an express
Declaration of Everlasting Rewards and Punishments annex'd to our
Obedience, or Disobedience, to the Law of Nature (tho' such a Future
State may be reasonably infer'd from all things happening alike to the
Good, and to the Bad in this World, and from Men's Natural desire of
Immortality) is yet but a necessary inforcement of the Law of Nature
to the far greatest part of Mankind, who stand in need of this
knowledge, and are uncapable of an Inference so repugnant to what
their Senses daily tell them in the case; and wherein the Truth
asserted has scarcely ever procur'd an unwavering assent from the most
rational of the Heathen Philosophers themselves. Now the
unquestionable certainty of a Future State, wherein Men shall receive
Everlasting Rewards, and Punishments, we alone owe the knowledge of to
Jesus Christ, _who only has brought Life and Immortality to Light_.
The willingest to believe the Souls Immortality were before our
Saviours coming, at best, doubtful concerning it; and the generality
of Mankind, were yet far less perswaded of it.

Fables indeed concerning a life hereafter (wherein there were Rewards
and Punishments) the _Greeks_ had; and from them, they were deriv'd
to some other Nations; but that for Fables they were taken is evident,
and we are expressly told so by _Diodorus Siculus_, who applauding the
Honours done to Good Men at their Funerals, by the _Egyptians, because
of that warning and encouragement which it gave to the Living to be
mindful of their Duty_, says, _That the Greeks, as to what concern'd
the Rewards of the Just, and the Punishment of the Impious, had
nothing among them but invented Fables and Poetical Fictions which
never wrought upon Men for the Amendment of their Lives; but on the
contrary, were despis'd and laugh'd at by them_.

Whether, or no, Men should subsist after Death depending plainly upon
the good Pleasure of their Maker, the Pagan World (to whom God had not
reveal'd his Will herein) could not possibly have any certainty of a
Life after this. Arguments there were (as has been said) that might
induce rational Men to hope for a future Existence as a thing
probable; and they did so: But the Gross of Mankind saw not the Force
of these Reasonings to be perswaded thereby of a thing so
inconceivable by them as that the Life of the Person was not totally
extinguish'd in the Death of the Body; and a Resurrection to Life, was
what they thought not of, the certainty of which,