om a perfect privation to
a habit, and that a body perfectly dead should be restored to life
again: but for all this no man that believes in a God who made the
world, and this natural frame of things, but must think it very
reasonable to believe that He can do things far above the power of
anything that He hath made.

Thirdly. This question implies that it is not a thing incredible to
natural reason that God should be able to raise the dead. I do not say
that by natural light we can discover that God will raise the dead;
for that, depending merely upon the will of God, can no otherwise be
certainly known than by divine revelation: but that God can do this
is not at all incredible to natural reason. And this is sufficiently
implied in the question which St. Paul asks, in which he appeals to
Festus and Agrippa, neither of them Christians, "why should it be
thought a thing incredible with you that God should raise the dead?"
And why should he appeal to them concerning the credibility of this
matter if it be a thing incredible to natural reason?

That it is not, I shall first endeavor to prove, and then to answer
the chief objections against the possibility of it.

And I prove it thus: it is not incredible to natural reason that God
made the world, and all the creatures in it; that mankind is His
offspring; and that He gives us life and breath, and all things. This
was acknowledged and firmly believed by many of the heathens. And
indeed, whoever believes that the being of God may be known by natural
light, must grant that it may be known by the natural light of reason
that God made the world; because one of the chief arguments of the
being of God is taken from those visible effects of wisdom, and power,
and goodness, which we see in the frame of the world. Now He that can
do the greater can undoubtedly do the less; He that made all things of
nothing, can much more raise a body out of dust; He who at first gave
life to so many inanimate beings, can easily restore that which is
dead to life again. It is an excellent saying of one of the Jewish
rabbis: He who made that which was not, to be, can certainly make that
which was once, to be again. This hath the force of a demonstration;
for no man that believes that God hath done the one, can make any
doubt but that He can, if He please, do the other.

This seems to be so very clear, that they must be strong objections
indeed, that can render it incredible.

There are but two