their dead, if
there were not a resurrection of the same body; for any dust formed
into a living body and united to the soul, would serve the turn? We
will therefore take it for granted that the very same body will
be raised, and I doubt not, even in this sense, to vindicate the
possibility of the resurrection from both these objections.

First, against the resurrection in general of the same body; it is
pretended impossible, after the bodies of men are moldered into dust,
and by infinite accidents have been scattered up and down the world,
and have undergone a thousand changes, to re-collect and rally
together the very same parts of which they consisted before. This the
heathens used to object to the primitive Christians; for which reason
they also used to burn the bodies of the martyrs, and to scatter their
ashes in the air, to be blown about by the wind, in derision of their
hopes of a resurrection.

I know not how strong malice might make this objection to appear; but
surely in reason it is very weak; for it wholly depends upon a gross
mistake of the nature of God and his providence, as if it did not
extend to the smallest things; as if God did not know all things that
He hath made, and had them not always in His view, and perfectly
under His command; and as if it were a trouble and burden to infinite
knowledge and power to understand and order the least things; whereas
infinite knowledge and power can know and manage all things with as
much ease as we can understand and order any one thing; so that this
objection is grounded upon a low and false apprehension of the Divine
nature, and is only fit for Epicurus and his herd, who fancied to
themselves a sort of slothful and unthinking deities, whose happiness
consisted in their laziness, and a privilege to do nothing.

I proceed therefore to the second objection, which is more close
and pressing; and this is leveled against the resurrection in some
particular instances. I will mention but two, by which all the rest
may be measured and answered.

One is, of those who are drowned in the sea, and their bodies eaten up
by fishes, and turned into their nourishment: and those fishes perhaps
eaten afterward by men, and converted into the substance of their
bodies.

The other is of the cannibals; some of whom, as credible relations
tell us, have lived wholly or chiefly on the flesh of men; and
consequently the whole, or the greater part of the substance of their
bodies