THE RESURRECTION.

When man was not, what power, what causes made him to be? Whatsoever it was, it did then as great a work as to raise his body to the same being again; and because we know not the method of nature's secret changes, and how we can be fashioned beneath "in secreto terræ," and cannot handle and discern the possibilities and seminal powers in the ashes of dissolved bones, must our ignorance in philosophy be put in balance against the articles of religion, the hopes of mankind, the faith of nations, and the truth of God? And are our opinions of the power of God so low, that our understanding must be his measure, and he shall be confessed to do nothing unless it be made plain in our philosophy? Certainly we have a low opinion of God unless we believe he can do more things than we can understand. But let us hear St. Paul's demonstration; if the corn dies and lives again; if it lays its body down, suffers alteration, dissolution and death, but at the spring rises again in the verdure of a leaf, in the fulness of the ear, in the kidneys of wheat; if it proceeds from little to great, from nakedness to ornament, from emptiness to

plenty, from unity to multitude, from death to life; be a Sadducee no more, shame not thy understanding, and reproach not the weakness of thy faith, by thinking that corn can be restored to life, and man cannot; especially since in every creature the obediential capacity is infinite, and cannot admit degrees; for every creature can be any thing under the power of God, which cannot be less than infinite.

But we find no obscure footsteps of this mystery even amongst the heathens. Pliny reports that Appion the grammarian, by the use of the plant Osiris, called Homer from his grave; and in Valerius Maximus, we find that Ælius Tubero returned to life when he was seated in his funeral pile; and in Plutarch, that Soleus, after three days' burial, did live; and in Valerius, that Æris Pamphilius did so after ten days. And it was so commonly believed, that Glaucus, who was choaked in a vessel of honey, did rise again, that it grew to a proverb; "Glaucus poto melle surrexit," Glaucus having tasted honey, died and lived again. I pretend not to believe these stories to be true; but from these instances it may be concluded, that they believed it possible that there should be a resurrection from the dead; and natural reason, and their philosophy did not wholly destroy their

hopes and expectation to have a portion in this article.

For God, knowing that the great hopes of man, that the biggest endearment of religion, the sanction of private justice, the band of piety and holy courage, does wholly derive from the article of the resurrection, was pleased not only to make it credible, but easy and familiar to us; and we so converse every night with the image of death, that every morning we find an argument of the resurrection. Sleep and death have but one mother, and they have one name in common.

Charnel-houses are but cemeteries or sleeping-places, and they that die are fallen asleep, and the resurrection is but an awakening and standing up from sleep. But in sleep our senses are as fast bound by nature, as our joints are by the grave-clothes; and unless an angel of God awaken us every morning, we must confess ourselves as unable to converse with men, as we now are afraid to die and to converse with spirits.

I will not now insist upon the story of the rising bones seen every year in Egypt, nor the pretences of the chymists, that they from the ashes of flowers can reproduce from the same materials the same beauties in color and figure; for he that proves a certain truth from an un

certain argument, is like him that wears a wooden leg when he hath two sound legs already; it hinders his going, but helps him not. The truth of God stands not in need of such supporters; nature alone is a sufficient preacher. Night and day, the sun returning to the same point of east, every change of species in the same matter, generation and corruption, the eagle renewing her youth, and the snake her skin, the silk-worm and the swallows, the care of posterity and the care of an immortal name, winter and summer, the fall and spring, the Old Testament and the New, the words of Job, and the visions of the Prophets, the prayer of Ezekiel for the resurrection of the men of Ephraim, and the return of Jonas from the whale's belly, the histories of the Jews and the narratives of Christians, the faith of believers and the philosophy of the reasonable, all join in the verification of this mystery. And amongst these heaps it is not of the least consideration, that there was never any good man, who having been taught this article, but if he served God, he also relied upon this. If he believed God, he believed this.

RESURRECTION OF SINNERS.

So have we seen a poor condemned criminal, the weight of whose sorrows sitting heavily upon his soul, hath benumbed him into a deep sleep, till he hath forgotten his groans, and laid aside his deep sighings; but on a sudden comes the messenger of death, and unbinds the poppy garland, scatters the heavy cloud that encircled his miserable head, and makes him return to acts of life, that he may quickly descend into death and be no more. So is every sinner that lies down in shame, and makes his grave with the wicked; he shall indeed rise again, and be called upon by the voice of the archangel; but then he shall descend into sorrows greater than the reason and the patience of a man, weeping and shrieking louder than the groans of the miserable children in the valley of Hinnom.

THE DIVINE BOUNTY.

That our desires are so provided for by nature and art, by ordinary and extraordinary,