own part; when I consider how I live; that all animal motions
necessary to my life are independent of my will; that my heart beats
without my consent and without my direction; that digestion and
nutrition are performed by methods to which I am not conscious; that my
blood moves in a perpetual round, which is contrary to all known laws
of motion: I cannot but think, that the preservation of my life, in
every moment of it, is as great an act of power, as is necessary to
raise a dead man to life. And whoever so far reflects upon his own
being as to acknowledge that he owes it to a superior power, must needs
think, that the same power which gave life to senseless matter at
first, and set all the springs and movements a-going at the beginning,
can restore life to dead body. For surely it is not a greater thing to
give life to a body once dead, than to a body that never was alive.

In the next place must be considered the difficulties which the
gentleman has laid before you, with regard to the nature of Christ's
body after the resurrection. He has produced some passages which
which, he thinks, imply, that the body was not a real natural body, but
a mere phantom, or apparition: and thence concludes, that there being
no real object of sense, there can be no evidence in the case.

Presumptions are of no weight against positive evidence; and
every account of the resurrection assures us, that the body of Christ
was seen, felt, and handled by many persons; who were called upon by
Christ so to do, that they might be assured that he had flesh and
bones, and was not a mere spectre, as they, in their first surprize,
imagined him to be. It is impossible that they who give this account,
should mean, by anything they report, to imply that he had no real
body; it is certain, then, that when the Gentleman makes use of what
they say to this purpose, he uses their sayings contrary to their