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Whatever, therefore, has been taken from the body, either during
life or after death shall be restored to it, and, in conjunction with
what has remained in the grave, shall rise again, transformed from the
oldness of the animal body into the newness of the spiritual body, and
clothed in incorruption and immortality. But even though the body has
been all quite ground to powder by some severe accident, or by the
ruthlessness of enemies, and though it has been so diligently scattered
to the winds, or into the water, that there is no trace of it left,
yet it shall not be beyond the omnipotence of the Creator, no, not a
hair of its head shall perish. The flesh shall then be spiritual, and
subject to the spirit, but still flesh, not spirit, as the spirit
itself, when subject to the flesh, was fleshly, but still spirit and
not flesh. And of this we have experimental proof in the deformity of
our penal condition. For those persons were carnal, not in a
fleshly, but in a spiritual way, to whom the apostle said, "I could
not speak to you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal." And a man
is in this life spiritual in such a way, that he is yet carnal with
respect to his body, and sees another law in his members warring
against the law of his mind; but even in his body he will be spiritual
when the same flesh shall have had that resurrection of which these
words speak, "It is sown an animal body, it shall rise a spiritual
body." But what this spiritual body shall be and how great its
grace, I fear it were but rash to pronounce, seeing that we have as
yet no experience of it. Nevertheless, since it is fit that the
joyfulness of our hope should utter itself, and so show forth God's
praise, and since it was from the profoundest sentiment of ardent and
holy love that the Psalmist cried, "O Lord, I have loved the
beauty of Thy house," we may, with God's help, speak of the gifts
He lavishes on men, good and bad alike, in this most wretched life,
and may do our best to conjecture the great glory of that state which we
cannot worthily speak of, because we have not yet experienced it, For
I say nothing of the time when God made man upright; I say nothing
of the happy life of "the man and his wife" in the fruitful garden,
since it was so short that none of their children experienced it: I
speak only of this life which we know, and in which we now are, from
the temptations of which we cannot escape so long as we are in it, no
matter what progress we make, for it is all temptation, and I ask,
Who can describe the tokens of God's goodness that are extended to
the human race even in this life?
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