. xv.) speaks of a partial or of the general resurrection, or even conceding to Lacunza that the former opinion is the more probable; I must still vehemently object to this Jesuitical interpretation of corruption, as used in a moral sense, and distinctive of the wicked souls. St. Paul nowhere speaks dogmatically or preceptively (not popularly and incidentally,) of a soul as the proper
I
. It is always 'we', or the man. How could a regenerate saint put off corruption at the sound of the trump, if up to that hour it did not in some sense or other appertain to him? But what need of many words? It flashes on every reader whose imagination supplies an unpreoccupied, unrefracting,
medium
to the Apostolic assertion, that corruption in this passage is a descriptive synonyme of the material sensuous organism common to saint and sinner,—standing in precisely the same relation to the man that the testaceous offensive and defensive armour does to the crab and tortoise. These slightly combined and easily decomponible stuffs are as incapable of subsisting under the altered conditions of the earth as an hydatid in the blaze of a tropical sun. They would be no longer
media
of communion between the man and his circumstances.
A heavy difficulty presses, as it appears to me, on Lacunza's system, as soon as we come to consider the general resurrection. Our Lord (in books of indubitable and never doubted catholicity) speaks of some who rise to bliss and glory, others who at the same time rise to shame and condemnation. Now if the former class live not during the whole interval from their death to the general resurrection, including the Millennium, or
Dies Messiæ
,—how should they, whose imperfect or insufficient merits excluded them from the kingdom of the Messiah on earth, be all at once fitted for the kingdom of heaven?