Discourses, or, Sermons on several Scriptures

We find the Apostle to the Corinthians, ¹complaining that the Greeks, who were then the great Masters of Wisdom and Learning, esteemed a crucified Christ Foolishness, and thought those Men little befriended by Reason, that would depend for Life upon one that lost his own; and venture to take off the Shamefulness of the Cross, or to silence those Scoffs that were cast upon them for their Credulity, who affirm the wonderful Resurrection of a dead Saviour, and his glorious Triumph over Death and the Grave. For this seemed to them no other than to solve an Absurdity by an Impossibility, and make Reason more suspicious, in that they judged the Fundamentals of Reason must be overthrown, to make the Fundamentals of Christianity any way tolerable or possible. Wherefore we find that even at Athens, that great Concourse of ⟨p. 91⟩Wits, where all the Sect of Philosophers made their common Retreat; yet when St. Paul preached to them Jesus, and the Resurrection, this Doctrine seemed so absurd and foolish to them, and so contrary to all Principles of right Reason, that they forgot that Civility that usually is found in Men of inquisitive Spirits, and brake out into open Reproaches and Revilings; ²What will this Babbler say? because he preached to them Jesus, and the Resurrection. No doubt they wanted not very specious Arguments to urge against the Resurrection of the Body: As first, The Impossibility of a Recollection of the dispersed Particles of Men, resolved into their Elements, and scattered by the four Winds of Heaven; though it might be very well retorted on the Epicureans, who disputed with St. Paul, against the Resurrection, that it was not so unlikely ⟨p. 92⟩a thing that there might be a Re-union of the scattered Parts of the same Man, as the fortuitous Concourse of Atoms at the first Making of the World; yet this Objection overbore and prevailed with Heathens, that when they burnt the Bodies of Christians, they cast their Ashes into the Rivers, to confute their Hopes of ever being raised again; from whence they should be carried away into an unknown Ocean, and there be made the Sport of Winds and Waves. But what our Saviour says upon the same Occasion to the Sadducees, may be said unto these Men; You err,