during the life of their divine Master, unable to comprehend what was meant by the rifing again from the dead; though, at his arraignment, they all forfook him and fled; though, after his crucifixion, they lamented their fallen hopes, and thought that they had falfely trufted that it had been he, who should have redeemed Ifrael; yet no fooner had Jefus appeared to them, fo as fully to convince them of the reality of his refurrection, than they boldly preached in his name, in oppofition to all the combined powers and interefts of the world, and chearfully fubmitted to the heaviest torments that could be inflicted upon them. And whence could this proceed, but from a firm faith and affurance of the refurrection, which confirmed to them the divine mission and authority of their crucified Saviour, and taught them to look for a state of happiness hereafter, when all the fufferings and miferies of this frail life should be no more?

But 3dly. As we have undeniable proof that our Saviour rofe again from the dead, fo his refurrection alfo is an undeniable pledge and affurance of our own.

VOL. II.

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Of all the articles of our holy religion, there has been none more zealously contradicted than that of the refurrection of the body; and that for this plain and obvious reafon : because none is a greater check upon the lives and manners of men. For if we are to rife again, then our hopes do not end in death: then the joy of the present moment is not the only object of the finner's care there is a thought of hereafter, which will damp the smile of triumphant guilt: there is a hand-writing upon the wall, which will change the finner's countenance in the midst of his impious enjoyments: then there are rewards to animate the defponding, and punishments to terrify the presumptuous. As then these confequences all clearly follow from the doctrine of the refurrection, it cannot be wondered, that it should at all times have been oppofed by thofe, whose wicked lives lead them to wifh, that all their guilty thoughts might perish, that there was indeed no hereafter to bring to light their hidden things of darkness, and lay open the black and treacherous fecrets of their hearts.

But vainly will the finner hope to fleep the fleep of death, or, "that he fhall not return

"out of darkness:" the refurrection of Chrift from the dead will leave us no room to doubt of our own. For if he could by his own almighty power break the bonds of death and triumphover the grave, how should he not be able to make good his promises, and to perform that in others, which he performed in his own perfon? With that flesh and blood, of which we are now partakers, he afcended up on high, and led captivity captive: with his own right hand and with his holy arm he gat himself the victory: nor is his arm shortened, that he fhould not raise up us by the fame power with which he raised himself. We shall therefore live, and shall not die eternally: we fhall live and declare the glory of the Lord: all they that go down into the duft fhall kneel before him the grave fhall hear his voice, and give up her dead: he will call our scattered remains from the bowels of the earth and the depths of the fea. The dispersed tribes of the remoteft nations, the mouldering millions of ancient times, shall all awake at the voice of the trumpet: for the trumpet fhall found, and the dead fhall be raised incorruptible. The unhappy father of mankind fhall look down with fhame upon the

first and latest of his pofterity, whom his tranfgreffion in paradife condemned to fin and forrow, through all the ages of the world; whilst the judge of the world shall smile upon thofe, whom he has redeemed from mifery and the fhadow of death, and receive them with that tranfporting welcome, "come, ye "bleffed children of my Father, receive the. kingdom prepared for you from the foun"dation of the world."

Happy they who fhall be found in that bleffed number! Happy they who prepare themselves by a life of virtue here, to be found amongst that bleffed number hereafter! To them a refurrection from the dead is indeed a noble and tranfporting profpect. It is an exemption from all the cares and difappointments of life: it is the exchange of dif eafe and frailty for life and glory it is the putting on immortality and incorruption : it is the being reunited to our long loft friends, to the arms of tender parents, to the friends of our love, or the children of our bofom: it is an approach unto mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerufalem, and to an innumerable company of angels,

angels, to the general affembly and church of the first born, which are written in heaven, and to God the judge of all, and to the spirits of juft men made perfect, and to Jefus the mediator of the new covenant. These are indeed noble fruits of a resurrection from the dead; fufficient to warm the coldeft, and make the weakest ftrong. They are fufficient to make us defpife the miseries of life and the terrors of mortality, and to cry out with the glorious exultation of the Apostle, "O "death, where is thy fting! O grave, where "is thy victory! The fting of death is fin, "and the strength of fin is the law: but "thanks be to God, which giveth us the "victory through our Lord Jefus Christ !"

But if a refurrection from the dead be thus a fountain of confolation to the good and virtuous, it is no less a fountain of terror to the guilty. For reflect, O finner, what it is to appear before an all-seeing and just God: to ftand felf-condemned and trembling before the awful judge of quick and dead! to have all thy fecret fins and midnight follies laid open and disclosed; to have all the generations of the world stand around thee, witnesses of thy

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