Thou wilt not leave me in the loathsome grave,
His prey, nor suffer my unspotted soul
For ever with corruption there to dwell;
But I shall rise victorious, and subdue
My vanquisher, spoil'd of his vaunted spoil:
Death his death's wound shall then receive, and stoop,
Inglorious, of his mortal sting disarm'd.

grave;

I through the ample air in triumph high,
Shall lead the captive maugre, hell, and show
The powers of darkness bound. Thou at the sight,
Pleas'd out of heav'n shalt look down, and smile,
While, by thee rais'd, I ruin all my foes,
Death last, and with his carcass glut the
Then with the multitude of my redeem'd,
Shall enter heav'n, long absent, and return,
Father, to see thy face, wherein no cloud
shall remain, but peace assur'd,
And reconcilement; wrath shall be no more
Thenceforth, but in thy presence joy entire.

Of anger

MILTON,

Wherefore, let the bodies of men be laid in the grave; let them rot there and be resolved into the most minute particles; or let them be burnt, and the ashes cast into rivers, or thrown up into the air, to be scattered by the wind; let the dust of a thousand genera tions be mingled, and the steams of the dead bodies wander to and fro in the air: let the birds or wild beasts eat the dead bodies, or the fishes of the sea devour them, so that the parts of human bodies, thus destroyed, pass into substantial parts of birds, beasts, or fishes; or, what is more than that, let men-eaters, who themselves must die and rise again, devour human bodies; and let others devour them again; and then let the modern Sadducees propose question in these cases, as the ancient Sadducees did in the case of the woman who had been married to seven busbands successively; Matt. xxii. 28. We answer, as our blessed Lord and Saviour did, ver. 29. "Ye'do err, not knowing the scriptures, nor the power of God." We believe God to be omniscient and omnipotent; infinite in knowledge and in power; and hence, agreeable to the dictates

the

of reason, we conclude the possibility of the resurrection, even to the cases supposed.

Th' archangel's trumpet shakes the trembling ground;
The startled dead awaken at the sound;

The grave resigns her ancient spoils, and all
Death's adamantine prisons burst and fall.
The souls that did their forc'd departure mourn,
To the same bodies with swift flight return.
The crowding atoms re-unite apace,

And without tumult know and take their place.
Th' assembled bones leap quick into their frame,
And the warm blood renews a brighter flame.
The quicken'd dust feels fresh and youthful heats,
While its old task the beating heart repeats.
The eyes, enliven'd with new vital light.
Open, admiring whence they had their sight.
The veins, too, twine their bloody arms around
The limbs, and with red leaping life abound,
Hard-twisted nerves new brace and faster bind
The close-knit joints, no more to be disjoin'd.
Strong new-spun threads immortal muscles make,
That, justly fix'd, their ancient figure take.
Brisk spirits take their upper seats, and dart
Through their known channels thence to every part,
The men now draw their long-forgotten breath,
And, striving, break th' unwieldy chains of death.
Victorious life to every grave resorts,

And rifles death's inhospitable courts;

Its vigour through those dark dominions spread;
Now ripe conceptions through the earth abound,
And new-sprung men stand thick on all the ground.
The sepulchres are quick, and every tomb
Labours with life, and grows a fruitful womb.

Boston.

SIR RICHARD BLACKMORE.

We shall then, in all probability, be entirely removed from every thing gross and mortal, low or carnal, sensual, animal, or earthly. But there is no authority for supposing we shall also be divested of motion, gravity, and other material qualities,

The resurrection will be a complete renovation of the whole buman structure, and a palpable re-establishment of all our best capacities of enjoyment. Organic life must of consequence be restored in full perfection, and the visible intercourse and communion with the holy angels, and the glorified bodies of the saints in light, resumed and perpetuated, as an additional accession to the happiness of both. Baseley.

The manner of their rising, the apostle doth more particularly branch out a little above, in four particulars; which particulars are these that follow:

1. "It is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption. 2." It is sown in dishonour, it is raised in glory.

3. "It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power.

4. "It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body." 1 Cor. xv.

First. "It is raised in incorruption." We are brought into this world by sin and corruption; "Corruption is our father, and in sin did our mother conceive us; Job. xvii, 14. Psal. li. 5. And hence it is, that we have our life not only like a span, shadow, or post, for shortness; but also, it is attended with so much vanity and vexation of spirit. But now, being raised from the dead incorruptible, these things, that now in our life annoy us, and at last take away our life, are effectually destroyed. And therefore we live for ever, as saith the Spirit: "And there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying; neither shall there be any more pain; for the former things (that is, all our corruptibleness) are passed away." Rev. xxi. 4.

There shall be in our resurrection no corruption, either of body or of soul; no weakness or sickness, nor any thing tending that way; as he saith: "He will present us unto himself a glorious Church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing." Eph. v. 25-27. Therefore, when he says, "it is raised in incorruption," it is as if he had said, It is impossible that ever they should sin more, sorrow more, or die more. "They that shall be accounted worthy of that world, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry

nor are given in marriage; (though it was thus with them in this world) neither can they die any more; for they are equal unto the angels, and are the children of God, being the children of the resurrection." Luke xx. 27, &c.

66

Secondly. "It is raised in glory." The dishonour that doth attend the saint at his departure out of this world is very great; 'he is sown in dishonour;" he is so loathsome at his death, that his dearest friends are weary of him, stop their noses at him, see no beauty in him, nor set any price upon him; (I speak nothing here of them that are hanged, starved, banished, and so die, torn in pieces, and not suffered to be put into graves) but it is raised in glory. Glory is the sweetness, comeliness, purity, and perfection of a thing. "The light is the glory of the sun, strength is the glory of youth, and grey hairs are the glory of old age." 1 Cor. xv. 40, 41. Prov. xx. 29. That is, it is the excellency of these things, and that which makes them shine.

Thirdly. "It is raised in power." While we are here, we are attended with so many weaknesses and infirmities, that in time the least sin or sickness is too hard for us, and taketh away both our strength, our beauty, our days, our breath, our life, and all. But, behold! we are raised in power; in that power, that all these things are as far below us, as a grasshopper is below a giant; at the first appearance of us the world will tremble!

This is the last

Fourthly. "It is raised a spiritual body." particular, and is indeed the reason of the other three; it is an incorruptible body, because it is a spiritual one; it is a glorious body, because it is a spiritual one; it doth rise in power, because it is a spiritual body. When the body is buried, or sown in the earth, it is a body corruptible, dishonourable, weak, and natural; but when it ariseth, it doth rise incorruptible, glorious, powerful, and spiritual, So that, as far as incorruption is above corruption, glory above dis honour, power above weakness, spiritual above natural—so great an alteration will there be in our body when raised again. And yet it is this body, not another; this in nature, though changed into a far more glorious state; a thousand times further, than if a hoggard was changed to be an emperor. Mark! "it is sown a natural

body:" a very fit word; for, though there dwell never so much of the Spirit and grace of God in it while it liveth, yet so soon as the soul is separated from it, so soon also doth the Spirit of God sepa rate from it, and so will continue, till the day of its rising be come. Therefore it is laid into the earth, a mere lump of man's nature: "it is sown a natural body:" but now, at the day, "when the heavens shall be no more," as Job says, then the trump shall sound, even the trump of God, and in a moment the dead shall be raised incorruptible, glorious, and spiritual. So that, I say, the body, when it ariseth, will be so swallowed up of life and immortality, that it will be as if it had lost its own human nature; though, in trath, the same substantial real nature is every whit there stilt. And it must needs be, that our nature still remain, otherwise it cannot be us that shall be in heaven, but something beside us. Let us lose our proper human nature, and we lose absolutely our being, and so are an nihilated into nothing. Wherefore it, the same it that was sown a natural body, it shall rise a spiritual body.

Bunyan.

First. Christ rose from the dead with awful majesty. So you find it in Matt. xxviii. 2-4. "And, behold, there was a great earthquake; for the angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and it. His came and rolled back the stone from the door, and sat upou countenance was like lightning, and his raiment white as snow; and for fear of him the keepers did shake, and became as dead men." Human imfirmity was not able to bear such heavenly majesty as attended the business of that morning. Nature sank under it. This earthquake was, as one calls it, a sign of triumph, or token of victory, given by Christ, not only to the keepers, and the neighbouring city, but to the whole world, that he had overcome death in his own dominions, and, like a conqueror, lifted up his head above all his enemies. So when the Lord fought from heaven for his people, and gave them a glorious, though but a temporal deliverance; see how the prophetess drives on the triumph in that rhetorical song, Judges v. 4,5. Alluding to the most awful appearance of God, at the giving of the law-"Lord, when thou wentest out of Seir, when thou marchedst out of the field of Edom, the earth trembled, and