Institutes of the Christian Religion (Vol. 2 of 2)Calvin, Jean
Religion
Institutes of the Christian Religion (Vol. 2 of 2)
Calvin, Jean
Reformed Church -- Doctrines -- Early works to 1800; Theology, Doctrinal -- Early works to 1800
that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation.”[659] Shall we
say that souls rest in graves, and will there hear the voice of Christ,
and not rather that bodies at his command will return to the vigour they
had lost? Besides, if we are to receive new bodies, where will be the
conformity between the Head and members? Christ rose; was it by making
himself a new body? No, but according to his prediction, “Destroy this
temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”[660] The mortal body
which he before possessed, he again assumed. For it would have conduced
but little to our benefit, if there had been a substitution of a new
body, and an annihilation of that which had been offered as an atoning
sacrifice. We must, therefore, maintain the connection stated by the
apostle—that we shall rise, because Christ has risen;[661] for nothing
is more improbable, than that our body, in which “we bear about the
dying of the Lord Jesus,”[662] should be deprived of a resurrection
similar to his. There was an illustrious example of this immediately on
Christ’s resurrection, when “the graves were opened, and many bodies of
the saints which slept arose.”[663] For it cannot be denied, that this
was a prelude, or rather an earnest, of the final resurrection, which we
expect; such as was exhibited before in Enoch and Elias, whom Tertullian
speaks of as “the candidates of the resurrection,” because they were
taken into the immediate care of God, with an entire exemption from
corruption in body and soul.
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