A SERMON preached ON EASTER-DAY AT OXFORD, IN SAINT PETERS church IN THE EAST, the accustomend place for the rehearsal SERMON on THAT DAY: Wherein is proved the SONNE'S Equality with the FATHER, the Deity of the Holy GHOST, AND The Resurrection of the same numerical Body, Against the old, and Recent Oppugners of these Sacred Verities. BY RICHARD gardener, D. D. and Canon of the Cathedrall Church of Christ in OXFORD.  
OXFORD, Printed by LEONARD LICHFIELD, Printer to the University, for Francis Bowman, Anno Dom. 1638.   

TO THE RIGHT worshipful, AND REVEREND, DOCTOR BAYLIE, PRESIDENT OF St John Baptist's college, dean of SARVM, and the Worthy Vice-chancelor of the university of OXFORD.  
SIR,  
I May seem to hazard your displeasure in surprising you with this Inscription beyond your expectation, and against your Assent. Yet I trust you will pardon my boldness for not pardoning your modesty. The matter being consigned by your Warrant to come abroad in public view, I presume you will deign it a safe conduct under your Name, since it would be an injurious surmise to imagine you are loathe to maintain, and make good your own hand. The Preaching, and Printing of the Argument is an entire Act of my Obedience, which prompts me to believe you cannot choose but protect, what you so much approved. Not long ago my mean, obscure self represented the Person of our own much honoured. dean in this spiritual employment: That task was backed with good success, for he freely guarded it with his Tutelar power, being unwilling what was done in his service should be exposed to the mercy of the world, and left to seek foreign engagements.  
I know from my own experience that you are made up of the same extractions of goodness, and gentleness; your affections alike poys'd; your pulse beats in as even, and as soft a temper, there's no sullennes, no roughness in it. As yet you dignify an equal Dignity in the Church; you fill up the place of Government with that general applause, which heretofore was paid as His due. And though the beams of his Favour shine upon me in a more direct line, yet I feel the reflection of your friendlinesse much intended towards me. The Concurrence of which Circumstances hath instructed me that my Dedication would be misplaced, if it pointed to any but yourself.  
The Scope of the discourse suits with the season of the Day,& Times, in that it vindicates the Rights of our Common Saviour, and our interest in his merits. I aclowledge in sincerity, not out of adulation,( and yet to speak truth of some is rendered in the Dialect, and bad Comment of the Malevolent to flatter,) that by the piety, and prudence of the archangel of our Church, the most vigilant sentinel of our university, socinianism is not discerneable amongst us, although their books have Clancularly crept in, endeavouring to infect, and poison our faith. My zeal to the Primitive Truth, with which we have been so long, and so happily possessed, raised me to pursue it's just defence, lest the unexperienced being ensnared with the glaring appearance of Sophisticated Reason, might be enticed to suck up the venom their Rancour hath disgorged. If they intend to bargain with concealed factors to accommodate them for a Reply, let them know they shall not win so much upon me as to wrest, or extort the least answer, for I mean not to make a Trade of writing, especially against such, who would reduce us to our first Rudiments, and put us to prove Prinicples not to bee Controverted.  
It is enough, J have discharged my duty to God, and my Nation, in making a plain discovery that the malice of their Tenets strikes at the Roote of Religion, shakes the ground of our salvation, vilifies the generally received expositions of the Orthodox Fathers, who drew the water of life nearest to the fountain Head, and makes our own particular Church to be all this while at a loss, by standing immovably upon the old way, without stepping aside to any crooked by-paths, which cross the venerable foot-steps of the catholic, apostolic Doctrine. Thus having silenced my pen; to suffer for such a cause will be my triumph, and I shall gain the victory when they count me overcom'd. But I stay you too long in the Porch, may it please you to look in, and behold the building, on which if you vouchsafe a favourable glance, you shall the more oblige me to bee  
Yours ready at your Commands RICHARD gardener.   
8. CHAP. ROM. vers. 11. 
But if the Spirit of Him that raised up Iesus from the dead dwell in you, He that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his spirit that dwell's in you.  
MY message on Christmas day was Christ's coming into the earth; my Easter tidings are that He came out of the earth. There He wore the cognisance, and badge of a servant: Here He did Lord it, like a sovereign. There the Divinity was eclipsed by the interposition of his Flesh, He being pleased not only to assume our Nature but to yield unto it. Here the beams of his heavenly majesty shined forth so clearly, that in the same Nature, which was conquered He vanquished the Conqueror, and put the grave to flight. There Natus est nobis, here surrexit pro nobis. We are concerned in both, yet our possibility is conditional, it stands vpon a But, and If: But if the spirit of Him that raised up Iesus from the dead dwell in you. &c.  
The words relate the resurrection of Christ in his Body natural, and mystical. The same spirit is Agent in One, and the Other. The main Act, Raising. The person raised, Iesus. The estate from whence, from the dead. The effect, and consequent of Christ's Antecedent Rising, the quickening of our mortal Bodies. The condition required to qualify, and make us capable to rise with Him, the residing, or inhabiting of the same spirit in vs. He that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his spirit that dwells in you.  
I will begin as the Spirit shall enable me with the Spirit of him that raised up Iesus from the dead.  
The Spirit, when it refers to the Deity, may be taken Essentially, or Personally. The first acception is common to the whole Trinity, for God, saith Saint John, 
S joh. c. 4. v. 24.  is a Spirit; simply, and absolutely. The other signifies a distinct Manner of subsisting by way of Effluence, or Emanation, and that specifies the Third person, who by a superexcellency is termed a Spirit, because He is as it were spir'd, or breathed from the Father and the son: And thus is the word here used.  
But first we hence observe the Trinity personal. The Third person is set down in plain terms; the Spirit, being his usual name throughout the whole Scripture. The Father is intended by the periphrasis of him. By Iesus Christ the son, the second person.  
Neither is it any disparagement to the sons equality with the father that the holy Ghost is implicitly in the text, and expressly in the 10. of S. matthew styled the Spirit of the Father, for in the 4. to the Galathians, and in the 9. verse of this chapter, he is as truly called the Spirit of Christ. In the 14. of S. John 'tis Rogabo patrem, I will entreat the Father to sand him. But in the 16. of the same Evangelist he assumes the authority to himself, saying, ego mittam, I will sand the Comforter, to show that with the Father he sent him. 
Aqu. part. 1. q. 36. art. 4 in corp.& q. 37. art. 1. in corp.  We see a necessity it should bee so. Nam cum Spirtus sanctus sit Patris,& filii amor unitivus, vel nexus communis; for the blessed Spirit being the mutual love of the Father, and the son; his Emission, or sending forth must be alike from both. Yet because the Father is the fountain of orderly procession in the persons, all the glory of the action may bee reduced to him, in regard 'tis his prerogative to be the original of life, and glory to the rest.  
And here, without more ado, wee are in sincerity to subscribe to the Deity of the holy Ghost. For seeing his personal property is in the God-head essentially, 'tis certain he agrees in the unity of the divine Essence, because whatsoever is in God is onely his being. And indeed how can a sin against the holy Ghost make the delinquents liable to an infinite punishment, unless it be because it doth prejudice the Jnterest of an Infinite being? He who is the Enditer of the Scripture, and testifies the truth to every faithful soul hath been punctual herein to take away mistaking. For Ananias his Lying to the holy Ghost in the 5. of the Acts, and the third is explained in the very next verse to be all one as to ly to God. To let us know the mighty work of Creation owns him as well as the Father, and the son, 'tis registered in the 33. of job, the Spirit of the Lord hath made me, and the breath of the almighty gave me life. And if so; then he hath a real subsistence, and is not a mere Motion, or quality in God, as the 〈◇〉 of old, and Socinus of late blaspheme. I will not beate that forlorn heresy any farther, there's enough to clear the point in his raising up Iesus from the dead, an effect, which none but the supremest cause can produce.  
And indeed it was needful for S. Paul to rest, and anchor this wondrous Act upon an omnipotent Agent. For the estate of the dead in the eyes of men, and in the conceit of Christs chief followers was lost, and desperate; so that wee should never have believed that death, and the grave would let go their hold, and part with their prey, were it not that wee have the Apostles word, nay Gods own dead for it. The disciples that went to Emaus had their souls so appall'd, and their hearts so dead within them, when they saw the onely staff of their comfort quiter burst in pieces, and blocked up within a Pile of ston, that through weakness of faith they were almost at a Non-plus. We, say they, as it is in the 24. of Saint Luke, did hope,( see, now they do not) that He should haue redeemed Israel. And Peter himself, who before bore record of his Divinity, 
S. joh. cap. 6.  when he averred thou art that Christ the son of God, now coming to his tomb, and not finding him there, went away wondering with himself at what had happened, in the 12. verse of Saint Luk's former Chapter. So that those words of David in the 30. Ps. may well befitt this blessed son of David. What profit is there in my blood when J go down to the pit? Shall the dust give thanks to thee? Or shall it declare thy truth?  
Our Saviour foreknew how gladly they would persuade themselves, and others that he was a spirit, or it was a shadow, a fancy that deluded his disciples, and therefore to stop the mouth of malice he frequently appeared to them. he did not so familiarly present himself to their company as before his death, 
Aq. 3. part. q. 54. art. 3. & q. 55. art. 6.  that they might know his body was Alterius gloriae a glorified body. Yet he did oft converse with them, to show his body was ejusdem naturae, the same individual body. He did eat in their presence, not often to inform them Aberat esuriendi necessitas, he was to hunger, and thirst no more. Yet he did not altogether abstain from meat, they gave him a piece of a broiled fish, 
Aqu. supplem. 3. part. q. 81. art. 4. Part. 1. q. 51. art. 3. ad 5.  and hony comb, and he truly ate before them, to assure them Aderat edendi potestas, that he rose in his human body, since it had a natural capacity to receive sustenance, though the converting it into nutriment was dispensed with, in regard there was no need of it. he would make their eyes and hands his witnesses, behold my hands, and my feet, It is I myself; handle, and see, a spirit hath not flesh, and bones, as you see Me have. To Mary Magdalen he said, Noli me tangere, touch me not, to signify Immortalitatem dederat, he had clothed it with immortality. To his disciples, videte& palpate, 
S. August. ep. 57.  to give security Naturam non abstulerat, he had not changed the substance, but the quality.  
In the one he shewed gloriam resurgentis, 
Aq. 3. part. q. 55. art. 3. in corp.  the rare endowments he had adorned it with upon his rising; in the other he declared Veritatem resurectionis, the evident truth of his Resurrection.  
Saint Peter became hereupon so well catechis'd that he  told the Iewes in a full assembly, Him, whom you have slain, and crucified, this Iesus hath God raised up, Act. 2. Him, whom you have denied, betrayed, and killed, Him, hath God raised, Act. 3. Yet this doth not derogate from the glory of Christ that Deus suscitavit, God raised him up, is so much repeated, for though as the son of man {αβγδ}. he was raised up, 1. Cor. 15. yet as the son of God {αβγδ}. He rose again, and revived to be Lord both of quick, and dead. Rom. 14.9. As the Father hath life in himself, so hath the son life in himself. Joh. 5. he had power to Lay down his own life, and he had power to take it up again. Joh. 10. The rage of the Iewes destroyed the Temple; in 3. dayes he built it up again; he spake, and performed it in the Temple of his Body.  
Thus was He Primitiae dormientium, the first fruits of them that slept, not because he dyed before all men, or was raised before all others, but in that he was the onely one that raised himself from death. They rose iteram morituri, 
Aq. 3. part. q. 53. art. 3.  to die again, but Christ is risen, and dyes no more. He rose by the power of his Deity; which was hypostatically united, they were raised by he virtue of his rising, for 'tis true of his resurrection, which is said of his blood, prius profuit quàm fuit, 
S. Bern.  it was effectual before it was actual. Hence is my Apostle so positive, He which raised up Iesus from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies.  
A benefit so sure that in the 2. to the Ephesians, and the 6, wee are all ready risen with him, and estated in possession of those heavenly mansions, though yet we be but in expectation, For there must be a correspondence betwixt him, which is the Head, and us the Members, and unless we imagine the body of Christ like that Videous image, whose Head was gold, 
Dan. 2.  and Feet day, our glorious Head must needs have glorified members.  
It was the Tenet of Entychius sometimes Bishop of Constantinople, 
Aq. 3. part. q. 54. art. 2. & supplem. 3. part. q. 79. art. 1.  that our earthly Tabernacles, which must be committed to the dust, were too mean to bee restored, and renewed at the last day, so that he thought the blessed souls should in stead of them bee invested with other bodies, of a strange, I know not what sublimated substance. The same Chymena it hatched again by the Socinians now, who would seem more subtle then all that have been before them, when indeed their boundless errors demonstrate them more brainsick then the former. Smalcius in the name of his incredulous Fraternity pronounceth this desperate position, Corpora haec, 
Smiglec. exam. cent. error.  quae nunc circumferimus resurrectora non credimus.  
Were they not given over to the spirit of contradiction they might red their confutation in the Etymon of the word. 
Aq. supplem. 3. part. ex Damasc.  For what is Resurrectio, nisi iterata, vel secunda ejus, quod cecidit surrectio? But a restitution of the same thing, which once perished, and was gone? And therefore the very flesh turned to corruption, and resolved into ashes must in the same nature, and manner return to itself, else it cannot properly be termed a Resurrection.  
Besides, if our particular bodies shall not rise again, then we our own particular selves shall never be revived. Nam hic numero dicitur ab unitate Corporis, aeqùe ac ainae. For the individuating, or making a man to be numerically, one and the same, depends as well from the Identity, or oneness of the body, as of the soul.  
Saint Paul foresaw some cavilling spirits would pled for a mutation of bodies when the last trump shall found, and thereupon he fortifies against them with a significant, and powerful proposition, This corruptible must put on incorruption; This mortal must put on immortality. He iterates the pronoun, This corruptible; This mortal to persuade the certainty of raising the same, natural, human body. He ingeminates the Oportet, This corruptible must, This mortal must; to warrant the necessity of the performance: The tenor of his speech is so earnest that he seems to clap himself upon the breast, and to point with his finger at his own body. This Identicall thing; this Idem numero. not an other instead of this, but this corruptible, which I now carry about me, This mortal, which shall lodge in the bowels of the earth, maugre the jaws, and belly thereof, shall be rescued thence, and settled in Eternity; which is a pregnant proof that by affirming flesh and blood shall not inherit the king doom of heaven, 
Greg. Mag. c. 29. expos. moral. in cap. 19. job.  Non exclusit naturam, said culpam, he excluded not the nature, and substance, but the enormous pravity to which 'tis subject in this state of infirmity. Whereupon it immediately follows by way of Comment on what went before, neither shall corruption inherit incorruption. Flesh, and blood tainted with corrupt lusts shall not be admitted, but as refined, and purified, it shall find a place in heaven.  
For why should not the flesh, which hath been Co-worker, and Ioint-martyr with the soul, participate a proportionable guerdon as well as the soul? 
Ezek cap. 18. v. 25.29.  God proclaims in the 18. of ezekiel that his ways are equal, how then can it stand with his justice that one body shall victoriously fight his battles, and an other, which never appeared in the quarrel bee honoured with the crown? If the material half of us vanish in our dissolution, in vain did Christ take our shape upon him; for if our flesh must bee utterly destroyed, it had been sufficient onely to assume our spirit? To what end are wee wished at his second coming to lift up our heads in triumph, 
S. Luk. cap. 21. v. 26.  if the whole body shall be consumed to a Nullity? The truth is, the Socinian conclusion is consonant to their heartless, disconsolate premises. For well may they believe their bodies shall not be restored,& quickened by Christ, so long as they hold no price was payed for their recovery. For as the Saviour of the world will never see them perish who die in the faith of him their Redeemer, so 'tis justly to be feared he will suffer those to be lost, who reject his Redemption. But to us, who give heed to his divine word as to a light shining in darkness, the old, and new Testament hath said enough to make us undoubtedly expect that every atom of our dust, and Cinders shall be gathered together, and enlivened by the proper soul, and that with these eyes we shall see God, and no other for us, as holy job speaks. 
S. joh. cap. 5. v. 28.29.  Saint John doth fully express this Article; the hour shall come, in which all that are in the grave shall hear his voice, and come forth. The Evangelicall Prophet Esay in his 26. Chapter is most emphatical. The dead men shall rise, together with my body shall they rise, that is when I rise, all the dead shall rise: Awake, and sing ye that dwell in the dust, the Earth shall cast out the dead.  
But because they advance Reason to stand in Competition with Faith, we will allow it a share, holding it inconvenient to frame a bill of divorce betwixt them, then it cannot bee denied that Right natural Reason guided by the Spirit of Grace, and light of the Word hath a profitable use to illustrate points of belief. 
Aq. part. 1. q. 1. art. 8. ad 2.  Nam cum Gratia nontollat naturam said perficiat, oportet vt naturalis ratio fidei subserviat, as the schoolman well teacheth. The better to foil these Goliahs with their own weapon, 
Aq. part. 1. q. 29. art. 1. ad 5. & Cont. Gent. l. 4. c. 79.  let us consider quòd Anima seperata retinet naturam vnibilitatis, that  
The soul in her separation naturally inclines to be consociated with the body, because shee naturally desires to bee freed from that imperfection she stands in while she is a severed part from the whole, and so we shall be compelled by reason to grant their Revnion, and consequently a Resurrection, since their permanent, continued disvnion being against nature cannot be perpetual. Besides  
If man before he received his constitution was potentially in the dead Elements, out which he was extracted, and in like manner after his dissolution remaines potentially in the same mass, 
just. Mart. ad qu.& Resp. Graec. if that book be his.  why should incredulous nature shrink at the possibility of raising the dead, since the God of nature can as easily new-cast Man, as he did actually mould him out of a potential being in his first Principles?  
The Rock out of which we were hewn, the bodies we move, and walk in do sufficiently persuade that he, which of a little seed, or blood could fashion a living man in the womb, and so produce him into the world, knows how out of dry, and rotten bones to cloath him with the same shape, which he himself at first bestowed vpon him. His ability to work the Cure is illustrious in his former actions, for did he not establish this ample world, and all things in it with a word, onely with a Fiat? And is his arm so shortened since that he cannot recollect our dispersed matter lying couchant in the earth, the sea, or whatsoever substance else?  
The verdict of sense will pass on our side; for who sees not minus est reparare quod erat, quam fecisse quod non erat? It is a work of much lesser power to restore that, which sometimes was, then to Create that, which never had been. Why dost thou wonder saith Tertullian that God should revive thee being dead? He that at first made thee of a Clod of Earth, can refine thee out of a Clod of Earth. Qui non eras, factus●es; Qui non eris fies. Thou, 
tertul. Apologet. advers. Gent.  which wert not, art now made, and again, when thou shalt not be, thou shalt be made. yield me the means by which thou wert made, and then inquire after the means by which thou shalt be raised.  
The continual course of nature in the digestion of the food brings a forcible Remonstrance that the Resurrection is not incredible. Out of the Earth comes the bread we eat, that bread after it passeth through several concoctions is altered and changed into blood, then conveyed throughout the parts of the body, and at last attains to be even of the very substance, and nature with the body. Now tell me what strange difference is there betwixt this, and the quickening of our mortal bodies. In this, that, which was Earth, and sprung out of the Earth, becomes flesh in substance, which before it was not; in the numerical resurrection, that, which was flesh, and after turned into Earth becomes flesh again in the same nature, which before it was. If that were not daily, and ordinary, this new& extraordinary, the difficulty would appear no greater in the One, then in the Other. I could draw arguments from the whole book of Nature, for every leaf therein is a Commentary vpon this doctrine.  
We may behold a tall lofty three to arise out of a little seed. If you demand, saith Gregory the Great, vhi latet fortitudo ligni, asperitas corticis? viriditas foliorum? 
Greg. Mag. c. 28. in c. 19. job.  whence was derived the solidity of the wood? the superficial roughness of the bark? the flourishing greenness of the leaves? experience testifies it proceeded from the spreading virtue, which lay treasured up in the seed. what marvel then if He that from a small seed daily extracts the wood, fruit, and leaves in the trunk, and branches of a three, doth likewise reduce bones, veins, and hair out of the least remainder of our dust? And having grafted them into the former stock of the same flesh, commands again breath, and warmeth into that flesh, blood into those veins, strength into those bones, and beautifies those heires with a fresher hue. Tertullian thought good to demonstrate the resurrection from the Phoenix, springing up new-liv'd out of her own ashes; from the flies lying dead all the Winter, and reviving with the heat of the sun in the Summer; from the dayes expiring at night, and rising next morn attired with light; from the Earths decay in the Winter, and its budding, and blossoming in the Spring,& so concludes omnia pereundo servantur, omnia interitu reformantur, all things are preserved by perishing, and perfected by dying. Whence it inevitably follows that Man, the Lord and master of the universe, for whose sake the Creatures partake their thriving vicissitudes cannot die for ever; since 'tis not probable he should be exceeded in perfection by such inferiors which were made to serve him, but his death must needs be better then his former life, because out of it he shall not merely be restored to what he lost, but be possessed of much more then ever before he had title to. He shall not onely be reviu'd, but rise up, and flourish too: for so much lies open in the verb 〈◇〉 shall quicken; He which raised Christ from the dead shall also quicken, which is the benefit that redounds to us, vpon the raising of our mortal bodies.  
Oecumenius observes the Apostle says not {αβγδ}, but {αβγδ}, to put a difference betwixt raising the just,& vnjust. All shall have {αβγδ}, their rising again to life, but all shall not be quickened. 〈◇〉 is of a larger extent then {αβγδ}, it is not to life alone, but {αβγδ}, to life, and glory. Such as despise God, and goodness shall wake out of the dust, but to perpetual shane, and confusion. They shall rise in the list, and beadroll of obdurate, impenitent sinners, to endless torments. They shall not be quickened in the rank of Saints to live with Christ in the sight of God. It were well with these Wretches if the Sea, and the grave might still retain them; for 'tis to be wished rather to know nothing after death, then to be raised to hear that fearful sentence, go ye cursed into everlasting fire. 
job. 19.  Better still to say to the worms, you are my brethren, and sisters, and to corruption, thou art my mother, then having broken off alliance with them, to be in a far worse family of damned Spirits, and tormented Ghosts. 'tis remarkably set down in the 27. of S. matthew that when Christ rose, 
S. Mat. 27.52.  many dead bodies of the Saints arose. Not one wicked man did rise when Christ rose, to premonish us that none shall feel the benefit of his quickening Spirit but such who are incorporated into Him by a lively faith.  
Life, sense, and motion, the union of the body, and soul, with the vnseperable faculties of them both, are the endowments of nature, and though they suffer dissolution, Christ doth restore these to all with whom He did Communicate in nature. immortal peace,& glory are the gifts of God; Christ hath appropriated these onely to those, who persevere in saving grace. He is Judge of all, and shall raise all; He is head of his own body, and shall quicken his own members. As Judge, He shall draw all to his tribunal seat, and in flaming fire shall render vengeance to them that have not known God, 
2. Thes. 1.  nor obeyed the gospel. As head, He knows his own members; and the cloud shall catch them up, 
1. Thess. 4.  and they shall live for ever with the Lord in permanent felicity. Though their bodies in this transitory state be mortal, vile bodies which must be destroyed, yet I cannot set out the glory of them, when they shall be quickened in the general resurrection. 'tis sown a natural body, saith S. Paul, 'tis raised a spiritual body. Not as if it should be without the parts, and dimensions which our bodies now have, but in regard of the condition it shall then rest in.  
When our bodies rise glorified, they will be enriched with such a spiritual quality that like spirits they shall be sustained by the power of God without the help of all natural means. Some think they are called spiritual bodies in respect of their operation, their strength, and agility being so great, vt licet adsit motio, absit fatigatio, 
Aq. 3. part. q. 54. art. 2.  that in the pure heaven above the clouds they will move upward, and downward, or what way they please, without defatigation, whereas now we cannot so much as walk forword, or perform any act without weariness. I conceive that exposition, which the Master of the schools adds in the 3. 
Q. 54. ar. 1.  part of his sums, to be most satisfying. The bodies, saith he, which shall be quickened, are termed spiritual, because in that state of glory the body shall be wholly subject to the spirits direction without reluctation, or struggling of the flesh. There shall be no complaint that the law of the members rebel against the law of the mind, but the spirit shall be all in all, leading, and guiding our bodies in all holy duties. Others to magnify their future eminency allot them a subtle, penetrating power; whereby they become able to pierce through any solid obstacle with as much facility as we pass through the water, or air.  
We will let slip these subtleties, being desirous to be thankful, and not curious. 'tis enough we are assured our frail bodies shall be conformable to Christ's glorious body. 
Phil. 3.21.  They shall shine as the brightness of the Firmament, 
Dan. 12.  and be as the stars for ever. Yea our Saviour in the 13. of S. matthew enlargeth their dignity farther, saying they shall shine as the sun in the kingdom of their Father.  
Thus God reserves our best dish last, 
job. 42.  he blesseth our later end, as he did Iob's, more then our beginning. The womb of the grave shall give back our bodies in greater perfection then we received them from our Mothers Belly. The old ragged coat of our flesh shall be scoured from all natural infirmities, and as a recompense for mouldering in the earth it shall be overclad with a vestment of immortal glory. But who are these that may live, and die in expectation of such a bliss? They are such, in whom the spirit of Christ keeps a standing house to dwell in, which is the period of my Text, and the condition required to qualify us for rising with Christ, the residing, or inhabiting of the Spirit in vs. He that raised Christ from the dead, shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his spirit that dwells in you.  
Paraeus herein well notes that this metaphor 〈◇〉 placeth the spirit of God in us, non tanquam Hospitem, not as a stranger, without respect, but as an inhabitant, whose tenor should hold so long as life holds. Now where such a Master of a house dwells, in ea imperat, there he rules, and governs, and looks to be obeyed. So that if we hope to rise in a glorified estate, we must not be contented with a flash of the spirit, which is no sooner received then lost, as it was with Saul, but we are to labour that the spirit may have a state of perpetuity in the whole man. For if our frequent recidivations, or relapses into sinful courses do so grieve his holiness that he quiter forsakes our houses of day before their dissolution, it will be in vain to expect that after death He should repair them a new, and provide for us houses without hands, and eternal in heaven. It is a measured truth, Our bodies cannot be glorified at the coming of Christ, except our souls bee first sanctified by the Spirit of Christ inhabiting in us. 
Ephes. 4.30.  I grant 'tis the gracious office of the holy Ghost to seal us to the day of Redemption, but if men shall slight, and have no regard of the seal, delighting to raze out his holy impressions, whereby their souls become instar rasae tabulae, like a bare, empty table-booke, wherein no characters of piety are sensible,& visible, how can they make account that his Eye of Providence should watch their bodies when they lie in the dust, and bring them out to happiness? 
1. Cor. 3.16.  It is his goodness to consecrate our bodies as Temples for Himself to dwell in, but if we debase, and demolish these his Temples by sitting upon the Lees, and persisting in lewd impurities, he will abandon these his dwellings, and destroy us for destroying them. For if our Saviour was so angry with them, which polluted the material temple that he made a whip, 
S. joh. 2.15.  and scourged them thence, much more will the fury of his indignation burn against such, who cease not to prostitute his spiritual Temples to all filthiness and uncleanness.  
It is too true that the best of men, while they live here, are troubled, and vexed with the burden of their corruptions, 
Rom. 8.23.  not onely the creatures saith S. Paul, but all wee, which have received the first fruits of the Spirit, we, which are Apostles, and Teachers of the Church, do sigh, and groan, in regard the tang, and relish of the flesh is still sending up noisome vapours to chill, and damp the devotion of the soul. Yet 'tis as true that if the holy Ghost keep his dwelling in a mans heart, such a one will find his will reclaimed, and reformed, his mind resolved constantly to walk with God, so far as human frailty will permit.  
If I were to preach to a Congregation, 
Act. 19. v. 2.  which like some in the Acts did not know there was a holy Ghost, I could spin, and draw out my discourse to a vast extent, by describing the Notes, and marks of the Spirits inhabiting in us, by laying down the means how to retain his comfortable dwelling with us, but here, where knowledge wants not the roote of Iudgement, my endeavour is to speak Multùm, non Multa; rarather much in a little, then exceeding Much, and yet very little.  
Now blessed be the God, and Father of our Lord Iesus Christ, 
1. S. Pet. 11. v. 3.4.  which according to his abundant mercy hath begotteen us again to a lively hope by the Resurrection of Iesus Christ from the dead to an inheritance incorruptible, undefiled, that fadeth not away, but is reserved in heaven, to which we beseech him to bring us out of this Vale of misery in his due time. AMEN.  
FINIS.