Can the cause be without the effect? can the Head live, and the Members remain dead? Yea, can the Saints life live, and they themselves continue in a state of death? This is an happy contradiction, a blessed impossibility! Oh write this comfortable word upon your hearts Christians, Christ is our life: Christ is your Life, and the Life of your Christian Relations; and as sure as Christ as risen, they shall rise, and because he lives, those Members of his, for whom you weep and bleed, (as dead) shall live also with him. Surely if the Devil, and all the powers of darkness were not able to keep Christ in the Grave, neither shall they be able to hold one of his Members ⟨p. 19⟩there for ever! Hence you shall find the holy Apostle disputing from the Resurrection of Christ, to the Resurrection of Christians; If Christ rose from the Dead, 1how say some that there is no Resurrection of the Dead? and back again from the Resurrection of Christians, 2to the Resurrection of Christ; if there be no Resurrection of the Dead, then Christ is not risen. Indeed the form of words is Negative, but the sense is Affirmative; and for the greater assurance, it is repeated over and over in the following verses; backward and forward as Convertibles; grant one, and ye grant the other; deny one, and ye deny the other. And the result is this, But now is Christ risen from the Dead, 3and become the first Fruits of them that sleep; Christ is risen, 4and risen as our first Fruits, as a pledge and part of the whole Harvest; for if the first Fruits be holy, the Lump is also holy; if the first Fruits be laid up safe in Gods Barns, the whole Harvest shall (in due time) be safely brought in thither also, only it must stay its time appointed by the great Husband-man, whose method is this, first, Christ the first Fruits, and afterward, they that are Christs at his coming.
Can the cause be without the effect? can the Head live, and the Members remain dead? Yea, can the Saints life live, and they themselves continue in a state of death? This is an happy contradiction, a blessed impossibility! Oh write this comfortable word upon your hearts Christians, Christ is our life: Christ is your Life, and the Life of your Christian Relations; and as sure as Christ as risen, they shall rise, and because he lives, those Members of his, for whom you weep and bleed, (as dead) shall live also with him. Surely if the Devil, and all the powers of darkness were not able to keep Christ in the Grave, neither shall they be able to hold one of his Members ⟨p. 19⟩there for ever! Hence you shall find the holy Apostle disputing from the Resurrection of Christ, to the Resurrection of Christians; If Christ rose from the Dead, 1how say some that there is no Resurrection of the Dead? and back again from the Resurrection of Christians, 2to the Resurrection of Christ; if there be no Resurrection of the Dead, then Christ is not risen. Indeed the form of words is Negative, but the sense is Affirmative; and for the greater assurance, it is repeated over and over in the following verses; backward and forward as Convertibles; grant one, and ye grant the other; deny one, and ye deny the other. And the result is this, But now is Christ risen from the Dead, 3and become the first Fruits of them that sleep; Christ is risen, 4and risen as our first Fruits, as a pledge and part of the whole Harvest; for if the first Fruits be holy, the Lump is also holy; if the first Fruits be laid up safe in Gods Barns, the whole Harvest shall (in due time) be safely brought in thither also, onely it must stay its time appointed by the great Husband-man, whose method is this, first, Christ the first Fruits, and afterward, they that are Christs at his coming.
- 11 Cor. 15.12.
- 2ver. 13.
- 3ver. 20.
- 4Christ rose as the first fruits, in which the whole Harvest is considered.
