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and they who have not, ought to examine so far as they are able, that they also may know: and then nothing remains but to hold them fast, and to make suitable improvements of them in our lives and conversations. "Let 66 us," then, “hold fast the profession of our faith without "wavering; (for he is faithful that promised;) and let us "consider one another to provoke unto love and to good "works a."

Heb. x. 23, 24.

1

SERMON XXIV.

The precise Nature and Force of Christ's Argument, founded on Exod. iii. 6. against the Sadducees.

LUKE XX. 37, 38.

Now that the dead are raised, even Moses showed at the bush, when he calleth the Lord the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. For he is not a God of the dead, but of the living: for all live unto him3.

THESE words are the concluding part of our Lord's reply to the Sadducees, a libertine sect of the Jews, who, (like the Epicureans before, and other infidels since,) for the sake only of indulging their lusts, and to remove the dread of an after-reckoning, thought proper to reject the belief of a resurrection and a life to come. But yet, to save appearances, and to keep up an outward show of religion among their countrymen, they professed a great regard to the same common Scriptures, as the oracles of God, and sought out colours from those very Scriptures, whereby to countenance, or seemingly to authorize, their wanton and wicked opinions. They came to our blessed Lord, and propounded a captious question to him, grounded upon Moses's Law, artfully insinuating, as if Moses himself must have been in their sentiments; for he had ordered that several brothers in succession should take the same surviving wife: a law which seemed to preclude any future resurrection; since, upon that supposition,

. Conf. Matt. xxii. 31. Mark xii. 26.

there could be no adjusting the contradictory claims. "Whose wife," said they, " is she in the resurrection?" Our blessed Lord, in reply, corrected their fond mistake in judging of a life to come by the life that now is, when circumstances would be widely different. In this world, where mankind go off and die daily, there is a necessity of a constant and regular succession to supply the decays of mortality: but in a world to come, where none die any more, the reason then ceases, inasmuch as there will be no occasion for any further supplies. Our blessed Lord, by thus distinguishing upon the case, defeated the objection but to show farther, how ill the Sadducees had contrived, in appealing to Moses as a favourer of their sentiments, he reminds them of a famous passage in Moses's Law, which was directly contrary to their principles, being indeed a full and clear proof of a resurrection and future state. "Now that the dead are raised," (or shall be raised,) "even Moses showed at the bush, when he "calleth the Lord the God of Abraham, and the God of "Isaac, and the God of Jacob. For he is not a God of "the dead, but of the living: for all live unto him." In discoursing upon which words, I propose more particularly to consider,

I. What the distinguishing principles of the ancient Sadducees really were.

II. Why our Lord chose to confront them with a text out of Moses's writings, rather than with any other out of the old Testament.

III. Wherein precisely the force of our Lord's argument, built upon that text, consists.

I.

As to the first article; the distinguishing principles of the Sadducees are briefly summed up by St. Luke in the twenty-third of the Acts, thus: "The Sadducees say, "that there is no resurrection, neither angel nor spirit; "but the Pharisees confess both." From whence we

Acts xxiii. 8.

may observe, that the Sadducees did not only reject the resurrection of the body, but they denied a future state ; they did not allow that the soul survived the body: they looked upon the doctrines of a resurrection and future state to be so nearly allied, or so closely connected with each other, that they might reasonably be conceived to stand or fall together: wherefore they denied both; as, on the other hand, the Pharisees admitted both. For if the soul survived the body, it was very natural to suppose, that some time or other the body would be again raised up, and reunited, to make a whole man: but if the soul died with the body, it was obvious to infer there would be no resurrection; since that would amount, in such a case, to a new creation, rather than a resurrection properly so called, and the parties so raised would not be the same persons as before. This observable connection of the two several doctrines seems to have made the Sadducees deny both; and the consideration thereof will be of use to us in explaining the force of our Lord's argument; as will be seen in the sequel.

There is one noted difficulty in St. Luke's account of the Sadducees, relating to their denial of the existence of angels. Other accounts of Jewish writers are silent on that head; and it might seem very needless for the Sadducees to clog their cause with it, since it was sufficient for their purpose to reject only the separate subsistence of human souls; and it is odd that they should run so flatly counter to the history of the Old Testament, (which is full of what concerns angels,) when they had really no great necessity for it, nor temptation to it, so far as appears. But, perhaps, they thought it the shortest and surest way to reject the whole doctrine of spirits, or, at least, of created spirits, and so to settle in materialism, after the example of some Pagan philosophers; and therefore they at once discarded both angels and separate souls: and as to the Old Testament standing directly against them, with respect to angels, there are so many various ways of playing upon words, especially in dead writings,

that men, resolute to maintain a point, (whatever it be,) can never be at a loss for evasions. This appears to be a fair account of the whole case, if it be certain that St. Luke is to be understood of their denying angels, properly so called. Nevertheless, I apprehend, there may be some reason to question whether he might not use the word in a particular sense, so as to mean no more by it than a human soul. It is certain that the Pagan writers, before his time, had been used to give the name of angels to good souls departed; and that the Jews also sometimes did the same may appear from the writings of Philo the Jew, who lived in that age. Possibly, St. Luke, knowing that the word angel had been so used, might mean only to say, that the Sadducees rejected the doctrine of the resurrection, and the other doctrine of separate souls, whether called angels, as by some, or spirits only, as by others. There is another place in this book of the Acts where the word angel seems to have been used in the like improper sense; when some, speaking of Peter confidently reported to be at the door, and the thing was thought impossible, said, "It is his angel1;" as much as to say, It is his ghost for they had reason to believe, that he had been executed by that time. I am aware, that interpreters give quite another gloss to that passage: but it is obvious to observe withal, how much they are perplexed with it, and how difficult it is to make tolerable sense of the place in their way, or in any way, excepting such as I have mentioned.

However, I would be understood to offer this other interpretation as conjecture only, and as tending to clear up some noted difficulties in St. Luke's account of the Sadducees in the easiest manner; while we do not want a solution of them, if this should not satisfy; for I have myself given one before: but if this second solution, which I have here offered, appears preferable to the other, we may then acquit the Sadducees of the charge

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