N34404:700
Human nature in its fourfold state ... In several practical discourses
Human nature in its fourfold state ... In several practical discourses. / By Mr. Thomas Boston, late Minister of the Gospel at Etterick.
United States : s.n. Printed for the booksellers., M,DCC,LXXXVII. 1787
State 4 › Part 3 › DOCTRINE. There shall be a Resurrection of the Dead.
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
Can men make curious glasses out of ashes. reduce •er• into ashes, and raise them again out of these ashes, restore them to their former beauty; and cannot the great Creator, who […] things of nothing, raise man's body, after it is reduced into dust. If […] object•, How can man's bodies be raised up again after they are dissolved into dust, and the ashes of many generations are mingled: gr• Scripture and not reason furnish 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 […] be done. How small a portion do we know of his ways! how absolutely the incapable are we of • ing distinctly of the extent of a•nty power, and much more […] comprehending its actings, and the method of procedure […] ⟨p. 252⟩but many illiterate men are as great infidels to many chemical 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 a• 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 noways 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 lame and inadequate a conception. then, must a f•it ▪ nature have of the power of that which is infinit•! tho we cannot conceive how God acts, yet we ought to believe he can do above what we can think o can conceive of.