hy they or any man
else should think it a thing incredible that God should raise the
dead.

I shall speak to these two propositions as briefly as I can; and then
show what influence this doctrine of the resurrection ought to have
upon our lives.

First, that it was thought by some a thing incredible that God should
raise the dead. This St. Paul has reason to suppose, having from his
own experience found men so averse from the entertaining of this
doctrine. When he preached to the philosophers at Athens, and declared
to them the resurrection of one Jesus from the dead, they were amazed
at this new doctrine, and knew not what he meant by it. They said, "he
seemeth to be a setter forth of strange gods, because he preached unto
them Jesus and the resurrection." He had discoursed to them of the
resurrection of one Jesus from the dead; but this business of the
resurrection of one Jesus from the dead was a thing so remote from
their apprehensions that they had no manner of conception of it; but
understood him quite in another sense, as if he had declared to them
two new deities, Jesus and Anastasis; as if he had brought a new god
and a new goddess among them, Jesus and the Resurrection. And when he
discoursed to them again more fully of this matter, it is said that,
"when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, they mocked." And at
the twenty-fourth verse of this twenty-sixth chapter, when he spake of
the resurrection, Festus told him he would hear him no further, and
that he looked upon him as a man beside himself, whom much learning
had made mad. Festus looked upon this business of the resurrection
as the wild speculation of a crazy head. And indeed the heathens
generally, even those who believed the immortality of the soul, and
another state after this life, looked upon the resurrection of the
body as a thing impossible. Pliny, I remember, reckons it among
those things which are impossible, and which God himself can not do;
"_revocare defunctos_, to call back the dead to life"; and in the
primitive times the heathen philosophers very much derided the
Christians, upon account of this strange doctrine of the resurrection,
looking always upon this article of their faith as a ridiculous and
impossible assertion.

So easy it is for prejudice to blind the minds of men, and to
represent everything to them which hath a great appearance of
difficulty in it as impossible. But I shall endeavor to show that if
the matter be th