The penitent pardoned a treatise wherein is handled the duty of confession of sin…

I am now to make entrance into the fourth Fundamental Doctrine in these words, And receive you to my self.

I am now to make entrance into the fourth Fundamentall Doctrine in these words, And receive you to my selfe.

These words contain in them that great Fundamental point touching the Resurrection of mans Body, that not only the Soul shall go to Heaven, but also the bodies of the godly men shall go to Heaven, Christ shall come out of heaven for this end, to receive the bodies as well as the Souls unto himself. I will come again and receive you unto my self.

These words containe in them that great Fundamentall point touching the Resurrection of mans Body, that not onely the Soule shall goe to Heaven, but also the bodies of the godly men shall goe to Heaven, Christ shal come out of heaven for this end, to receive the bodies as well as the Soules unto himselfe. I will come again and receive you unto my selfe.

There is some difference between a few Interpreters touching the sense of these words; one carrieth it this way; that here the promise of Christs coming made a little before he was to die, referreth not to the last coming; but they refer it to that forty days that he was upon the Earth, after his resurrection to the Ascension; they say, that this promise was accomplished, when Christ after his resurrection did come to his Disciples, and did eat a broiled Fish with them, and stayed forty ⟨p. 186⟩days with them. Why? what comfort would this be to the Disciples to think of Christs going away and coming again, and stay but forty days, and then be seen no more? this would have made them the more sorrowful, that they should never have seen him more. Here are two or three reasons from the Text, why that cannot be the sense of the place, because here was a promise before that he was going to his Fathers House to receive them there; Now that living upon the Earth forty days after his Resurrection, cannot be his Fathers House; this cannot therefore be meant of Christs coming again at that time to them. Again, that it is said, where he was to go; he was to prepare a place for them, now if his meaning had been that he would come again at forty days, it should have been an Earthly place that he had prepared for them: But the current of Interpreters, seeing the weakness of that, gives many consequent reasons why it must necessarily be referred to Christs last coming, and everlasting receiving of them, when the Body shall be raised, and at that coming he hath promised the Elect, that he will receive them unto himself; as if he should have said, though I leave your bodies behind me in the world for a season, though they may be mangled and massacred by cruel persecutors, and though you may be without my bodily presence for a while, yet I do not go to Heaven to stay there for ever, but I promise you, I will come again, and then I will take you into Heaven with me. They would fain have had Christ to have received them into Heaven, and that they might have gone with him. The Disciples when they heard Christ speak of going to his Fathers house, they were all on fire to go with Christ into Heaven: