(2.) In blessedness there is a confluence of all good necessary to the happiness of the creature. Our blessedness is full for jiarts, full for the degrees and manner of enjoyment ; and all tiiis continues for ever, without fear of losing it. Our crown of glory is a garland that will never wither; it is an eternal state of actual delights ; we are blessed in our bodies, blessed in our souls, blessed in our conipany. Man is ^woif TToXiTiKov, a sociable creature ; and thei'efore to his complete happiness it is necessary that he should not be only blest in his person, but in his company and relations. We are brought into the i)resence of God, who is blessedness itself, and to the sight and bles.sed fellowship of his bles.sed Son, and into the company of blessed angels and saints.
First, Let me speak of the happiness of his person, and then both of his body and soul. i
KeV. XIV. 13.] THAT DIE IN THE LORD. 465
1st, For liis body, it is now a temple of the Holy Ghost. He cannot leave his nuinsion and ancient dwelling-place, and tiierefore he raisoth it up and formeth it again into a complete fasliion, like Christ's glorious body, Fhil. iii. 21, for clarity, agility, strength, incorruption. Solomon's temple, when it was destroyed, the latter house was nothing so glorious as the former; men wept when they saw it, Ezra iii. 12. But it is not so here ; it is raised quite another body. For the present there is to be seen a beautiful fabric wherein God hath shown hi.s workmanship ; every member, if it were not so common, would be a miracle ; all is ordered for the service and comeliness of the whole. But now it is a vile body, subject to diseases, fed with meat, humbled with wants, many times mangled with violence, dissolved by death, and crumbled to dust in the grave like a dry clod of earth. This is the body we carry about us, a mass of flesh dressed up to be a dish for the worms. But this vile body shall rise in another manner, like Christ's glorious body. When the sun appears the stars vanish, their lustre is eclipsed and darkened ; but the Sun of righteous- ness, when he appears at the last day, doth not obscure, but perfect our glory. More particularly ; if you inquire wherein our bodies shall be like Christ's glorious body, the apostle will tell us that in another place, 1 Cor, xv. 40-44. Let me single out three expressions : it is raised in incorruption ; it is raised in glory ; it is raised a spiritual body, (1.) It is an incorruptible body. Now it yields to the decays of nature, and is exercised with pains and aches, till at length it droppeth down like ripe fruit into the grave; but here- after it shall be clothed with immortality, wholly impassible. What a comfort is this to those that are racked with the stone or gout, broken with diseases, or withered with age, to think that they shall have a body witliout aches, and without decays, that shall always be in the spring of youth! The trees of paradise are always green. (2.) It shall be a glorious body. Here it is many times deformed ; at least, beauty, like a flower, is lost in sickness, davered or withered with age, defaced ])y sevei-al accidents ; but then we shall be glorious like to Christ's body. The naked body of man was so beautiful in innocency that the beasts of the field admired it, and thereupon did homage to Adam ; but we shaii hot be conformed to the first Adam, but the second. Christ in the mount, when he was transfigured, they could not endure the shining of his garments, it astonished the disciples, Mat. xvii. ; his garments could not veil, nor their eyes endure, those strong emissions of the beams of glory. Paul could not endure the light that shined to him when Christ appeared to him from heaven, Acts ix., but was utterly confounded and struck blind. By tliis you may guess a little at the glory of the body when it is likened to Christ's glorious body. Moses, by conversing with God forty days, the complexion of his face was altered so that they were glad to put a veil upon it. In this low estate in which we aie, we must make use of these hints, (3.) A si)iritual body, either for agility. We shall not be clogged as now ; we .shall be caught up in the air to meet the Lord. Or rather a spiritual body, because more disposed for spiritual uses, for the enjoy- ments and the em])loyments of grace. Here it is a natural body, an unready instrument for the soul : we are not in a capacity to bear the new wine of glory ; but there we are made more capacious and
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466 THE BLESSED ESTATE OF THEM [ReV. XIV. 13.
strongjer vessels to contain all that God will give out. The disciples fainted at Clirist's transfiguration, Mat. xvii. G. We cannot receive such large dill'iisions and overflowings of glory as we shall then have ; every strong affection and raised thought doth overset us, and cause ecstasy and ravishment ; but there it is otherwise : God maketh out himself to us in a greater latitude, and we are more able to bear it.