For the main reason why it was
looked upon as impossible was, because it was contrary to the course
of nature that there should be any return from 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.
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