SECTION ill. of a future state, was chiefly such as they could gain from the light of nature, and learn by traditions from their fathers, or from unwritten instructions. For though our Saviour improves the words of God to Moses in the bush; Ex. iii. 6. I ant the God of Abraham, Sçc. so far as to prove a resurrection from them, yet we can hardly suppose the Israelites could carry it any further, than merely to the happiness of Abraham's soul, &c. in some separate state ; and thetice came the notion of departed souls of good men going to the bosom of Abraham. I grant that David in his Psalms, Isaiah and Daniel, in their prophecies, have some hints of the resurrection of the body ; but this doth not seem to have,been the common principle or sup- port Of virtue and goodness, or a general article of belief among the Jews, fn the early ages. In the flays of the later prophets, and after their return from Babylon, I confess the Jews had some notion of a resurrec- tion ; but they alsq retained their opinion of the righteous souls being at rest with God, in a separate state before the resurrection. See the book of wisdom, chapter iii. I -4. "The souls of the righteous are in the hand of God. And there shall no torment touch them. In the sight of the unwise, they seemed to die, and their departure is taken for misery, sod their going from us to be utter destruction ; but they are in peace: for though they be perished in the sight ofmen, yetis their hope foal of imtnortality." and iv. 9: " Though the righteous be prevented with death, yet theyshall be in rest." That this was the most common doctrine of the Jews, ex- cept the Saddupees and their followers, in our Saviour's time, and Mats it was the doctrine of the primitive christians 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 pould attain to, under the dispensation of natural reason, as the most powerful motive to virtue and piety, if this be the chiefest doc- trine of that kind that we know ot; which the patriarchs and primitive Jews enjoyed, ff this also be a constant doctrine of later Jews, that is, the wisest and best of them, and also of the primitive christians, which had so much influence on the good behaviour of all of them toward God aqd 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 of vice and wickedness, is it not hard tö be supposed, that this doctrine is all more fancy and delusion, and bath nothing of truth in it i And, indeed if this doctrine had been taken away, the heathens Would be left without any possible true notion of a future state of revompouce, and the patriarchs seem to have had no sufficient
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