{"collection":"chr","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/chr/ecf/003/0030609.htm","path":"chr/ecf/003/0030609.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/chr/ecf/003/0030609.htm","text":"Chapter XXVII.\u2014Certain Metaphorical Terms Explained of the Resurrection of the Flesh.\nWe have also in the Scriptures robes mentioned as allegorizing the hope of the flesh. Thus in the Revelation of John it is said: \u201cThese are they which have not defiled their clothes with women,\u201d 7473 \u2014indicating, of course, virgins, and such as have become \u201ceunuchs for the kingdom of heaven\u2019s sake.\u201d 7474 Therefore they shall be \u201cclothed in white raip. 565 ment,\u201d 7475 that is, in the bright beauty of the unwedded flesh. In the gospel even, \u201cthe wedding garment\u201d may be regarded as the sanctity of the flesh. 7476 And so, when Isaiah tells us what sort of \u201cfast the Lord hath chosen,\u201d and subjoins a statement about the reward of good works, he says: \u201cThen shall thy light break forth as the morning, and thy garments, 7477 shall speedily arise;\u201d 7478 where he has no thought of cloaks or stuff gowns, but means the rising of the flesh, which he declared the resurrection of, after its fall in death. Thus we are furnished even with an allegorical defence of the resurrection of the body. When, then, we read, \u201cGo, my people, enter into your closets for a little season, until my anger pass away,\u201d 7479 we have in the closets graves, in which they will have to rest for a little while, who shall have at the end of the world departed this life in the last furious onset of the power of Antichrist. Why else did He use the expression closets, in preference to some other receptacle, if it were not that the flesh is kept in these closets or cellars salted and reserved for use, to be drawn out thence on a suitable occasion? It is on a like principle that embalmed corpses are set aside for burial in mausoleums and sepulchres, in order that they may be removed therefrom when the Master shall order it. Since, therefore, there is consistency in thus understanding the passage (for what refuge of little closets could possibly shelter us from the wrath of God?), it appears that by the very phrase which he uses, \u201cUntil His anger pass away,\u201d 7480 which shall extinguish Antichrist, he in fact shows that after that indignation the flesh will come forth from the sepulchre, in which it had been deposited previous to the bursting out of the anger. Now out of the closets nothing else is brought than that which had been put into them, and after the extirpation of Antichrist shall be busily transacted the great process of the resurrection.\nThere is a curious change of the word here made by Tertullian, who reads \u1f31\u03bc\u03ac\u03c4\u03b9\u03b1 instead of \u1f30\u03ac\u03bc\u03b1\u03c4\u03b1, \u201cthy health,\u201d or \u201chealings,\u201d which is the word in the Sept.\n565:7478 565:7479 565:7480","title":"Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol III: Tertullian: Part II: Certai...","type":"page"}