The book of nature translated and epitomiz'd. By George Sikes.

SECT. II.

Resurrection.

THe perfection of man's eternal joy and bles∣sednes in heaven, argues the resurrection of his body. The spirit of man has a natural inclina∣tion and love to its own body, as that which was fashion'd by the hand of God, and brought into a kind of natural marriage-union with it. The body alone is not a man, nor yet the spirit; but both, as put together in personal union. The recovery and restitutiō of the body then, after it is laid down by death, cannot but be naturally desired by the spirit, as a necessary ingrediēt into the compositiō of the man. Till he hath all the essentialls of his humane constitution about him, so as to be compleated in his personal being, wanting nothing that may justly he desired by him, his joy cannot be abso∣lutly

perfect and compleat. And on the same ground that we may conclude the body wilbe res∣tored, may we farther conclude, that it wilbe res∣tored in a state most proportion'd, lovely and de∣sireable to the elect; to wit, a most beautiful, come••ly, glorious, impassible, immortal, agile, spiritual body. He that can advance the soul into a higher and more excellent state then at first he gave it, will proportionally rarefy, spiritualize, and exalt the body, at the resurrection, into a far more ex∣cellent state, then when formed by him out of the dust of the ground Gen. 3. 19. or fashioned in the low∣est parts of the earth, his mother's womb. Psal. 139. 15. The spirit of man, transform'd by the love of God, ascends to a partaking of the divine na∣ture: 2. Pet. 1. 4. the body, by its proportionable transformation, will ascend into a spiritualty of being, as partaker of the very nature of the spirit. In the essentials of his constitution, thus advan∣ced, compleated, and perfected, will he have an absolute fulnes of joy and blessednes, for ever. He will for ever have all he can desire, and for ever be rid of all he hates, and would not have. And then farther; from this radical, fundamental joy in God, will spring up innumerable other secondary joy's, on the account of all that are in the same state of blessednes with himself. His joy wilbe multiplied according to the numberless multitude of saved men and angels. Rev. 7. 9. The elect angels rejoyce in man's hapines; why should not elected

men rejoyce eternally in theirs? Every man in heaven, will ever love every one, as himself, that's in the same blessed condition with himself; and therefore equally rejoyce in the joy of every one, as in his own. If then therebe innumerable men, that will have the like joy in God, every one of them will have innumerable joyes. Every ones unspeakable joy in God, wilbe innumerably mul∣tiplied by the like unspeakable joy in others. All this is the necessary, certain, eternal fruit and con∣sequent of man's wel-fix'd love of God.