Quest. Wherein shall this glory of our bodies consist ?
Ans. Especially in these six endowments. Our bodies be now vile and perhaps inqwrfect. They want a member, a sense, or a limb. Our bodies then shall be perfect, even as Christ's body is. Those martyrs that have been dismembered shall then have perfect bodies. Let us not be afraid to lose a limb or a joint for Christ or a good cause. If our bodies be made vile for Christ, they shall be made perfect afterward.
Then again, our bodies then shall be heautiful. Adam in his innocency had such a beauty in his body that the very creatures reverenced him. He was awful to the very creatures. So the body of our blessed Saviour, now in heaven, is wondrous beautiful ; and so shall our bodies be, how deformed soever they be now. Let us not stand, therefore, upon any present
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deformity of our bodies now with years, or siclmess, or other means. They shall not always be so. We shall have beautiful bodies.
Nay more than so, the third endowment is, we shall haxc i/loiioiis bodies. As we see Christ in the mount when he was transfigured, and jMoses and Elias were with him, his body was glorious. They could hardly behold him. And Christ, in llev. i. 10, he appears * as the sun in his full strength.' His body is wondrous glorious now in heaven, and so he is represented there. If the very representation of him while he was upon earth was so glorious in the mount, what is it in heaven ? St Paul could not endure the light that shined to him, Acts ix. 3, seq. So shall our bodies be like the glorious body of Christ.
ij "What a glorious time will it be when the glorious body of Christ shall appear, and all the saints shall appear in glory ! what a rellection of beauty and glory will there be, one shining upon another, when Christ shall come ' to be glorious in his saints ! ' Oh, the glory of the body of God's children, it shall put down all created glory. All the glory of the sun and moon, and all the glory of these inferior bodies, are nothing to the glory of the body of a Christian that doth abase h :■ body here for Christ and the church's sake. You see, then, these bodies shall be perfect, and beautiful, and glorious bodies in regard of the lustre of them.
And likewise, in the fourth place, they shall be immortal bodies — bodies that shall never die, unchangeable bodies. There shall be no alteration, no death, no sickness. ' All tears shall be w-iped from our eyes,' Rev. vii. 17. They shall be immortal bodies, that shall never die ; as St Peter saith, * We shall have an inheritance undefiled, immortal,' &c., 1 Peter i. 4. This is clear : therefore I will not stand in the enlarging of it.
In the next place. Our bodies shall be powerful and vi<jorous. Now they are weak, as St Paul saith, 1 Cor. xv. 43. Our bodies are ' sown in weak- ness,' but then they shall be able to ascend and descend. They shall be strong, even as the body of Christ. We shall have strong bodies ; as all imperfections, so all weakness shall be taken away.
In the sixth place, The}' shall be spiritual bodies ; that is, they shall not stand in need of meat, and drink, and sleep, and refreshings as now they do, but Christ will be all in all to them. He will be instead of meat, and diink, and clothes. Yea, and instead of the ordinances that we stand in need of here, the word and sacraments, he will be all in all. And our bodies shall be spiritual in another regard, because they shall be subject to the spirit. Whereas now, our very spirits are flesh, because the flesh rules and tyranuiseth over them, so our souls follow our bodies. The soul of a carnal man is flesh, but then our flesh, our bodies, shall be spiritual. Not that they shall be turned into spirits, that is not the meaning, but spiritual bodies, obedient and obsequious to the very guidance of the soul, to a sanctified and glorious soul. These shall be the endowments of our bodies. They shall be perfect bodies ; beautiful, glorious, shining bodies ; immortal, unchangeable bodies ; powerful, strong, and vigorous bodies, ready to move from place to place; and spiritual bodies. They shall stand in need of no other help, and they shall be obedient altogether to the spirit. You see now how these vile bodies draw away our souls. Then all imperfections shall be taken away. We shall have purged bodies and purged souls. Thus you see wherein the glory of the body shall consist.
Let us therefore often seriously think of these things ; and let me renew my former exhortation : let us be content to make our bodies here vile for
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