366 ESSAY TOWARD THE [SECT, III. full of immortality ;" and iv. 7. " Though the righteous be prevented with death, yet they shall be in rest." That this was the most common doctrine of the Jews, except the sadducees and their followers, in our Saviour's time, and that it was the doctrine of the primitive Christi- ans, also, need not be proved here ; though they, also, had the expectation of the resurrection of the body. Now if this be the chief or only doctrine, which men, could attain to, under the dispensation of natural reason, as the most powerful motive to virtue and piety, if this be the chiefest doctrine of that kind that we know of, which the patriarchs and primitive Jews enjoyed, if this also be a constant doctrine of later Jews, that is, the wisest and best of them, and also of the primitiveChristians, which had so much influence on the good behaviour of all of them toward God and men, and by which God carried on his work of piety in their hearts and lives, and by which also he impressed the consciences of evil men in some measure, and restrained them from their utmost excesses ofvice and wickedness, is it not hard to be sup- posed, that this doctrine is all were fancy and delusion, and bath nothing of truth in it? And, indeed, if thisdoc- trine had been taken away, the heathens would be left without any possible true notion of a future state of, re- eompence, and the patriarchs seem to have had no suffi- cient principle or motive to virtue and piety left them, and the principles and motives of goodness, in the fol- lowing ages, among Jews and Christians, had been greatly diminished and enfeebled. At the conclusionOf this chapter, I cannot help taking notice, though I shall but just mention it, that the mul- titude of narratives, which we have heard of in all ages of the apparition of' the spirits or ghosts of persóns de- parted from' this life, can hardly be all delusion and falsehood. Some of them have been affirmed to appear upon such great and important occasions as may be equal ío such an unusual event ; And several of these accounts have been attested, by such witnesses of wisdom, and prudetTt e, and sagacity, under nodistempers of imagina- tion, that they may justly demand a belief; and the effects of these apparitions, in the discovery of murders, and things unknown, have been so considerable and use- ful, that a fair disputant should hardly venture to run directly counter to such a.croud of witnesses, . without
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy OTcyMjk=