but because through the heavenly gift, by the change of its qualities, not by the loss of its nature, he shall be fitted to inhabit in heaven" So that, although they affirmed by this article, that the same flesh and blood should still remain at the resurrection, yet they held withal, that the properties and qualities thereof should be changed, as St Austin writes in his exposition hereof," that this same visible flesh, which is properly called flesh, shall arise; for the apostle Paul doth seem to point at it as it were with his finger, when he saith, for this corruptible shall put on incorruption, and this mortal immortality:" and yet a little farther on in the same place, he saith, "that those raised bodies shall be simple and shining, whom the apostle calls spiritual;" or, as he expresseth it in another place," the bodies of the saints shall arise without any defect or deformity, as well as without any corruption, heaviness or difficulty," being by the change of their properties fitted and prepared for life everlasting; which is the next and last clause of the creed to be enquired into.

Wherein it may be observed in the first place, that it was variously placed in the pri mitive creeds, as in a creed of Cyprian's it stands thus before the article of the church,

and "life everlasting thro' the holy church; but it is most pertinently expressed by the apostles creed at the conclusion thereof, be cause it is the end of all our faith, and thè determination of every man to his eternal and proper place and state; for the dead having been raised, and both quick and dead having received their sentence from the final and supreme judge of heaven and earth, all men both good and bad, shall go unto their appointed place, from whence they shall not return, but there remain throughout life everlasting.

The Gnostics, as it hath been already related in the fifth chapter of this treatise, unto which I refer the reader, divided all mankind into three parts earthly, animal and spiritual; the first of which and part of the second, they affirmed, would be annihilated, or reduced to nothing by the general conflagration at the last day, whilst only the spiritual, and part of the animal, should be made immortal and efernal. To obviate which opinion, as it seems most probable, the rulers of the church did in those days subjoin to the resurrection the clause of life everlasting, that thereby that heresy might be contradicted and warded a gainst from whence we find, that Irenæus a cotemporary with these heretics, and their greatest antagonist and confuter, doth in op

position to their heresy, thus paraphrastical ly express in his creed the final determin ation of every man, that after the resurrec tion Christ shall render a righteous judg、 ment unto all, “ wicked, unjust, ungodly and blasphemous men, he shall send into everlast ing fire; but unto the just and righteous, and those who kept his commandments, he shall give immortality and eternal glory:" and in another of his creeds he thus words it, that Christ shall come in glory to be a Sa viour of those who are saved, and a judge of those who are judged, sending the corrupters of his truth, and the contemners of his father, and his coming, into eternal fire;" and to the same effect, it is in a creed of Tertullian's, which he designedly repeats in opposition to the Gnostics, and other heretics of his time, that Christ shall come in glory to receive the saints into the fruit of eternal life, and to sentence the profane to everlasting fire." From all which it appears, that this clause was levelled against the forementioned heresy of the Gnostics; and, that it includes the final and eternal state of every man, of the damned in hell, as well as of the blessed in heaven; that on the one hand, the wicked and miserable shall forever suffer under the loads of divinevengeance; and that on the other hand, the

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godly and blessed shall forever live in the per petual fruition of pure and undisturbed happiness: the eternity of both which persons and states are included by St. Austin in his explication of this article, that after the resurrection and universal judgment, "the godly shall happily live in eternal life, but the wicked miserably, without the power of dying in eternal death, because they shall both be without end" wherewith agrees the creed commonly called the creed of St. Athanasius, that at Christ's coming, all men shall rise again with their bodies, and shall give account for their own works; " and they that have done good, shall go into life everlasting; and they that have done evil, into everlasting fire."

THE EN D.