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200 Credibility of the Gospel History.
here speaks of two remarkable revelations, and two different
raptures, one into the third heaven, the other into paradise
and he thinks that they who carefully attend to the expressions
of the npostle will perceive, that he does not speak
of paradise and the third heaven as one and the same place,
or suppose paradise to be in the third heaven.
3. Theodoi'et has quoted this passage of Methodius out
of his discourse Concerning- Martyrs :
' For,' says^ he,
' martyrdom is so admirable and desirable that the Lord
Jesus Christ himself, the Son of God, was pleased to be a
martyr, not esteeming it a thing- to be earnestly sought, to
be like God, that he might bless man to whom he had descended,
with this gift also :' see Philip, ii. 6. This is the
entire passage as given us by Theodofet. Bishop Bull'"
understood the expression of St. Paul here made use of in
the sense of our English version, " thought it not robbery
to be equal with God :" and he refers to a place of Petavius,
where he also is supposed to be of the same opinion. Nevertheless
it seems to me that, in this passage of Methodius,
the expression can admit of no other meaning than that in
the translation I have made, and that it must denote a voluntary
humiliation of Jesus Christ. There is likewise a passage
in the Banquet where Methodius refers to Philip, ii. 6, 7;
I put it in the" margin : I suppose it does not weaken but
confirm the interpretation 1 have given of the expression in
the sixth verse ; which sense, it is certain, appears frequently
in the christian writers of the third century.
4. St. Paul writes : " And the dead in Christ shall
rise first: then we which are alive:" 1 Thess. iv. 16, 17.
" we
By " the dead," y Methodius understood our bodies :
which are alive," are our souls, which receive " the dead,"
that is, our bodies, out of the earth : then " we," soul and
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