up into heaven1 (Acts i. 9). So shall it be at the resurrection of the dead. The bodies with which they shall rise, shall so far be the same bodies, that every one shall have properly his own, and be truly the same person he was before. But these bodies will be very different from our present bodies3. Sown in corruption, they shall be raised in incorruption; sown in weakness, they shall be raised in power; sown in dishonour, they shall be raised in glory (1 Cor. xv. 42-44); and, invested with new attributes and new properties, they shall be like unto Christ's glorious Body, according to the mighty working whereby God is able to subdue all things unto Himself (Phil. iii. 21). CHAPTER XIII. ARTICLE XII. The Life Everlasting. Amen. 1. The Fourth of our great privileges as members of the Church, is the Life Everlasting. This Article of 1 "The Resurrection is not like any one of the recorded miracles of raising from the dead. It is not a restoration to the old life, to its wants, to its inevitable close, but the revelation of a new life, foreshadowing new powers of action and a new mode of being. It is not like any of the fabled apotheoses of the friends of the gods...it is the consecration of a restored and perfected manhood....The Body, which was recognised as essentially the same Body, had yet undergone some marvellous change, of which we can gain a faint idea by what is directly recorded of its manifestations." Westcott On the Resurrection, 154–160. 2 Archbishop Secker On the Catechism, Vol. 1. 271. 3 The Apostle's analogy of the Seed-corn enables us in a measure to understand this. The grain of wheat, after being apparently destroyed, rises again, and the body with which it is raised may be called its own body. But still it is a new body, it is the old life reappearing in a higher form, with stem, and leaves, and fruit, &c. Robertson's Lectures on the Corinthians. 4 See the Service for the Burial of the Dead. the Creed' is to be taken in close connection with the one preceding. For as we believe that there shall be a resurrection of the dead, so we believe that the dead shall rise to life, and that this life will be everlasting. 2. Everlasting Life. True, indeed, it is that all shall rise again; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, to the resurrection of condemnation (Jn. v. 29). But in this Article is specially set forth "the most large gifts which God will give to them that be His"," and who depart hence "in His true faith and fear3." 3. Present. In one sense everlasting life may be regarded as a present gift, and as having its commencement on earth. For our blessed Lord says, This is life eternal, to know the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom He has sent (Jn. xvii. 3). Again, He saith, He that heareth My word, and believeth on Him that sent Me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation, but is passed from death unto life* (Jn. v. 24); and this life He imparts through the grace of the Holy Ghost. 4. Future. But though begun on earth, everlasting life in all its fulness is a future gift, and will be only then perfectly realized, when it shall be shared by 1 Wanting in some of the early Creeds, the Twelfth Article " I can hardly be said to have been established in the Western formularies till the middle of the seventh century." Heurtley, p. 151. 2 Noell's Catechism; see also Nicholson On the Catechism, p. 86, smaller Edn. 3 See the Prayer for the Church Militant in the Communion Service. Hence we say in the 4 Compare also Jn. iii. 36; vi. 47. second Collect in the Morning Prayer, that " our eternal life standeth," i. e. consisteth, "in the knowledge of God;" and in the Collect for St Philip and St James's Day, that "truly to know God is everlasting life." the whole being of man, body, soul, and spirit, in the day of his complete redemption. Respecting the nature of this life, Revelation gives no exact or particular account, and that probably because our finite faculties are not capable of receiving it1, for, as the Apostle Paul says, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man, to conceive the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him2 (1 Cor. ii. 9). Still some ideas are given us respecting "the life of the world to come," and that (1) negatively and (2) positively, telling us what it will not and what it will have. 5. Negatively. In the new heaven, then, and the new earth (Rev. xxi. 1), we learn that there shall be neither hunger, nor thirst", nor night, nor pain, nor sorrow, nor death. All that makes this life full of misery and trouble, of care and anxiety, shall be done away; for God will wipe away all tears from every eye (Rev. xxi. 4), and will make all things new (Rev. xxi. 5). 6. Positively. But Revelation also tells us something of what the life of the world to come will have. And we gather that not only will there be an absence of all painful toil, all distressing anxiety, all overwhelm 1 See Secker On the Catechism, Vol. I. p. 270, and Whately On the Doctrine of a Future State. 2 Compare the Collect for the Sixth Sunday after Trinity. 3 As this Article is expressed in the Nicene Creed. 4 Nicholson On the Catechism, p. 86. 5 Rev. vii. 16, and compare Isai. xlix. 10. 6 Rev. xxii. 5, There shall be no night there; and they need no candle, neither light of the sun; for the Lord God giveth them light; comp. Rev. xxi. 23, 25. 7 Rev. xxi. 4. The word for pain in the original also denotes excessive toil, exhausting labour, which also will have passed away. 8 Rev. xxi. 4; comp. Isai. xxxv. 19. 9 Rev. xxi. 4; 1 Cor. xv. 26, ing sorrow, but the future life will be a state of rest1, and peace2, and joy3. Again, St Paul informs us, that our vile bodies will be fashioned like unto Christ's glorious Body (Phil. iii. 21), which at His transfiguration shone as the sun, and was white as the light (Mtt. xvii. 2); St John tells us that are shall be like unto God, for we shall see Him as He is (1 Jn. iii. 2); and our Lord declares that we shall be as the angels of God in heaven (Mtt. xxii. 30). These words, whatever they may denote in all their depth and fulness, at least imply, that freed from all tendency to decay and disorder, our bodies will become fitting instruments for the noblest exertions, that our faculties will be infinitely exalted, and our understandings raised to their utmost capacities; and that in a state of never-ending felicity, and ever-increasing progress and improvement, we shall be employed in executing the will of Him in whom we live, and move, and have our being (Acts xvii. 28). 7. Amen. Such are some of "the good things passing man's understanding, which God hath prepared for them that love Him?," and to this, and so to all the other Articles of the Creed, we reiterate our assent by solemnly adding, Amen, i.e. So be it. 1 Or Sabbath-keeping, IIeb. iv. 9. 2 Isaiah lvii. 2. 3 Mtt. xxv. 21, Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord. 4 More literally, the body of our humiliation, rò oŵμa TŶs ταπεινώσεως ἡμῶν. 5 St Paul tells us that we shall know even as we are known by God, I Cor. xiii. 12; see Secker's Lectures on the Catechism. 6 See Whately's Lectures on the Doctrine of a Future State; and Isaac Taylor's Physical Theory of Another Life. 7 See the Collect for the Sixth Sunday after Trinity. 8 So ends the Creed in the Prymer of A. D. 1538, and an English Creed, circ. A. D. 1400. One of the xvth century concludes, So mote it be, Amen. See Heurtley, p. 99. PART III. THE COMMANDMENTS. CHAPTER I. You said, that your Godfathers and Godmothers did promise for you, that you should keep God's Commandments. Tell me how many there be? Ten. Which be they? The same which God spake in the twentieth Chapter of Exodus, saying, I am the Lord thy God, who brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. I. Thou shalt have none other gods but me. II. Thou shalt not make to thyself any graven image, nor the likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or in the earth beneath, or in the water under the earth. Thou shalt not bow down to them, nor worship them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, and visit the sins of the fathers upon the children, unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me, and shew mercy unto thousands in them that love me, and keep my commandments. III. Thou shalt not take the Name of the Lord thy God in vain: for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his Name in vain. IV. Remember that thou keep holy the Sabbath-day. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all that thou hast to do; but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God. In it thou shalt do no manner of work, thou, and thy son, and thy daughter, thy man-servant, and thy maid-servant, thy cattle, and the stranger that is within thy gates. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day; wherefore the Lord blessed the seventh day, and hallowed it. V. Honour thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee. VI. VII. Thou shalt do no murder. Thou shalt not commit adultery. VIII. Thou shalt not steal. IX. bour. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neigh |