And see how the words he uses bring home the point in question. _It is not vivified_, he says, _unless it dieth_. Passing over the terms which are proper to seeds, such as the sprouting and growth and rotting and withering, he takes those points which correspond to our flesh, the ‘vivifying’ and ‘death,’ which belong properly not to seeds but to bodies. And he does not say that it is vivified after dying, but what is more, that it is quickened _because_ it has died. You see how, as I am always saying, he brings his argument as a proof against itself. That which they made out as conclusive against the resurrection _he_ makes an earnest of it, for they said, ‘He will not rise because he is dead’. Now, how can you meet this? If, indeed, he had not died, neither would he rise again, and _because_ he has died, therefore he rises again. In the same way Christ points this out still more clearly, saying: _If the grain of wheat, falling into the earth, doth not die, it remaineth alone, but if it dieth, it beareth much fruit_; so here, in illustrating this example, Paul does not say that it does not live, but that it is not ‘quickened,’ making again the power of God his theme, and showing that it is He Who does all, not the properties of the soil. And why did he not at once speak of something more personal—I mean of human seed? For our coming into the world also begins in corruption just as that of the corn does. It was because it was still stronger in our case than in the latter. What he wants is something quite perishable: the corn was partially so, and that is why he introduced it. Besides, the human seed proceeds from a living person, and falls into a living womb, but here the seed is cast into the earth, not into a living body, and becomes dissolved in it, just as in the case of the mortal body. Thus the example was the more pertinent.