so use these thy precious gifts, that I may employ them to those ends and purposes for which thou didst communicate them to me; that all my my faculties may adore and worship thee, the bountiful source from whence they received their original; that the great care and business of my life may be to provide for that happiness which thou hast made me capable of, and which only can be obtained by a patient continuance in well-doing. Let not the concerns of this short, miserable, and uncertain life, make me neglect the things which are not seen, which are eternal. Let not the faint images of honour, and the empty scenes of mirth and pleasure, fill my soul, which was created for more perfect and satisfying enjoyments. Thou hast given me the utmost assurance of eternal life by the resurrection of thy Son Jesus from the dead; and hast thereby convinced me of his power to fulfil his gracious promises of raising me up at the last day let me live under the constant sense of these precious promises, that they may support me under all the afflictions and calamities of my pilgrimage in this world; and so comfort and strengthen me at the hour of death, that I may cheerfully submit to my dissolution, knowing that when the tabernacle of my body shall tumble into dust, I have an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens, through the merits of Jesus Christ, who died for my sins, and rose again for my justification. Amen.

FOR THE CARE OF OUR SOULS.

GRANT, O Lord, that I may above all things apprehend the loss of my soul, which though it cannot cease to be, may sink into an irrecoverable state of misery. Let not therefore the charms and flatteries of this world

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dissolve me into luxury and sensuality. Let not the terrors or torments that wicked men can inflict shake my constancy, or interrupt my perseverance in the ways of thy commandments. Let me never venture the loss of my soul to gain the pleasures, or to avoid the sufferings of this life. Thou hast sufficiently provided even for my happiness here below, by a lawful enjoyment of those good creatures with which thou hast supplied me. I renounce, O Lord, whatever must be purchased at the forfeiture of thy favour, which is better than life; and I am resolved to sacrifice the ease, and pleasure, and comforts of temporal enjoyments, rather than offend thee. Thou hast abundantly recompensed this choice, by peace of conscience, by calm and easy passions, by contentment, and by submission to thy will, and by an entire dependence on thy providence, and by the transporting hopes of immortal life, which thou hast laid up for all those that love and fear thee. Let this prospect keep me steadfast and immoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as I know my labour shall not be in vain in the Lord. Amen.

CHAP. XVII.

EASTER TUESDAY.

Q. What happy consequence is deducible from our Saviour's resurrection, besides the immortality of our souls?

A. The resurrection of our bodies.

Q. How is the resurrection of our Saviour an argument of our resurrection?

A. Because, having promised to raise us up, his own resurrection is an evident proof of his power to perform it. Besides, by his rising from the dead, he became

the first-fruits of them that slept; which first-fruits, among the Jews, were a pledge and earnest of a future harvest.

Q. What are we to believe concerning the resurrection of the body?

A. We are to believe, as a necessary and infallible truth, that "as it is appointed for all men once to die," so it is also determined that all men should rise from death; that their bodies, committed to the grave, and dissolved into dust, or scattered into ashes, shall at the last day be re-collected, and be re-united to their souls; that the same bodies that lived before shall be revived; that this resurrection shall be universal, the just to enjoy everlasting life, and the wicked to be condemned to ever lasting punishment.

Q. Why ought we to establish ourselves in the belief of the resurrection of the body?

A. Because it is one of the great articles of the Christian faith, though the heathens of old, and the infidels of latter times, make it one of their great objections against Christianity, upon the pretence of the impossibility of the doctrine; which if true, had made it highly unreasonable to have been proposed to the belief of Christians. But this article is not only possible, but highly probable to reason, and upon Christian principles infallibly certain.

Q. Upon what account was the resurrection of the body thought impossible by the heathen philosophers?

A. Because they thought it contrary to the course of nature, that a body perfectly dead should be restored to life again. Among the works of nature they could never observe any action or operation, that did or could produce

such an effect. And indeed, by natural light, we cannot discover that God will raise the dead, for that depending upon the will of God, can be no otherwise known than by his own declarations; yet this doctrine, when made known by revelation, evidently contains nothing in it contrary to right reason; the possibility of things not so much depending upon the power of nature, as upon the power of God.

Q. What evidence does right reason afford us for the possibility of the resurrection of the body?

A. The proof of the necessary existence of an infinite perfect being, arises chiefly from those visible effects of his wisdom, and power and goodness, which we see in the frame of the universe; from whence it follows, that God made the world, and gave to all creatures life and breath; which makes it evident to reason, that he who can do the greater, can undoubtedly do the less; it being plainly as easy for God to raise the body again after death, as to create and form it at first: it being a less effect of power to raise a body when resolved into dust, than to make all things out of nothing.

Q. But is it not impossible to rally the same parts of a body, after they are mouldered into dust, and have undergone variety of changes, and by infinite accidents have been scattered up and down in the world?

A. It is true, the heathens objected this against the primitive Christians; and in order, as they thought, to disabuse them and disappoint them, they burnt the bodies of the martyrs, and scattered their ashes in the air to be blown about by the wind: but the weakness of this objection appears from the false foundation it is grounded upon, it wholly depending upon a mistake of the nature of God, and his providence, as if it did not extend to the smallest things, as if God did not know all things he

made, and had them not always in his view, and perfectly under his command; whereas infinite knowledge understands the most minute things, and infinite power can order them as he pleases.

Q. But how can bodies that have been devoured by cannibals, who chiefly live on human flesh, or bodies, eaten up by fishes, and turned to their nourishment, and then those fishes perhaps eaten up by other men, and converted into the substance of their bodies, how should both these, at the resurrection, recover their own body?

A. In order to satisfy this objection, it must be considered, that the body of man is not a constant and permanent, but a successive thing, which is continually spending and renewing itself, losing something of the matter it had before, and gaining new; so that it is undeniably certain from experience, that men frequently change their bodies, and that the body a man hath at any time of his life, is as much his own body, as that which he hath at his death. So that if the So that if the very matter of the body, which a man had at any time of his life, be raised, it is as much his own and the same body, as that which he had at his death; which does clearly solve the forementioned difficulty, since any of those bodies he had at any time before he was eaten, is every whit as good, and as much his own, as that which was eaten. It has been moreover observed, that scarce the hundredth part of what we eat is digested into the substance of our bodies, that all the rest is rendered back again into the common mass of matter by sensible or insensible evacuations; therefore what should hinder an omnipotent power from raising the body a cannibal hath devoured out of the ninety-nine parts which return into the common mass of matter? Others, to answer this difficulty,