For in this we groan,— The following seems the best and most unexceptionable exposition of the very difficult passage before us: "And in this view we groan, through that intenseness of spirit with which we are earnestly and perpetually desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven; since, being so clothed upon, we should not be found naked, and exposed to any evil and inconvenience, how entirely soever we may be stripped of every thing that we can call our own here below. And moreover we who are yet in this tabernacle do groan, not onlywith those longings after a blessed immortality, but also being burthened with the present weight of many infirmities and calamities. For which cause, nevertheless, we would not be unclothed or stripped of the body; for that is what we cannot consider as in itself desirable; but rather, if it might be referred to our own choice, clothed upon immediately with a glory like that which shall invest the saints after the resurrection; that so what is mortal, corruptible, and obnoxious to these disorders, burdens, and sorrows, may all be so absorbed and swallowed up by life, as if it were annihilated by that divine vigour and energy which shall then exert itself in and upon us." See 1 Corinthians 15:53.

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