The like similitude the apostle Paul uses against such as called the resurrection in doubt, because by natural judgment they could not apprehend that flesh once putrified, and dissolved as it were into other substance, should rise again, and return again to the same substance and nature: “O fool,” saith he, “that which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die; and that which thou sowest, thou sowest not that body that shall be, but bare corn, as it falleth, of wheat, or some other, but God giveth it a body as it pleaseth him, even to every seed his own body.” In which words and sentence, the apostle sharply rebukes the gross ignorance of the Corinthians, who began to call in doubt the chief article of our faith, the resurrection of the flesh after it was once dissolved, because that natural judgment, as he said, reclaimed thereto.(11) He reproves, I say, their gross ignorance, because they might have seen and considered some proof and document thereof in the very order of nature; for albeit the wheat, or other corn, cast in the earth, appears to die or putrify, and so to be lost, yet we see that it is not perished, but that it fructifies according to God’s will and ordinance. Now, if the power of God be so manifest in raising up of the fruits of the earth, unto which no particular promise is made by God, what shall be his power and virtue in raising up our bodies, seeing that thereto he is bound by the solemn promise of Jesus Christ his Eternal Wisdom, and the Verity itself that cannot lie? Yea, seeing that the members must once communicate with the glory of the Head, how shall our bodies, which are flesh of his flesh, and bone of his bones, lie still for ever in corruption, seeing that our Head, Jesus Christ, is now exalted in his glory? Neither yet is this power and good-will of God to be restrained unto the last and general resurrection only, but we ought to consider it in the marvellous preservation of his church, and in the raising up of the same from the very bottom of death, when by tyrants it has been oppressed from age to age.