First, that it was thought by some a thing incredible that God should raise the dead.  This St. Paul has reason to suppose, having from his own experience found men so averse from the entertaining of this doctrine.  When he preached to the philosophers at Athens, and declared to them the resurrection of one Jesus from the dead, they were amazed at this new doctrine, and knew not what he meant by it.  They said, “he seemeth to be a setter forth of strange gods, because he preached unto them Jesus and the resurrection.”  He had discoursed to them of the resurrection of one Jesus from the dead; but this business of the resurrection of one Jesus from the dead was a thing so remote from their apprehensions that they had no manner of conception of it; but understood him quite in another sense, as if he had declared to them two new deities, Jesus and Anastasis; as if he had brought a new god and a new goddess among them, Jesus and the Resurrection.  And when he discoursed to them again more fully of this matter, it is said that, “when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, they mocked.”  And at the twenty-fourth verse of this twenty-sixth chapter, when he spake of the resurrection, Festus told him he would hear him no further, and that he looked upon him as a man beside himself, whom much learning had made mad.  Festus looked upon this business of the resurrection as the wild speculation of a crazy head.  And indeed the heathens generally, even those who believed the immortality of the soul, and another state after this life, looked upon the resurrection of the body as a thing impossible.  Pliny, I remember, reckons it among those things which are impossible, and which God himself can not do; “revocare defunctos, to call back the dead to life”; and in the primitive times the heathen philosophers very much derided the Christians, upon account of this strange doctrine of the resurrection, looking always upon this article of their faith as a ridiculous and impossible assertion.

So easy it is for prejudice to blind the minds of men, and to represent everything to them which hath a great appearance of difficulty in it as impossible.  But I shall endeavor to show that if the matter be thoroughly examined, there is no ground for any such apprehension.

I proceed therefore to the second proposition, namely, that this apprehension, that it is an incredible thing that God should raise the dead, is very unreasonable:  “why should it be thought a thing incredible with you, that God should raise the dead?” That is, there is no sufficient reason why any man should look upon the resurrection of the dead as a thing impossible to the power of God; the only reason why they thought it incredible being because they judged it impossible; so that nothing can be vainer than for men to pretend to believe the resurrection; and yet at the same time to grant it to be a thing in reason impossible, because no man can believe that which he thinks to be incredible; and the impossibility of a thing is the best reason any man can have to think a thing incredible.  So that the meaning of St. Paul’s question is, “why should it be thought a thing impossible that God should raise the dead?”