HEAD III.

THE RESURRECTION.

JOHN V. 28, 29.

Marvel not at this; For the hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice: And shall come forth; they that have done good unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil unto the resurrection of damnation.

TH

HESE words are part of the defence our Lord Jesus Christ makes for himself, when persecuted by the Jews for curing the impotent man, and ordering him to carry away his bed on the Sabbath; and for vindicating his conduct, when accused by them of having thereby profaned that day. On this occasion, he professeth himself not only Lord of the Sabbath, but also Lord of life and death; declaring, in the words of the text, the resurrection of the dead to be brought to pass by his power. This he introduceth with these words, as with a solemn preface, Marvel not at this ; i. e. at this strange discourse of mine: Do not wonder to hear me, whose appearance is so very mean in your eyes, talk at this rate; for the day is coming, in which the dead shall be raised by my power.

and come

Observe in this text, (1.) The doctrine of the resurrection asserted, All that are in the graves,shall hear his voice, forth. The dead bodies, which are reduced to dust, shall revive,and evidence life by hearing and moving. (2.) The author of it, Jesus Christ, the Son of man, ver. 27. The dead shall hear his voice, and be raised thereby. (3.)

The number that shall be raised, All that are in the graves, i. e. all the dead bodies of men, howsoever differently disposed of, as it were, in different kinds of graves; or all the dead, good or bad. They are not all buried in graves, properly so called; some are burnt to ashes, some drowned, and buried in the bellies of fishes; yea some devoured by man-eaters called Cannibals; but wheresoever the matter or substance, of which the body was composed, is to be found, thence they shall come forth. (4.) The great distinction that shall be made betwixt the godly and the wicked. They shall indeed both rise again in the resurrection. None of the godly will be missing; though, perhaps, they either had no burial, or a very obscure one; and all the wicked shall come forth; their vaulted tombs shall hold them no longer than the voice is uttered. But the former shall have a joyful resurrection to life, while the latter have a dreadful resurrection to damnation. Lastly, The set time of this great event: There is an hour, or certain fixed period of time, appointed of God for it. We are not told when that hour will be, but that it is coming; for this among other reasons; that we may always be ready.

DOCTRINE.

There shall be a Resurrection of the Dead.

In discoursing of this subject, I shall, First, Shew the certainty of the resurrection. Secondly, I shall enquire into the nature of it: And, Lastly, Make some practical improvement of the whole.

I. In shewing the certainty of the resurrection, I shall evince, (1.) That God can raise the dead. And, (2.) That he will do it: Which are the two grounds or topics laid down by Christ himself, when disputing with the Sadducees, Mat. xxii. 29. Jesus answered and said unto them, Ye do err, not knowing the scriptures, nor the power of God.

First, Seeing God is Almighty, surely he can raise the dead. We have instances of this powerful work of God, both in the Old and New Testament. The son of the widow in Sarepta was raised from the dead, 1 Kings xvii. 22. The Shunamite's son, 2 Kings iv. 35. And the man

cast into the sepulchre of Elisha, chap. xiii. 21. In which we may observe a gradation, the second of these miraculous events being more illustrious than the first, and the third than the second. The first of these persons was raised when he was but newly dead; the prophet Elijah who raised him, being present at his decease. The second, when he had lain dead a considerable time; namely, while his mother travelled from Shurem to mount Carmel, (reckoned about the distance of sixteen miles) and returned from thence to her house with Elisha, who raised him. The last, not till they were burying him, and the corpse was cast into the prophet's grave. In like manner in the New Testament, Jairus' daughter, (Mark v. 41.) and Dorcas (Acts ix. 40.) were both raised to life, when lately dead; the widow's son in Nain, when they were carrying him out to bury him, Luke vii. 11. 15. And Lazarus, when stinking in the grave, John xi. 39. 44.

Can men make curious glasses out of ashes, reduce flowers into ashes, and raise them again out of these ashes, restoring them to their former beauty; and cannot the great Creator, who made all things of nothing, raise man's body after it is reduced into dust? If it be objected, How can men's bodies be raised up again after they are dissolved into dust, and the ashes of many generations are mingled together? Scripture and not reason, furnishes the answer, With men it is impossible,but not with God. It is absurd for men to deny that God can do a thing, because they see not how it may be done. How small a portion do we know of his ways! How absolutely incapable are we of conceiving distinctly of the extent of almighty power, and much more of comprehending its actings, and the method of procedure! I question not, but many illiterate men are as great infidels to many chymical experiments, as some learned men are to the doctrine of the resurrection; and as these last are ready to deride the former, so the Lord will have them in derision. What a mystery was it to the Indians, that the Europeans could, by a piece of paper, converse together at the distance of some hundreds of miles? And how much were they astonished to see them with their guns, produce as it were, thunder and lightning in a moment, and at pleasure kill men afar off? Shall some men do such things as are wonders in the eyes

of others, because they cannot comprehend them; and, Shall men confine the infinite power of God, within the narrow boundaries of their own shallow capacities, in a matter no ways contrary to reason? An inferior nature has but a very imperfect conception of the power of a superior. Brutes do not conceive of the actings of reason in men: And men have but lame notions of the power of angels; how low and inadequate a conception, then, must a finite nature have of the power of that which is infinite! Though we cannot conceive how God acts, yet we ought to believe he can do above what we can think or can conceive of.

Wherefore, let the bodies of men be laid in the grave; let them rot there, and be resolved into the most minute particles; or let them be burnt, and the ashes cast into rivers, or thrown up into the air, to be scattered by the wind; let the dust of a thousand generations be mingled and the streams of the dead bodies wander to and fro in the air; let birds or wild beasts eat the dead bodies, or the fishes of the sea devour them, so that the parts of human bodies, thus destroyed, pass into substantial parts of birds, beasts, or fishes; or what is more than that, let man-eaters, who themselves must die, and rise again, devour human bodies, and let others devour them again; and then let our modern Sadducees propose the question in these cases, as the ancient Sadducees did, in the case of the woman, who had been married to seven husbands successively, Mat xxii. 28. We answer, as our blessed Lord and Saviour did, ver. 26. Ye do err, not knowing the scriptures, nor the power of God. We believe God to be omniscient, and omnipotent, infinite in knowledge and in power; and hence, agreeable to the dictates of reason, we conclude the possibility of the resurrection, even in the cases supposed.

Material things may change their forms and shapes, may be resolved into the principles of which they are formed: But they are not annihilated, or reduced to nothing; nor can they be so, by any created power. God is omniscient, his understanding is infinite, therefore he knows all things whatsoever; what they were, at any time, what they are, and where they are to be found. Though the country-man, who comes into the apothecary's shop, cannot find out the drug he wants, yet the apothecary himself knows what

he has in his shop, whence it came, and where it is to be found. And in a mingle of many different seeds, the expert gardener can distinguish betwixt seed and seed: Why then may not omniscience distinguish betwixt dust and dust? Can he, who knows all things to perfection, be liable to any mistake about his own creatures! Whoso believes an infinite understanding, must needs own, that no mass of dust is so jumbled together, but God perfectly comprehends, and infallibly knows how the most minute particle, and every one of them, is to be matched. And therefore he knows where the particles of each dead body are, whether in the earth, sea, or air, how confused soever they lie. And particularly, he knows where to find the primitive substance of the man-eater; howsoever evaporated or reduced, as it were, into air or vapour, by sweat or perspiration; and how to separate the parts of the body that was eaten, from the body of the eater, howsoever incorporate, or made one body with it; and so understands, not only how, but whence, he is to bring back the primitive substance of the man-eater to its proper place; and also to separate from the man-eater's body, that part of the devoured body which goes into its substance, and is indeed but a very small part of it. It is certain, the bodies of men, as of all other animals, or living creatures, are in a continual flux; they grow, and are sustained, by daily food, so small a part whereof becomes nourishment, that the most part is evacuated. And it is reckoned that, at least as much of the food is evacuated insensibly by perspiration, as is voided by other perceptible ways. Yea, the nourishing part of the food, when assimilated, and thereby become a part of the body is evacuated by perspiration through the pores of the skin, and again supplied by the use of the food; yet the body is still reckoned one, and the same body. Whence we may conclude, that it is not essential to the resurrection of the body, that every particle of the matter, which at any time was part of a human body, should be restored to it, when it is raised up from death to life. Were it so, the bodies of men would become of so huge a size, that they would bear no resemblance of the persons. It is sufficient to denominate it the same body that died, when it is risen again; if the body that is raised be formed