VIII. I am ashamed of consuming so many words on so clear a subject; but my readers will cheerfully unite with me in submitting to this trouble, that no room may be left for men of perverse and presumptuous minds to deceive the unwary. The unsteady spirits I am now opposing, bring forward a figment of their own brains, that at the resurrection there will be a creation of new bodies. What reason can induce them to adopt this sentiment, but a seeming incredibility, in their apprehension, that a body long consumed by corruption can ever return to its pristine state? Unbelief, therefore, is the only source of this opinion. In the Scripture, on the contrary, we are uniformly exhorted by the Spirit of God to hope for the resurrection of our body. For this reason, baptism is spoken of by Paul as a seal of our future resurrection;[664] and we are as clearly invited to this confidence by the sacred Supper, when we receive into our mouths the symbols of spiritual grace. And certainly the exhortation of Paul, to “yield our members as instruments of righteousness unto God,”[665] would lose all its force, if unaccompanied by what he afterwards subjoins: “He that raised up Christ from the dead, shall also quicken your mortal bodies.”[666] For what would it avail to devote our feet, hands, eyes, and tongues to the service of God, if they were not to participate the benefit and reward? This is clearly confirmed by the following passage of Paul: “The body is not for fornication, but for the Lord; and the Lord for the body. And God hath both raised up the Lord, and will also raise up us by his own power.”[667] The following passages are still plainer—that our bodies are the “temples of the Holy Ghost,” and “members of Christ.”[668] In the mean time, we see how he connects the resurrection with chastity and holiness; and so he just after extends the price of redemption to our bodies. Now, it would be extremely unreasonable that the body of Paul, in which he “bore the marks of the Lord Jesus,”[669] and in which he eminently glorified Christ, should be deprived of the reward of the crown. Hence also that exultation: “We look for the Saviour from heaven, who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body.”[670] And if it be true, “that we must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God,”[671] there can be no reason for prohibiting this entrance to the bodies, which God trains under the banner of the cross, and honours with the glory of victory. Therefore no doubt has ever been entertained by the saints, whether they should hope to be companions of Christ hereafter; who transfers to his own person all the afflictions with which we are tried, to teach us that they are conducting us to life. And God also established the holy fathers under the law in this faith by an external ceremony. For to what purpose was the rite of sepulture, as we have already seen, but to instruct them