that sense and reason are not so much concerned in the case as the Gentleman imagines.  For I ask, Is it from the evidence of sense, or the evidence of reason that people of warm climates think it contrary to nature, that water should grow solid, and become ice?  As for sense, they see indeed that water with them is always liquid; but none of their senses tell them that it can never grow solid.  As for reason, it can never so inform them; for right reason can never contradict the truth of things.  Our senses then inform us rightly what the usual course of things is; but when we conclude that things cannot be otherwise, we outrun the information of our senses, and the conclusion stands upon prejudice, and not upon reason.  And yet such conclusions form what is generally called the course of nature.  And when men upon proper evidence and informations admit things contrary to this presupposed course of nature, they do not, as the Gentleman expresses it, quit their own sense and reason; but, in truth, they quit their own mistakes and prejudices.

In the case before us, the case of the resurrection, the great difficulty arises from the like prejudice.  We all know by experience that all men die, and rise no more; therefore we conclude, that for a dead man to rise to life again, is contrary to the course of nature.  And certainly it is contrary to the uniform and settled course of things.  But if we argue from hence that it is contrary and repugnant to the real laws of nature and absolutely impossible on that account, we argue without any foundation to support us either from our senses or our reason.  We cannot learn from our eyes, or feeling, or any other sense, that it is impossible for a dead body to live again; if we learn it at all, it must be from our reason; and yet what one maxim of reason is contradicted by the supposition of a resurrection?  For my own part; when I consider how I live; that all animal motions necessary to my life are independent of my will; that my heart beats without my consent and without my direction; that digestion and nutrition are performed by methods to which I am not conscious; that my blood moves in a perpetual round, which is contrary to all known laws of motion:  I cannot but think, that the preservation of my life, in every moment of it, is as great an act of power, as is necessary to raise a dead man to life.  And whoever so far reflects upon his own being as to acknowledge that he owes it to a superior power, must needs think, that the same power which gave life to senseless matter at first, and set all the springs and movements a-going at the beginning, can restore life to dead body.  For surely it is not a greater thing to give life to a body once dead, than to a body that never was alive.

In the next place must be considered the difficulties which the gentleman has laid before you, with regard to the nature of Christ’s body after the resurrection.  He has produced some passages which which, he thinks, imply, that the body was not a real natural body, but a mere phantom, or apparition:  and thence concludes, that there being no real object of sense, there can be no evidence in the case.