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    mould and become the food of vegetation , after having been decomposed by the putrefactive fermentation , one way or other . Time dissolves every corporeal fabric , and their atoms are

    dissipated and dispersed through the elements , and not a vestige of their recrements can be found ; how then is the body to be raised from death ? This first question of the objector alone belongs to our subject .

    The apostle , in his reply , shews the objection was founded on the objector ' s ignorance of facts . " Inconsiderate man , " replies Paul , " that which thou sowest is not quickened except it die ; and that which thou sowest , thou sowest not that body which shall

    be , but bare grain , it may chance of wheat or some other , but God giveth it a body as it hath pleased him , and to every seed its own body . * Without entering into a philosophical examination of this argument , which I

    think to be strictly analogous to nature , I need only observe , that whether Paul was right or wrong in his comparison , his conclusion evidently is , that we are not to expect the same body to arise from the dead , but though it is a medium for a future state of

    existence , when buried it is no more than a decayed and worn out garment waiting to be changed . Again , the same mode of reasoning we find 2 Cor . v . 6 , " Whilst we are at home in the body , we are absent from the Lord . " A nd that this at home

    in the body , signifies being in this earthly tabernacle , instead of being in a state of utility , glory and happiness with Jesus , is further evident from the Sth ver . ' * We are confident , and willing , rather to be absent from the

    body and to be present with the Lord . Wherefore , we labour , that whether present or absent we may be accepted of him . " In the Jst ver . of this chapter he speaks similar language : " We know , " says he , " that if our earthly house of this tabernacle be dissolved ,

    we have a building of God , a house not made with hands . " It was from this confidence that injury done to this mortal body does not affect the man farther than for the time being ,

    that Paul was enabled to anticipate death with joy : thus , in writing to the Church of Philippi , Phil . i . 22 , he * ays , " If I live in the flesh . " Ver . 23 , ** I am in a strait between two , having

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    a desire to depart and be with Christ which is far better - , nevertheless , to abide in the flesh is more useful to you . " So to 2 Tim . iv . 6 , «• I am now ready to be offered , the time of my departure is at hand ; " thus ceasing to be in the flesh , is departing from this earthly tabernacle to the kingdom of our Father .

    But without multiplying passages to shew that this was the general tenour of the language of the apostles , and endeavouring to prove from history that such were the consequences of this their teaching- upon the primitive church , that for two or three

    centuries the early Christians courted death , in its most awful forms , from the most perfect conviction that martyrdom , whilst it destroyed the bod y * liberated the mind from mortality ,

    and prepared it to receive an incorruptible organization that could not pass away , and a mansion in the palace of God , John xiv . 2 : —instead of doing this , I shall now endeavour to shew that Jesus had the same ideas

    on this subject ; probably both Jesus and his apostles derived them from the Jewish Church , and that church from primitive revelation ^ Mark relates , xii . 18 , that the Sadducees came to Jesus , and stated a case , the decision of which they might think would overturn the doctrine of

    the resurrection . The case was this * seven brothers had , in succession , as one died after the other , married the same woman , in obedience to the law of Moses ; and the question was , whose wife , of the seven brothers , the woman should be at the

    resurrection ? Obedience to the law of Moses was righteousness . Here was , then , a case of eight righteous persons who , in the most trying of all circumstances , obeyed unto death . To this question Jesus replies , that the difficulty of the case arose , first , from their ignorance of the Scriptures , and secondly , of the

    power of God . And first , xhe Scriptures call the Deity , " the God of Abraham , of Isaac and of Jacob . " " God , " said be , " is not the God of the dead , but of the living . " Therefore , the consequence must be , that though Abraham , Isaac and Jacob , died and were buried in the cave

    of the Jneld of Macpelah , and that their bodies there mouldered into dust and past away , vet they theira-

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    On Vitality . 6 OS

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Oct. 2, 1817, page 603, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2469/page/31/