What shall I say?  Enoch by it could tell what should be done at the end of the world.  How did the prophets circumstantially prophesy of Christ’s birth, his death, his burial, of their giving him gall and vinegar, of their parting his raiment and piercing his hands and feet, of his riding on an ass also.  All this they saw when they spake of him.  Peter also, though half asleep, could at the very first word call Moses and Elias by their names, when they appeared to Christ in the holy mount.  He is very ignorant of the operation of the Spirit that scrupleth these things.

But now, I say, if these things have been done, seen, and known by spiritual men while their knowledge has been but “in part,” how shall we know, see, and discern, when “that which is perfect is come!” which will be at the resurrection:  “It is raised a spiritual body.”

Paul said to the Philippians that he was confident that he who had begun a good work in them, would perform it until “the day of Christ.”  Which day of Christ was not the day of their conversion, for that day was past with them already, they were now the children of God; but this day of Christ is the same which in other places is called the day when he shall come with the sound of the last trump to raise the dead.  For you must know that the work of salvation is not at an end with them that are now in heaven; no, nor ever will be until their bodies be raised again.  God has made our bodies the members of Christ, and God does not count us thoroughly saved, until our bodies be as well redeemed and ransomed out of the grave and death, as our soul from the curse of the law and dominion of sin.

Though God’s saints have felt the power of much of his grace, and have had many a secret word fulfilled on them, yet one word will be unfulfilled on their particular person, so long as the grave can shut her mouth upon them.  But when the gates of death do open before them, and the bars of the grave do fall asunder, then shall be brought to pass that saying which is written, “Death is swallowed up of victory.”  And then will they hear that most pleasant voice, “Awake and sing, ye that dwell in the dust; for thy dew is as the dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast forth her dead.”

The body is no such ridiculous thing in the account of Christ as it was in the account of the Sadducees.  “The body is not for fornication, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body;” and that not only in this world, but in that which is to come.

XXVI.  THE JUDGMENT.

Oh my heart, it is in vain now to dissemble, or to hide, or to lessen transgressions; for there is a judgment to come, a day in which God will judge the secrets of men by his Son.

The saints judged.

When the saints are raised, they must give an account of all things that they have done while they were in the world, of all things “whether they be good or bad.”