Even if, without any sickness or pain, He had hidden the body somewhere by Himself—in a corner, a deserted place, a house, or anywhere else—and then suddenly appeared and said that He had risen from the dead, everyone would have thought that He was telling stories. His claim about the Resurrection would have been even less believable, since no one at all would have witnessed His death. Death must come before resurrection, for there can be no resurrection unless death precedes it. Therefore, if the death of His body had taken place secretly, without being visible or witnessed, His Resurrection also would have been hidden and without witnesses.
Again, why should He die a secret death, when He proclaimed the fact of His rising openly? Why should He drive out evil spirits and heal the man blind from birth and change water into wine, all publicly, in order to convince men that He was the Word, and not also declare publicly that incorruptibility of His mortal body, so that He might Himself be believed to be the Life?
How could His disciples have spoken boldly about the Resurrection if they could not say that He first died? And how could they have been believed when they said that death occurred first and the Resurrection afterward, unless the very people before whom they spoke boldly were witnesses of His death? Even though both the death and the Resurrection took place in the sight of all, the Pharisees of that time refused to believe and compelled those who had seen the Resurrection to deny it. If these events had happened in secret, how many pretexts for unbelief would they have devised?
Or how could the end of death and the victory over it have been declared, had not the Lord thus challenged it before the sight of all, and by the incorruption of His body proved that from then on it was annulled and void?