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A44433 Discourses, or, Sermons on several Scriptures by ... Ezekiel late Lord Bishop of London-Derry. Hopkins, Ezekiel, 1634-1690. 1691 (1691) Wing H2729; ESTC R31535 75,889 298

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Occasion to that fond Opinion of some that Christ descended into Hell and there underwent the Pains and Penalties of that infernal Place as full Satisfaction to the Justice of God and that these were the Pains God raised or loosed him from in his Resurrection But this Conceit is erroneous and extravagant and deserves no serious Confutation especially because it plainly contradicts Christ's Consummatum est upon the Cross for when Christ had undergone his Sufferings on the Cross Joh. 18.30 he said It is finished and so gave up the Ghost If Christ therefore did undergo any farther Sufferings and Pains than those Sufferings he underwent on the Cross those Sufferings would have been so far from being compleated and finished that they would have been but the Praeludium and Beginning of his Sorrows Having loosed the Pains of Death it implies no more but that God raised Jesus Christ from Death which after many dolorous Pains he suffered It follows It was not possible he should be holden of it This is that I intend principally to insist upon and here I shall shew upon what Accounts it was altogether impossible for Christ to be detained under the Power of Death and my Arguments for the Proof hereof are these that follow Reasons why Christ could not be held under the Power of Death First It was impossible Christ should be held under the Power of Death because of that great and ineffable Mystery of the Hypostatical Union of the Divine and Humane Nature in the Person of Christ Because of the Hypostatical Vnion There are three Unions the Belief of which are the Foundation of the greatest part of the Christian Religion which are wholly beyond the reach of Reason The Mystical Union of a Believer unto Christ The Union or rather Unity of the three Glorious Persons the Father the Son and the Holy Ghost in one Nature and this Hypostatical Union of two Natures in one Person in the Mediator It is a Mystery Angels pry into and adore with Wonder and Astonishment how the Eternal only begotten Son of God should assume Flesh to himself in so close and intimate a Conjunction that though he be Eternal yet he should be born though he be Immortal yet he should truly die and though he were truly dead yet he should raise himself to Life again These are things that seem very inconsistent one with another yet they truly come to pass through this miraculous Union which transcends the Reach of Reason as far as these things do that of Nature That the same Person that is Eternal should be young yea be born in the Fulness of Time That the same Person that hath Immortality and Life dwelling in himself should also die a shameful and accursed Death That the same Person that was truly and really dead yet had a power to quicken and recover himself Joh. 10.18 And this was it which declared him to be the Son of God with Power as the Apostle speaks Rom. 1 4● even by his Resurrection from the Dead And indeed if he had not risen from the Dead the Deity would have suffered in the Opinion of the World nor would they have believed him to be the Son of God who would suffer himself to lie under the Dominion of Death longer than the End of his Death required it And this I shall demonstrate to you by two Arguments only premising this which is a common and true Maxim among Divines That when the Natural Union between Christ's Body and Soul was dissolved yet both Soul and Body did retain the Hypostatical Union to the Divine Nature The Divine Nature was united to the Body of Christ when the Soul was separated from it I. If Christ could not have raised himself it must have been either from a Want of Power or from a Want of Will to do it He could not want Power to raise himself because he was God equal in Power and in all other Divine Attributes with the Father As the Resurrection of the Dead is not impossible to the infinite Power of God so neither can it be that that God who had a Will to assume our Flesh should want a Will to raise it up That that God who so lov'd the Humane Nature as to associate it into Oneness of Person with himself should yet suffer it to continue under the power of Death which is of all things most contrary to his natural Inclinations We see Christ in his Agony prayed most fervently that the bitter Cup might pass from him insomuch that he strained clotted Blood through him and certainly one Ingredient into that Cup was the Separation of Soul and Body by Death which is that which even innocent Nature it self abhorred as destructive to him yet having taken our Nature upon him for this very End that by Death he might destroy him that had the power of Death that is Heb. 2 14. the Devil he voluntarily submitted himself to undergo it and this End being fully accomplish'd by his Death and the Truth of his Death likewise attested by his lying three Days in the Earth it was altogether impossible that that Person who had an Abhorrence of Death and a Power to raise himself should continue longer under the Arrest and Dominion of it And this is the first Demonstration of the Necessity of the Resurrection of Christ upon the Account of both Natures in one Person As Man so he abhorred the Separation of Soul and Body as God so he was able to re-unite them So that having as Man a Desire to live and as God a Power to live it was impossible for him to be holden of Death II. Because of the Union of the Divine and Humane Nature in the Person of Christ it was impossible that his Flesh should see Corruption which yet it must certainly have done had he not been raised in a short space after his Death For since Christ's Body was not a phantastical Body as some of old held but made of true Flesh and of the same Temper and Constitution with ours it must without a Miracle have undergone such Changes after Death as ours shall do and to imagine the contrary is but to feign one Miracle to avoid the necessity of another even of the Resurrection But now it was utterly impossible that that Body that was united to both Natures by so close and unconceivable a Bond should ever see Corruption that is a Putrefaction in the Grave This the Scripture clearly asserts to us Act. 2.28 Thou wilt not leave my Soul in Hell neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see Corruption And also because all Bodies that are corrupted turn into some other Thing and some other Nature according to that undoubted Maxim of the Philosophers Corruptio unius est Generatio alterius And so this horrid and blasphemous Consequence would follow that the Divine Nature of the Son of God might have been joyned to some other So that it was necessary that Christ should be
World whose Minds were too deeply tinctur'd with contrary Notions that they look'd upon the Christian Religion as a Design rather to destroy Reason than to save the Soul accounting it a very absurd thing to believe in a crucified Saviour as being a Person weak and impotent or the future Resurrection as being a thing utterly impossible We find the Apostle to the Corinthians 1 Cor. 1.24 complaining that the Greeks who were then the great Masters of Wisdom and Learning esteemed a crucified Christ Foolishness and thought those Men little befriended by Reason that would depend for Life upon one that lost his own and venture to take off the Shamefulness of the Cross or to silence those Scoffs that were cast upon them for their Credulity who affirm the wonderful Resurrection of a dead Saviour and his glorious Triumph over Death and the Grave For this seemed to them no other than to solve an Absurdity by an Impossibility and make Reason more suspicious in that they judged the Fundamentals of Reason must be overthrown to make the Fundamentals of Christianity any way tolerable or possible Wherefore we find that even at Athens that great Concourse of Wits where all the Sect of Philosophers made their common Retreat yet when St. Paul preached to them Jesus and the Resurrection this Doctrine seem'd so absurd and foolish to them and so contrary to all Principles of right Reason that they forgot that Civility that usually is found in Men of inquisitive Spirits and brake out into open Reproaches and Revilings Act. 17.18 What will this Babler say because he preached to them Jesus and the Resurrection No doubt they wanted not very specious Arguments to urge against the Resurrection of the Body As first The Impossibility of a Recollection of the dispersed Particles of Men resolved into their Elements and scatter'd by the four Winds of Heaven though it might be very well retorted on the Epicureans who disputed with St. Paul against the Resurrection that it was not so unlikely a thing that there might be a Re-union of the scatter'd Parts of the same Man as the fortuitous Concourse of Attoms at the first Making of the World yet this Objection overbore and prevaild with Heathens that when they burnt the Bodies of Christians they cast their Ashes into the Rivers to confute their Hopes of ever being raised again from whenee they should be carried away into an unknown Ocean and there be made the Sport of Winds and Waves But what our Saviour says upon the same Occasion to the Sadduces may be said unto these Men You err Matth. 22.29 not knowing the Scriptures nor the Power of God For unless their Parts could be scatter'd beyond the reach of Omnipotency unless they could be ground so small as to scape the Knowledge and Care of God who ordereth and rangeth every Mote that plays up and down in the Sun-beams this Dispersion of the Body proves not the Impossibility of their Union because the Power and Providence of God will gather up every Dust and rally them together again into the same Place and Order as now they are Objection Another Argument against the Resurrection of the Body may be the various Changes dead Bodies undergo being first turn'd into Earth that again turn'd into Grass and Herbs that becoming Nourishment for other Men or Beasts that Nourishment again passing into their Substance making a kind of Transmigration of Bodies as Pythagoras would have there was of Souls which is very evident in the Case of Anthropomorphites and Men-Eaters who have of several parts of other Men's Bodies compounded their own And so the same Question may be demanded which the Sadduces asked our Saviour concerning the seven Brethren that married the same Woman whose Wife of the seven she should be at the Resurrection So here those Parts that belonged to so many Men to which of them belong they in the Resurrection without detriment to the rest Here the same Answer occurrs that Christ gave them Matth. 22.29 You err not knowing the Scriptures nor the Power of God who is the best Judge of Property and can resolve all those Parts by which any Nourishment hath been received by any other Creatures unto their own proper Bodies again And thus it appears these Arguments against the Resurrection of the Body amount not to prove the Impossibility of the Effect but only the Supernatural Almighty Power of the Efficient Wherefore granting the Resurrection impossible according to the Original Course of Natural Things yet when an Omnipotent Arm doth interpose which gives Laws unto it who dares to say the Creature may be brought to such a State of Dissolution as may out-reach the Dominion of the Almighty Creator Upon these Grounds it is that the Apostle urgeth Act. 26.8 why it should be thought a strange and incredible thing that God should raise the Dead and in the Text that he asserts the Resurrection of Christ And to prevent any fallacious Cavils against it he shews First Division of the Words That God raised him from the Dead and therefore it was not to be accounted a thing impossible since to God nothing could imply a Contradiction Secondly He doth not only assert the Possibility but the Impossibility of his final Continuance under the Power of Death The Grave that grasps and retains all other Mortals was not able to detain him who hath Immortality and Life dwelling in himself It was not possible he should be holden of it therefore God hath raised him up loosing the Pains of Death Whom God raised up Here is the Efficient Cause of Christ's Resurrection in the concurrent Action of the whole Trinity for all that God doth out of himself is ascribed to all the Three Persons Sometimes it is ascribed to the Father Act. 3.13 15. as the Apostle speaks The God of Abraham and of Isaac and of Jacob the God of our Fathers hath glorified his Son Jesus whom ye delivered up and denied the Holy One and the Just desiring a Murtherer and killed the Prince of Life whom God hath raised from the Dead Sometimes it is ascribed to the Son who by the infinite Power of his Divinity raised up his Humane Nature from the Grave So our Saviour himself tells us I lay down my Life of my self Joh. 3.18 I have power to lay it down and I have power to take it up again The same may be collected of the Holy Ghost from the Words of the Apostle Rom. 8.11 If the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the Dead dwell in you he that raised up Christ from the Dead shall also quicken your mortal Bodies by his Spirit Now if the Spirit of God can quicken our Bodies the same Spirit also can quicken the Body of Christ since it is the same Spirit that quickens both the Head and the Members Having loosed the Pains of Death In some Copies it is Having loosed the Pains of Hell which possibly gave