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| Necessity of a public death for the doctrine of the Resurrection. PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP
§23.
Necessity of a public death for the doctrine of the
Resurrection.
But even if, without any disease and without any
pain, He had hidden His body away privily and by Himself “in263 a corner,” or in a desert place, or in
a house, or anywhere, and afterwards suddenly appeared and said that He
had been raised from the dead, He would have seemed on all hands to be
telling idle tales264 , and what He said
about the Resurrection would have been all the more discredited, as
there was no one at all to witness to His death. Now, death must
precede resurrection, as it would be no resurrection did not death
precede; so that if the death of His body had taken place anywhere in
secret, the death not being apparent nor taking place before witnesses,
His Resurrection too had been hidden and without evidence. 2. Or why,
while when He had risen He proclaimed the Resurrection, should He cause
His death to take place in secret? or why, while He drove out evil
spirits in the presence of all, and made the man blind from his birth
recover his sight, and changed the
water into wine, that by these means He might be believed to be the
Word of God, should He not manifest His mortal nature as incorruptible
in the presence of all, that He might be believed Himself to be the
Life? 3. Or how were His disciples to have boldness in speaking of the
Resurrection, were they not able to say that He first died? Or how
could they be believed, saying that death had first taken place and
then the Resurrection, had they not had as witnesses of His death the
men before whom they spoke with boldness? For if, even as it was, when
His death and Resurrection had taken place in the sight of all, the
Pharisees of that day would not believe, but compelled even those who
had seen the Resurrection to deny it, why, surely, if these things had
happened in secret, how many pretexts for disbelief would they have
devised? 4. Or how could the end of death, and the victory over it be
proved, unless challenging it before the eyes of all He had shewn it to
be dead, annulled for the future by the incorruption of His body?E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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