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after death, and believed death to be ultima linea rerum, "the last line and bound of things," beyond which the concerns of men are no farther extended. I doubt not but this is a true account of our Saviour's reasoning in that famous text, which some learned interpreters have strangely perplexed, for want of attending to the whole connection of the Sadducees' doctrine above observed. Certainly, if our Saviour's reasoning had been so subtle, intricate, and elaborate, as some expositors have made it, it had been impossible for the common people to have understood the force of it. But that the multitude themselves presently apprehended it, and wondered at our Saviour's convincing way of arguing, is expressly affirmed. " And when the multitude heard this, they were astonished at his doctrine *." The multitude were on the Pharisees' side against the Sadducees, as Josephus and others assure us. This multitude presently conceived the text alleged and urged by our Saviour, to be a clear proof that the holy Patriarchs subsisted and lived after the death of their bodies. And they knew this to be an effectual refutation of the whole doctrine of the Sadducees, who held that there is no life after this present life, but that men die as the beasts that perish. Thus the doctrine of the immortality of man's soul, and it's subsistence after the death of the

* Matt. xxii. 33.

body, appears to be the plain doctrine of Christ and his apostles, delivered in the New Testament. But lest we should yet suspect ourselves to be deceived in the sense of those evident texts of Scripture (as some would fain persuade us, that we dream when we are awake, and that the sun shines not at the brightest noon) I add, that the Catholic Church of Christ after the apostles, ever acknowledged the same doctrine, and reckoned it among the undoubted Articles of the Christian Religion. You have already heard the judgment of those doctors and martyrs of the Church, who lived in or very near the apostles' times; how they believed that the soul of every man presently after death hath a place to go to, and dies not with the body. And the same tradition was constantly held and maintained in the Church all along afterwards, insomuch that the doctrine is to be found in the most ancient liturgies, as hath been above observed, wherein it was unfit that any disputable problem should have a place. Nor would the Church ever tolerate or suffer any man, under her government, to teach the contrary opinion.

To pass by the dreams of those infamous heretics the Valentinians, the first, to my best remembrance, that universally affirmed the dissolution of all men's souls together with their bodies, were certain heterodox persons of Arabia, about the middle of the

third century, mentioned by Eusebius in his sixth Book of Ecclesiastical History, chap. xxxvii. where he tells us that they held, "That the souls of men in this present world, die and perish together with their bodies, but that at the resurrection they return again to life, together with the same bodies *." Against these novelists a great council was presently called, wherein the famous Origen was present; and he by his arguments so effectually dealt with them, that they renounced their error, and so prevented the anathema of the council, that would otherwise certainly have been denounced against them.

I add over and above, that the subsistence of the soul of man after the death of his body, was a tradition generally, nay, I think, universally received among the civilized heathen nations. For, though certain wrangling and contentious philosophers among them disputed the matter, and by disputing came at last most of them to doubt of it, and some of them flatly to deny it, yet this could not hinder but that the notion still prevailed among the generality of men in every age and nation. Nay, in that part of the world which for so many ages remained undiscovered and unknown to the rest of the earth (there being no very ancient historian or writer extant, that gives us any certain account of it) I say, in that part of the world which is called America, when it was first discovered by the Christians, this faith of the soul's immortality was found to obtain. Joseph Acosta, a learned Spaniard, and an approved author, who had lived in those parts, tells us, L. 5. c. 7. that the Indians of Peru believed commonly that the souls of men lived after this present life. Nay, in that region of America which is called Nova Francia, New France, although, when it was first discovered, the people were found rude and barbarous, insomuch that a good author saith of them, "That they are not bound by any laws, nor observe any good customs, but live as beasts devoid of reason;" yet even of these the same author thus testifieth: "They believe the immortality of men's souls, and say, that when they leave their bodies they go to another region, where their deceased friends are*." Moreover, Lerius tells us of a strange sort of people in America, of a hard name, (they are called by him, To vou pinam baultii) who acknowledge no particular God at all, but only in general certain spirits

* Τὴν ἀνθρωπείαν ψυχὴν τέως μὲν κατὰ τὸν ἐνεστῶτα καιρὸν, ἅμα τῇ τελευτῇ συναποθνήσκειν τοῖς σώμασι καὶ συνδιαφθείρεσθαι, αὖθις δέ ποτε κατὰ τὸν τῆς ἀναστάσεως καιρὸν σὺν αὐτοῖς ἀναβιώσεσθαι.

* Animarum credunt immortalitatem, dicuntque; quod postquam ex corpore migrârunt, tunc in aliam migrant regionem, ubi amici illorum defuncti reperiuntur.

with whom their priests converse, from whom they believe themselves to receive courage and success in war, and the productions of the fruits of the earth: and, therefore, they are instanced in by some as a nation atheistical, though unjustly, for those spirits which they acknowledge are their gods. However, these very men (as the same Lerius informs us) confess that " the souls of the virtuous," that is, of those who have valiantly defended their country, for this seems to be the chiefest, if not the only virtue, which they admired, " do presently after death fly beyond certain very high mountains, and at last light on most pleasant gardens, where they lead a merry life in perpetual delights and dances: and that on the other side, the souls of cowards and degenerate souls go ad stignan, that is, to the devil, and live in torments with him." In a word, I am yet to seek for that nation in the world, among whom the primitive religion, taught by God to the first men, is so utterly corrupted and lost, but that they have still some notion remaining among them of the soul's immortality and permanence after death.

To conclude, therefore, let us firmly adhere to this confessed truth, this great truth, this fundamental truth, not only of our Christian Religion, but of religion in general. Let us take heed of those men who, professing to believe the resurrec

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