A treatise of self-denial. By Richard Baxter, pastor of the church at KidderminsterA treatise of self-denial. By Richard Baxter, pastor of the church at Kederminster

To which I answer, First the Relative union between the soul and it, and the souls disposition to the Return into its body, is as potent a cause of its reviving, as the natural union of the Root and branches: if withal you consider that Christ is the Root of the soul. Rational agents if perfect, will work as certainly as Natural. For natural causes do nothing but by a Power communicated to them from an Intellectual cause, even God himself. Why should Nature do any of these things but because God that makes and ruleth all, will have it to be so? Now Jesus Christ is the Political Head of the Church. The body in the grave hath its own Relation to him: Christ is still living, and resolved, and engaged by promise, and inclined by Love, to revive that body. And as Christ is the life of the soul, so the soul is the life of the body; and this soul, as I said, is waiting to be sent again into it. And when the hour comes, what can hinder? The Love of the soul to its body, and its desire to be reunited, is a kind of natural cause of the Resurrection: A candle not lighted, is as far from light, and as much without it, as a dead body is without life. And yet one touch of a lighted candle will light that which never was lighted before. And so may one touch of the living soul that's now with Christ, put life into the body that lieth in the dust. And as the lighted candle makes the other like it, and communicateth of its own nature to it; so doth ⟨p. 258⟩the glorified soul communicate a new kind of excellency to the body, which it never had before: even to be a spiritual, glorious, incorruptible, and immortal body. In the first creating of man, the new formed body as to the matter of it, was no better than the body of a Beast or any common piece of earth. But the soul made the difference: when a Rational Soul was breathed into that Body, it advanced the very body to a dignity beyond the bodies of brutes, even such as the natural body of man had before sin. When Christ was about to repair fallen man, it was the spirit of Christ informing: the soul that caused the renewed soul to communicate again a dignity to the bodies of sanctified men above other bodies.

To which I answer, First the Relative union between the soul and it, and the souls disposition to the Return into its body, is as potent a cause of its reviving, as the natural union of the Root and branches: if withal you consider that Christ is the Root of the soul. Rational agents if perfect, will work as certainly as Natural. For natural causes do nothing but by a Power communicated to them from an Intellectual cause, even God himself. Why should Nature do any of these things but because God that makes and ruleth all, will have it to be so? Now Jesus Christ is the Political Head of the Church. The body in the grave hath its own Relation to him: Christ is still living, and resolved, and engaged by promise, and enclined by Love, to revive that body. And as Christ is the life of the soul, so the soul is the life of the body; and this soul, as I said, is waiting to be sent again into it. And when the hour comes, what can hinder? The Love of the soul to its body, and its desire to be reunited, is a kind of natural cause of the Resurrection: A candle not lighted, is as far from light, and as much without it, as a dead body is without life. And yet one touch of a lighted candle will light that which never was lighted before. And so may one touch of the living soul that's now with Christ, put life into the body that lieth in the dust. And as the lighted candle makes the other like it, and communicateth of its own nature to it; so doth