Suppose a man should tell you, that he was come from the dead, you would be apt to suspect his evidence.  But what would you suspect?  That he was not alive when you heard him, saw him, felt him, and conversed with him?  You could not suspect this, without giving up all your senses and acting in this case as you act in no other.  Here then you would question, whether the man had ever been dead?  But would you say, that it is incapable of being made plain by human testimony, that this or that man died a year ago?  It can’t be said.  Evidence in this case is admitted in all courts perpetually

Consider it the other way.  Suppose you saw a man publicly executed, his body afterwards was wounded by the executioner, and carried and laid in the grave; that after this you should be told, that the man was come to life again; what would you suspect in this case?  Not that the man had never been dead; for that you saw yourself:  but you would suspect whether he was now alive.  But would you say this case excluded all human testimony and that men could not possibly discern , whether one with whom they conversed familiarly was alive or no?  Upon what ground could you say this?  A man rising from the grave is an object of sense, and can give the same evidence of his being alive, as any other man in the world can give.  So that a resurrection considered only as a fact to be proved by evidence, is a plain case; it requires no greater ability in the witnesses, than that they be able to distinguish between a man dead, and a man alive:  a point in which I believe every man living thinks himself a judge.

I do allow that this case, and others of like nature, require more evidence to give them credit than ordinary cases do.  You may therefore require more evidence in these, than in other cases; but it is absurd to say, that such cases admit no evidence, when the things in question are manifestly objects of sense.

I allow further, that the Gentleman has rightly stated the difficulty upon the foot of common prejudice; and that it arises from hence, that such cases appear to be contrary to the course of nature.  But I desire to consider what this course of nature is.  Every man, from the lowest countryman to the highest philosopher frames to himself from his experience and observation, a notion of a course of nature; and is ready to say of everything reported to him that contradicts his experience, that it is contrary to nature.  But will the Gentleman say, that everything is impossible or even improbable, that contradicts the notion which men frame to themselves of the course of nature?  I think he will not say it.  And if he will, he must say that water can never freeze; for it is absolutely inconsistent with the notion which men have of the course of nature, who live in the warm climates.  And hence it appears, that when men talk of the course of nature, they really talk of their own prejudices and imaginations; and