them Jesus and the resurrection." He had discoursed to them of the
resurrection of one Jesus from the dead; but this business of the
resurrection of one Jesus from the dead was a thing so remote from
their apprehensions that they had no manner of conception of it; but
understood him quite in another sense, as if he had declared to them
two new deities, Jesus and Anastasis; as if he had brought a new god
and a new goddess among them, Jesus and the Resurrection. And when he
discoursed to them again more fully of this matter, it is said that,
"when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, they mocked." And at
the twenty-fourth verse of this twenty-sixth chapter, when he spake of
the resurrection, Festus told him he would hear him no further, and
that he looked upon him as a man beside himself, whom much learning
had made mad. Festus looked upon this business of the resurrection
as the wild speculation of a crazy head. And indeed the heathens
generally, even those who believed the immortality of the soul, and
another state after this life, looked upon the resurrection of the
body as a thing impossible. Pliny, I remember, reckons it among
those things which are impossible, and which God himself can not do;
"_revocare defunctos_, to call back the dead to life"; and in the
primitive times the heathen philosophers very much derided the
Christians, upon account of this strange doctrine of the resurrection,
looking always upon this article of their faith as a ridiculous and
impossible assertion.

So easy it is for prejudice to blind the minds of men, and to
represent everything to them which hath a great appearance of
difficulty in it as impossible. But I shall endeavor to show that if
the matter be thoroughly examined, there is no ground for any such
apprehension.