ristianity (Heb. v. 1, 2), for
truly these two--the immortality of the soul and the resurrection of the
mortal body--are the two ground-stones or pillars of true religion, which,
if they be not well settled in the hearts of men, all religion is
tottering and ruinous and unable to support itself. That the soul cannot
taste death or see corruption, and that the body shall but taste it, and,
as it were, salute it, and cannot always abide under the power of it,
these are the prime foundations upon which all Christian persuasion is
built. For without these be laid down in the lowest and deepest part of
the heart, all exhortations to an holy and righteous life are weak and
ineffectual, all consolations are empty and vain. In a word, religion is
but an airy speculation, that hath no consistence but in the imaginations
of men,--it is a house upon sand, that can abide no blast of temptation, no
wave of misery, but must straightway fall to the ground. From whence is
it, I pray you, that the persuasions of the gospel have so little power
upon men,--that the plain and plentiful publication of a Saviour is of so
small virtue to stir up the hearts of men to take hold on him? How comes
it to pass that the precepts and prohibitions of the most high God, coming
forth under his authority, lay so little restraint on men's
corruptions,--that so few will be persuaded to stop their course, and come
off the ways that they are accustomed to,--that men pull away the shoulder
and stop the ear, and make their hearts as adamant, incapable of being
affected with either the authority or love of the gospel,--that when he
pipes unto us so few dance, and when he mourns so few lament? Is it not
because these two foundations are not laid, and men's hearts not digged
deep by earnest consideration to receive these ground-stones of
Christianity,--the belief of their souls, eternal survivance after the
dust, and of the revivance and resurrection of the body, after it hath
slept a while in the dust? I remember heathens have had some noble and
rare conceptions about virtue, and some have laboured to enamour men with
the native beauty of it, and to persuade them that it was a sufficient
reward to itself.(206) And truly it would far more become a Christian,--who
knoweth the high and divine pattern of holiness to be God himself, and so
must needs behold a far surpassing beauty and excellency in the image of
God than in all earthly things,--I say, it would become him