Online Bible 1995 March/ROM-1025.iso/olb/gill/d_400.lzh/D_434.TXT

Text File | 1994-08-18 | 7KB | 135 lines

434                                 OF THE RESURRECTION OF THE BODY.                                                        Book VII.

ing, redeeming, calling, and persevering grace, ascrib-
ing glory to the Father, that has chose them in Christ;
and to the Son, who has redeemed them to God by his
blood; and to the Spirit, who has regenerated, sanc-
tified, and called them; and to all Three, for the pre-
servation of them to the kingdom and glory of God.
5thly, Much Of the employment of souls in this se-
parate state lies in converse with angels and the spirits
of just men made perfect. Angels have some way o
other of conversing with each other; we read of the
tongue of angels; not that they speak any particular
language, and with an articulate voice; but they have
speech among themselves, which they understand;
they can communicate their thoughts to one another,
andbe happy in their mutual converse; see Dan. viii.
13. and xii. 5, 6, 7. and angels can convey their sense
to the spirits of men; and the spirits of men can com-
municate theirs to them; such an intercourse between
angels and the souls of men has been carried on in
dreams and visions, even in this imperfect state; and
much more are they capable of conversing together in
a more perfect one. The souls of men in the separate
state are distinguishable from one another; and there
are ways and means, no doubt, of knowing one from
another; thus the soul of Abraham may be known
from the soul of Isaac; and the soul of Isaac from the
soul of Abraham; and the soul of Jacob from both:
and as the saints will know one another in heaven {9},
one part of their happiness will lie in conversing toge-
ther about divine and heavenly things; and, indeed,
about what they have .had experience of, both in pro-
vidence and grace, whilst they dwelt in their bodies on
earth.

CHAP. IV.
OF THE RESURRECTION OF THE BODY.
THOUGH the immortality of the soul may be known
by the light of nature, yet not the resurrection of the
body; the one arises from the nature of the soul itself;
but the other does not arise from the constitution of
the body, but depends,upon the sovereign will and
power of God: now the will and purpose of God, or
what he has determined to do, is secret, and cannot be
discovered by the light of nature, and is only known
by divine revelation. It might bc known by the light
of nature, that God c.an raise the dead if he will, be-
cause he is Almighty, and nothing is impossible to
him; though it has been asserted by some heathen
writers, that it cannot be done by God himself: one
says {}, it is not in the power of God to raise the dead;
and says another {2} it seems to me, that no one can
,
make one that is dead to live again: which is false;
since by the light 'of nature, and the works of nature,

9 See a sermon of mine, called, ~ The glorious State of the Saints in
Heaven," p. 34, 35.
a P!in. Nat. Hist. I. 2. c. 7.
~ Pala~phat. de Incredib. p. 56.
3 De Prmscript. Ha~ret. c. 2.
4 Chrysostom. et Oecumen. in Act. 17.
s \~avelpistoi. te yanontev\~. Theocrit. Idyll. 4.
~ Plin. Nat. Hist. 1. 7. c. 55.
7 Ca~cil. in Minut. Fel. Octav. p. 10.
a Celsus in Origen. contr. ibid. p. ~40:

are known the eternal power and Godhead, or that
God is eternal and infinitely powerful. Indeed, it
cannot be known by the light of nature, that God will
raise the dead; this is of pure revelation: hence hea-
thens, destitute of it, had no knowledge of the resur-
rection of the body: that that was mortal they all
agreed; and that the soul was immortal, the wiser part
of them especially, affirmed: but that the body, when
dead, should be raised to life again, this Tertullian
says 3, was denied by every sect of the philosophers.
Those, the most refined among them, and who pre-
tended to a greater degree of knowledge than others,
as the philosophers of Athens, were so ignorant of this
doctrine, that, as some think {4}, they took Jesus, and
\~anastasiv\~, the word used by the apostle Paul for the
resurrection, when preaching to them, to be the names
of some strange deities they had never heard of before;
and therefore said, He seemeth to be a setter forth of
strange gods, Acts xvii. 18. The heathens had no
faith in this doctrine, nor hope of it; and therefore
are sometimes described as without hope, Eph. ii. 12.
1 Thess. iv. t3, 14. that is, of the resurrection of the
body, neither of their own nor of their deceased rela-
tions {5}; and this may be rather thought to be, at least
part of the sense of the apostle in these passages;
since in his defence before Felix and Agrippa he re-
presents the resurrection of the dead as the object of
the hope of the Jewish fathers, Acts xxiv. 15. and xxvi.
6, 7, 8. Yea, the Gentiles, not content with barely
denying this doctrine, have treated it with the utmost
scorn, calling it a dream, fancy, and madness {6}, an old-
wive's fable {7}; as abominable and detestable s; and of
all the tenets of the Christians, it was held in the ut-
most contempt by Julian the apostates; the abettors
of it were always accounted by the heathens vain,
trifling, babbling fellows {10}, as the apostle Paul was by
the Athenian philosophers of the Epicurean and Stoic
sects {11}, Acts xvii. 18, 32.; it was so contrary to the
reasonings of the unenlightened Gentiles, that they
judged it quite incredible, and pronounced it beyond
all belief of rational creatures; hence, says the apostle
Paul, when before Festus the Roman governor, and
king Agrippa, a Sadducee, why should it be thought a
thi.ng incredible with you that God should raise the dead ?
as it seems it was {12}, Acts xxvi. 8.
Some have thought the Gentiles had knowledge of
the resurrection of the dead, which they conclude from
some notions of theirs, which seem to bear some sem-
blance to it, as is thought; as that the soul after death
has a perfect human shape, and all the same parts, ex-
ternal and internal, the body has; that they both have
an equal duration after death; that there is a transmi-
gration of souls into other bodies, especially human;
that man may be translated, soul and body, to heaven,

s Cyril. Alex. contr. Julian. 1. 7.
~o Tatjan. contr. Grincos Orat. p. 146.
,t Antoninus the emperor, of this sect, says, "When men are dead
they exist no more, but are entirely extinct," De Seipso, 1. l2. c. 5.
~a The Indians of North America used to say when tW, s doctrine was
mentioned, "I shall never believe it," Mather's History of New Eng-
land, b. :3. p. 19~. though the inhabitants of Virginia and Louisiana are
said to believe it; but perhaps this is a mistake. See Hody's R. esur-
rection, p. 45, 46,49.