Fifthly, But lastly, Christ rose as a public or common person. " As the first fruits of them that slept," 1 Cor. xv. 20. I desire this may be well understood ; for upon this account it is that our resurrection is secured to us by the resurrection of Christ ; and not a resurrection only, but a blessed and happy one, for the first-fruits both assured and sanctified the whole crop or harvest.
Now that Christ did rise, as a public person, representing and comprehending all the elect, who were called the children of the re- surrection, is plain from Eph. ii. 6. where we are said to be risen with, or in him. So that, as we are said to die in Adam, (who also was a common person) as the * branches die in the death of the root ; so we are said to be raised from death in Christ, who is the head, root, and representative, of all his elect seed. And why is he called the Jirst-born, and first begotten from the dead, but with respect to the whole number of the elect, that are to be born from the dead in their time and order also ; and as sure as the whole harvest follows the first fruits, so shall the general resurrection of the saints to life eternal follow this birth of the first-born from the dead.
* Mankind putrified in their first parent, as the branches in the root. Greg.
492 THE FOUNTAIN OF LIFE. SERM. XXXIX.
It shall surely follow it I say, and that not only as a consequent follows an antecedent, but as an effect follows its proper cause. Now there is a three-fold casualty, or influence that Christ's resurrec- tion hath upon the saints resurrection, of which it is at once the me- ritorious, efficient, and exemplary cause.
First, The resurrection of Christ is a meritorious cause of the saints resurrection, as it completed his satisfaction, and finished his payment, and so our justification is properly assigned to it, as before was noted from Rom. iv. 25. This his resurrection was the re- ceiving of the acquittance, the cancelling of the bond. And had not this been done, we had still been in our sins, as he speaks, 1 Cor. xv. 7. and so our guilt had been still a bar to our happy re- surrection. But now, the price being paid in his death, which pay- ment was finished when he revived ; and the discharge then re- ceived for us, now there is nothing lies in bar against our resurrec- tion to eternal life.
Secondly, As it is the meritorious cause of our resurrection, so it is the efficient cause of it also. For when the time shall come that the saints shall rise out of the dust, they shall be raised by Christ, as their head, in whom the effective principle of their life is. " Your " life is hid with Christ in God," as it is Col. iii. 3. As when a man awakes out of his sleep *, " the animal spirits seated in the " brain, being set at liberty by the digestion of those vapours that " bound them up, do play freely through every part and member " of the body ;" so Christ, the believers mystical head, being quick- ened, the spirit of life, which is in him, shall be diffused through all his members to quicken them also in the morning of the resur- rection. Hence the warm animating dew of Christ's resurrection is said to be to our bodies, as the dew of the morning is to the wither- edj languishing plants, which revive by it, Isa. xxvi. 19. " Thy " dew is as the dew of herbs ;" and then it follows, " the earth " shall cast forth her dead." So that by the same faith we put Christ's resurrection into the promises, we may put the believer's re- surrection into the conclusion. And therefore, the apostle makes them convertibles, reasoning forward, from Christ's to ours ; and back again from ours to his, 1 Cor. xv. 12, 13. Which is also the sense of that scripture, Rom. viii. 10, 11. "And if Christ be " in you, the body indeed is dead because of sin ; but the spirit is " life because of righteousness." i. e. Though you are really united to Christ by the Spirit, yet your bodies must die as well as other
* Proximum instrumentum sive sedes somni est cerebrum, u/pote in quo spiritus animates frigejlunt et condensantur, ant etiam resolvuntur et disdpantur, proxime, tanquam in pro- pria spirituum animalium officina, et in quo etiam radices nervorum obstruuntur pier va- pores, ne spiritus animates sensui commuui servire aut in ]>artes reliquas inferiores corporis propagari libere possint. Keckerm. Syst. Pbys. p. (mihij 441.
SERM. XXXIX. THE FOUNTAIN OF LIFE. 493
men's ; but your souls shall be presently, upon your dissolution, swallowed up in life. And then it follows, verse 11. "But if the " Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead, dwell in you ; " he that raised up Christ from the dead, shall also quicken your " mortal bodies, by his Spirit that dwelleth in you,'1 i. e. though your bodies must die, yet they shall live again in the resurrection ; and that by virtue of the Spirit of Christ which dwelleth in you, and is the bond of your mystical union with him your head. You shall not be raised as others are, by a mere word of power, but by the Spirit of life dwelling in Christ your head, which is a choice prerogative indeed.
Thirdly, Christ's resurrection is not only the meritorious and efficient cause, but it is also the exemplary cause or pattern of our resurrection. " * He being the first and best, is therefore the " pattern and measure of all the rest." So you read, Phil. iii. 21. " Who shall change our vile body that it may be fashioned like " unto his glorious body." Now the conformity of our resurrection to Christ's stands in the following particulars. Christ's body was raised substantially the same ; so will ours. His body was raised first ; so will ours be raised before the rest of the dead. His body was wonderfully improved by the resurrection ; so will ours. His body was raised to be glorified ; and so will ours.
First, Christ's body was raised substantially the same that it was before ; and so will ours. Not another, but the same body. Upon this very reason the apostle uses that identical expression, 1 Cor. xv. 53. " This corruptible must put on incorruption, and this " mortal, immortality." Pointing, as it were, to his own body when he spake it ; the same body, I say, and that not only specifi- cally the same, (for indeed no other species of flesh is so privileged) but the same numerically, that very body, not a new or another body in its stead. So that it shall be both the what it was, and the who it was. And indeed to deny this is to deny the resurrec- tion itself. For should God prepare another body to be raised in- stead of this, it would not be a resurrection, but a creation ; for non resurrectio dici poterit, ubi non resurgit quod cccidit. That cannot be called a resurrection, where one thing falls and another rises, as Gregory long since pertinently observed.