Now whether these Arguments against these three Miracles, drawn from the Shortness of the Time, in which these Persons lay for dead, have any Force in them, let our _Divines_ consider. If nothing of all this is in their Opinion affecting of the Credit of the Miracles; yet they must allow, that _Jesus_, if he could raise the dead, might have made Choice of other Instances of Persons, more unquestionably dead, who had lain longer in their Graves, and were in a visible State of Putrefaction. And if this grand Miracle of raising the dead was to be wrought by _Jesus_ for the Manifestation of his Glory, and in Testimony of his Authority; he should have exercised his Power on some such Persons, nominated by the Magistrates of this or that City, who with the People should be present at the miraculous Operation, beholding the putrified Bodies, (without a Napkin before their Faces) and how they were suddenly enliven'd and invigorated with new Flesh, after the Similitude of their pristine Form, when in Health and full Strength. Because that _Jesus_ rais'd not some such Persons to Life, I must take the Stories of the three Miracles before us to be but typical of more mysterious Works; or believe them for the Arguments above to be downright Cheats and Fables. And what is enough to induce a modern _Divine_ to this Opinion. Is 5. The Consideration, that none of these rais'd Persons did or could, after the Return of their Souls to their Bodies, tell any Tales of their separate Existence otherwise the Evangelists had not been silent in this main Point, which is of the Essence of Christianity. Are not our _Divines_ here reduced to an unhappy _Dilemma_, either to deny the separate Existence of the Soul, or the precedent Deaths of these rais'd Persons? As Christians, We profess to believe both, which seemingly are incompatiable; or the Evangelists had made such a Relation, as their return'd Souls had given of the other World. Was any Person, in this Age, to be rais'd to Life, that had been any time dead; the first Thing that his Friends and Acquaintance would enquire of him, would be to know, where his Soul had been; in what Company; and how it had fared with him; and Historians would certainly record his Narrative. The same Curiosity could not but possess People of old, when these Miracles were wrought; and if the rais'd Persons had told any Stories of their separate Existance, the Evangelists no less unquestionally would have reported them, in as much as such a Report would have been, not only a Confirmation of that Doctrine; which is of the Essence of our Religion; but an absolute Confutation of the _Sadducees_ and _Sceptists_ of that Age, and of the _Materialists_ of this. But this their Silence in this Case is of bad Consequence, either to the Doctrine of the Soul's Existence in Separation from the Body, or to these Miracles themselves, since we must hereupon almost necessarily hold, that these rais'd Persons were not at all dead, or