"contained in one common term; as that is one line, “which is not cut off or interrupted, and that one "motion, which is not discontinued by rest. But "there is no common term between that which once

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was and perished, and that which afterwards is "produced; for non-existence came between them, " and therefore they cannot be numerically the same." Vain therefore would be the expectation of good men, because they themselves should not be rewarded in the resurrection, but others for them.

To this I add, that as a resurrection cannot rightly be defended, unless we assert the permanence and subsistence of man's soul after death; so this being acknowledged, a necessity of the resurrection of his body plainly follows. In order to the demonstration whereof, we are in the first place to observe, that the body is not in man a thing adventitious or superinduced, a thing which at first he was without, and afterward was invested with; (a dream of those men, who hold a preexistence of souls or spiritual beings, afterward, for some fault committed in their primitive state, thrust down into bodies, as into prisons ;) but it is an essential part of man. Though the soul be the principal, and by far the most excellent part, (as I have said before,) yet the body too is one constitutive part of that compositum, that compounded thing which we call man. For the sacred oracles teach us, that the body of man was a thing made by God in the very first creation and constitution of man; nay, that the body was made before the soul, God first forming man out of the dust of the earth, and then breathing into his nostrils the breath of life, so that man became a living soul, Gen. ii. 7. That is, that which was taken out of the earth, and that which

was from without breathed by God into it, made in the whole one living man; the soul being here put for the whole man, as often otherwhere in the holy Scriptures. And the apostle plainly tells us, that the body, as well as the soul and spirit, belongs to the oλókλnpov, the whole of man, that whole, which he prays may be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus, that is, to the day of judgment, 1 Thess. v. 23. This being established, we thus argue. Seeing the soul of man is permanent, and subsists after the death of the body, and yet the body also belongs essentially to the constitution of man; when that body is defunct, either the soul must remain perpetually in a state of separation, and, as it were, of widowhood, or the body must be recalled to life, and again united to it.

The former hypothesis agrees not to reason. For seeing the soul alone doth not constitute human nature, that being which we call man, if the body utterly perished, would for ever remain as it were an half man, and be destitute of a part of himself. And indeed that he should be so by dispensation, and for a certain time, and for certain causes, is not absurd; but that he should continue so for ever, seems repugnant to the order of things established by the divine wisdom. In a word, if man had not sinned, the union between his soul and body should have been uninterrupted and perpetual, that is, if he had never sinned, he should never have died; but by sin came death, which dissolved the union. Yet by the grace of a new covenant in Christ, that death becomes not perpetual, and man receives a second promise of immortality. In order to which, though his body remain for a while under death, (an irreversible decree being

past, that man should return to the dust from whence he was taken,) yet his soul still subsists, and his body too shall in due time be raised again; and then the breach made by sin shall be fully healed, and the union between soul and body shall never more be dissolved, but the duration of both shall run on in lines parallel. And our Saviour expressly tells us, that they who shall be accounted worthy of a blessed resurrection, shall not, cannot die any more, Luke XX. 35, 36.

So necessarily doth a resurrection to judgment, and the soul's subsistence and permanence after death, depend each on the other; and therefore the Sadducees were very consistent in their principles, when they denied both together. And so much for the philosophy of the Sadducees in this matter.

The Pharisees on the other side held a just contrary chain of doctrines, viz. that there are certain immaterial and invisible beings, both angels, and also spirits of men distinct substances from their bodies, and subsisting after the death of their bodies, and therefore that there shall be a resurrection. He that believed one of these hypotheses believed all; and he that denied either of them equally denied the rest. Now St. Luke expressly tells us, that St. Paul openly declared himself to be on the Pharisees' side in this controversy, Acts xxiii. 6. He made indeed this profession at that time politicly, and to save himself from present danger; but yet his profession was honest and true, and void of any deceit or equivocation. And why should St. Luke together with the error of the Sadducees, in denying a resurrection, join their other opinions; that there are no such

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things as angels, or spirits of men distinct substances from their bodies, but that he believed these opinions to be equally errors with the former, and indeed to have a necessary connexion with it?

But let us hear the determination of our Lord himself in this controversy; Matt. xxii. 31, 32. But as touching the resurrection of the dead, have ye not read that which was spoken to you by God, saying, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living. Where our Saviour proves against the Sadducees, the resurrection of the dead, from the words of God concerning Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, spoken to Moses many ages after the death of those blessed patriarchs, I am the God of Abraham, &c. And he lays down this hypothesis as the foundation of his argument, that God is not the God of the dead, but of the living. Which indeed is an evident proposition, seeing for God to be one's God, necessarily implies a present relation that God hath to him; and no relation can continue, where either of the relatives cease and is taken away. Whence it clearly follows, that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were alive, and did subsist (viz. in their spirits) when God spake those words to Moses, that is, many ages after the death of their bodies.

And to this sense of our Saviour's words, doubtless the holy apostolic bishop and martyr Polycarp had respect in his last prayer at the stake, recited by Eusebius, Eccl. Hist. b. iv. c. 15. out of the epistle of the brethren of Smyrna, who were present at his martyrdom. For in the beginning of that prayer, he thus addresseth himself to God: "O thou God of

"the whole race of righteous men, who live before "thee." And having particularly mentioned the martyrs, he presently adds, " Among whom may I "be received before thee this day." So Justin Martyr, in his second Apology, p. 96. (as it is reckoned in the vulgar editions,) tells us, that by what was said out of the bush to Moses, I am the God of Abraham, &c. was signified, "That those men "even after death do still remain and subsist "" Hence also in the most ancient Liturgies of the church, the place and receptacle of the spirits of just men deceased, is called "the region of the living, "the bosom of Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob *,” as we find it in the Office for the Dead, at large described by the author of the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, chap. ulty. And from those ancient Liturgies our church hath taken that prayer of hers, which we have in the Office for the Burial of the Dead: " Almighty

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God, with whom do live the spirits of just men "that depart hence in the Lord."

Now our blessed Saviour having clearly proved, that the spirits of men can and do subsist after death, had thereby sufficiently confuted the whole doctrine of the Sadducees, without proceeding any farther, considering the connexion of their dogmata or opinions, before mentioned. They denied the subsistence of the spirits of men after death, and therefore denied the resurrection of their bodies: and if

5 Ὁ Θεὸς παντὸς τοῦ γένους τῶν δικαίων, οἳ ζῶσιν ἐνώπιόν σου.

* Ἐν οἷς προσδεχθείην ἐνώπιόν σου σήμερον.

- ̓Αποθανόντας ἐκείνους μένειν. [Αpol. 1. 63. p. 82.]

* Ἡ χῶρα τῶν ζώντων.

[This is one of the works falsely ascribed to Dionysius the Areopagite.]