A resurrection—of what? Of that which is sown, or of that which was never sown? If of that which is sown, then it must be either of that nature that was sown, or else of the corruption that cleaveth to it; but it is the nature, and not the corruption that cleaveth unto it, that riseth again. And verily, the very term "resurrection" is a forcible argument to prove the dead shall come forth of their graves; for the Holy Ghost hath always spoken more properly than to say, "There shall be a resurrection of the dead, both of the just and unjust;" when yet neither the good nor the bad shall come forth of their graves, but rather something else to delude the world withal.
Having thus in few words, shewed you the truth of the resurrection of the dead, I now come,
SECOND—To the manner of their rising.
THE MANNER OF THE RESURRECTION OF THE JUST.
And FIRST of the just.
The apostle, when he had in the fifteenth of the 1st of the Corinthians proved the truth and certainty of the resurrection, he descends to the discovery of the manner of it; and to the end, he might remove those foolish scruples that attend the hearts of the ignorant, he begins with one of their questions—"But some man will say," saith he, "How are the dead raised up? and with what body do they come?" (verse 35). To which he answereth,
First, By a similitude of seed, that is sown in the earth. In which similitude, he inserteth three things—
1. That our reviving or rising, must be after death—"That which thou sowest is not quickened except it die" (verse 36).
2. That at our rising, we shall not only revive and live, but be changed into a far more glorious state than when we were sown. "That which thou sowest, thou sowest not that body that shall be," &c. "But God giveth it a body as it hath pleased him" (verse 38)—that is, he giveth the body more splendour, lustre, and beauty at its resurrection. But,
3. Neither its quickening, not yet its transcendent splendour, shall hinder it from being the same body—as to the nature of it—that was sown in the earth; for as God giveth it a body, for honour and splendour as it pleaseth him, so "to every seed his own body" (verse 38).