.
What does he think? Was not Christ's body changed in his transfiguration upon the mount? Was it not therefore the same body? Or did Christ take a new body? That would have been death; for after a soul is hypostatically, that is, personally, united to a body, their separation is called death. Unless he thinks that Christ took a body no otherwise than as angels have done, that is, not into any hypo statical union with his person, but only as a cloak or veil, which he might throw off and put on again without any alteration as to his person. And if so, then Christ did not die upon the cross more than upon the mount; that is, he only put off that bodily garment; but that was no death, more than an angel is said to die when he lays down that body which he took up only for an occasion.
But this has been discoursed of more fully in the section concerning the divinity of Christ. In the mean time, let me give an easy answer to the two verses in the fifteenth chapter of the First Epistle to the Corinthians, which the Quakers make use of against the resurrection of the body: one is ver. 37, Thou sowest not that body which shall be; the other is ver. 50, That flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God.
Answer. Flesh and blood, while corruptible, as ours is in this life, cannot bear the incorruptible state of heaven, as it is expressed in the same verse in explanation of the expression; Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption; but our corruptible flesh will be changed in its qualities, and put on un corruptible qualities; and thus the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed; for this corruptible must put on incorruption, &c. ver. 53, &c.
The same answer will serve, ver. 37, where the apostle does illustrate the resurrection of our bodies by the resurrection of grain that is sown in the ground. For the body of such grain is changed in its qualities, but not in its substance. The grain must die, or else it will not fructify or rise again. In this death it loses something, as the husks; but it retains the substance, which rises again much al tered from what it was sown; for it rises in the blade, then the stalk, ears, and then the full grain in the ear. But to shew that the substance is not altered in all this, we find that every grain rises the same it was sown: if you sow oats, you expect not a crop of wheat: and there is full as much rea son to say that God does anew create every year all the grain that grows in our fields, without any re spect to the grain that was sown, or any natural production from thence, as that we shall receive totally new bodies without any relation to, or any part of, the body that was sown.
And as to Mr. Penn's mighty wonder, how a thing can be changed and yet the same, which he cannot comprehend, and compares to transubstantiation, it is so far from being any difficulty at all, that it proves the thing that is changed to be the same; because otherwise it were not changed.
If George be changed in quality, in the state of his health or reputation, this is a certain proof that it is the same George still. But if William be changed, this is no change in George. So that a thing being changed proves it to be the same: nor is the greatness of the change any difference as to the sameness of the person changed. Death is a great change; yet if William dies, it is William, even the same William that lived, who died: and as sure it will be the same who shall rise again, though undergoing another great change.
But I am now to tell you a very strange thing, which I would not believe when it was told me till I saw it; and that is, that Mr. Penn does understand that long and elegant description of the resurrection of our bodies from the 35th verse of the fifteenth chapter of the First Epistle to the Corinthians, only of the spiritual state of the soul in this life. These are his own words, p. 373, of his book quoted in the margin2; and repeating verse 44, It is sown a na tural body, it is raised a spiritual body, &c. he adds, p. 369, I do utterly deny that this text is concern ed in the resurrection of man's carnal body at all. I will recite it, says he, with the five following verses, which he there sets down; but for bre vity I omit them, referring to the chapter: and having repeated them which speak of the natural and spiritual body, that the first man is of the earth, earthy; the second is the Lord from heaven; and that, as we have borne the image of the earthy, (that is, of Adam, in this corruptible life,) so we shall bear the image of the heavenly, (that is, at the resurrection, when our vile bodies shall be made like unto Christ's glorious body.) But Mr. Penn, p. 370, having repeated these verses, goes on thus: I say this doth not concern the resurrection of carnal bodies, but the two states of men under the first and second Adam: men are sown into the world natural, so they are the sons of the first Adam; but they are raised spiritually, through him who is the resurrection and the life; and so they are the sons of the second Adam who came to raise up the sons of the first Adam from their dead to his living, their natural to his spiritual estate. But perhaps, says he, it will be ob jected that the 47th verse, the first man is of the earth, earthy, and part of verse 49, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly, seem to imply a bodily resurrection; but let the whole verse be considered, and we shall find no such thing, &c.
I will not take up the reader's time to repeat all his arbitrary interpretations. They are such as will, by the same liberty he uses, take away the literal Adam, and literal Christ, as well as the literal re surrection. And I have shewn, sect. x, that the Quakers have spiritualized away the body and the being of Christ into their light within. Indeed, if the spiritualizing art be allowed in this latitude, there can remain no one word of certainty or reality in the whole Bible, or in any other book or writing, or in any words that men can speak.
When I urged to a Quaker preacher, towards a proof of the resurrection of bodies, that text, Matt. xxvii. 52, 53, that many bodies of saints arose, and came out of the graves after Christ's resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many; he made answer, that that was not meant of the literal or earthly Jerusalem, that any dead body arose there; but of the spiritual Jerusalem, which John saw coming down from heaven. And others told me they heard the same exposition in a Quaker sermon at one of their meetings.
Here we have spiritual graves, spiritual dead bodies, spiritual Jerusalems, spiritual resurrection, and spiritual Christ, whenever any text pinches them!
Among other names of reproach which Mr. Penn in his Spirit of Alexander the Coppersmith, (before quoted,) p. 4, bestows upon one of the separate Quakers, he calls him Hymeneus and Philetus, I suppose only through inadvertence, because they were ill names; not minding how near home this brought the accusation: for these, in this article of the resurrection, were direct Quakers. These were they, who (as St. Paul tells of them, 2 Tim. ii. 18,) concerning the truth have erred, saying, That the resurrection is past already. That is, they spirit ualized it from the letter, and meant it only of the spiritual rising up of Christ in our hearts; which having obtained, (as their light within did assure them,) their resurrection they supposed was past already, and they expected no other. But this St. Paul calls overthrowing the faith. And I have heard several Quakers, some of their preachers, say, that they had already obtained the resurrection, by Christ having risen in their hearts; and that they believed no other resurrection, nor expected any.
And as they deny any outward resurrection, so consequentially they deny any outward heaven; which we may see by the books that have been wrote against them upon that head, and their an swers to them. There was one printed 1656, by several hands, entitled, An Antidote against the In fection of the Times; which is divided into several considerations. The fourth consideration, p. 6, is wholly upon this point, proving against the Quakers, that there was an outward heaven, and that Christ ascended thither, viz. that heaven which was created before man was formed out of the earth. How sottishly blind then are they (says that book, ibid.) that suppose angels, yea, the very heaven of glory, to be something in man; whereas these were cre ated in their glory before man had a being.
To this book G. Fox wrote an answer; which you will find in his Great Mystery, p. 214, where repeating the above quoted words in his way, that is, never exactly, seldom truly, (though they com plain grievously if but a comma be misplaced in quoting any of their words, and then deny them, as so stated,) he does not deny the charge, but justifies it. He puts the objection against the Quakers in these words; To say heaven and glory is in man, which was before man was, they are sottish and blind. And his answer is in these words; There's none have a glory and a heaven but within them, which was before man had a being.
For further proofs upon this head, and the Quaker defences and excuses of their heresy herein, I refer to Satan Disrobed, sect. 3, where the Quakers' last shift to cover this and other their vile errors is laid fully open.
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