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| Whether Infants Shall Rise in that Body Which They Would Have Had Had They Grown Up.
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Chapter 14.—Whether Infants Shall
Rise in that Body Which They Would Have Had Had They Grown
Up.
What, then, are we to say of
infants, if not that they will not rise in that diminutive body in
which they died, but shall receive by the marvellous and rapid
operation of God that body which time by a slower process would
have given them? For in the Lord’s words, where He says, “Not
a hair of your head
shall perish,”1631
it is
asserted that nothing which was possessed shall be wanting; but it
is not said that nothing which was not possessed shall be given.
To the dead infant there was wanting the perfect stature of its
body; for even the perfect infant lacks the perfection of bodily
size, being capable of further growth. This perfect stature is,
in a sense, so possessed by all that they are conceived and born
with it,—that is, they have it potentially, though not yet in
actual bulk; just as all the members of the body are potentially in
the seed, though, even after the child is born, some of them, the
teeth for example, may be wanting. In this seminal principle of
every substance, there seems to be, as it were, the beginning of
everything which does not yet exist, or rather does not appear, but
which in process of time will come into being, or rather into
sight. In this, therefore, the child who is to be tall or short
is already tall or short. And in the resurrection of the body, we
need, for the same reason, fear no bodily loss; for though all
should be of equal size, and reach gigantic proportions, lest the
men who were largest here should lose anything of their bulk and it
should perish, in contradiction to the words of Christ, who said
that not a hair of their head should perish, yet why should there
lack the means by which that wonderful Worker should make such
additions, seeing that He is the Creator, who Himself created all
things out of nothing?E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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