“This is the peevishness of our humane wisdom, yea, rather of our humane folly, to earn for tidings from the dead, as if a spirit departed could declare anything more evidently than the book of God, which is the sure oracle of life? This was Saul's practise,—neglect Samuel when he was alive, and seek after him when he was dead. What says the Prophet, _Should not a people seek unto their God? Should the living repair to the dead? (Isai. viij. 19.)_ Among the works of Athanasius I find (though he be not the author of the questions to Antiochus,) a discourse full of reason, why God would not permit the soul of any of those that departed from hence to return back unto us again, and to declare the state of things in hell unto us. For what pestilent errors would arise from thence to seduce us? Devils would transform themselves into the shapes of men that were deceased, pretend that they were risen from the dead (for what will not the Father of lies feign?) and so spread in any false doctrines, or incite us to many barbarous actions, to our endless error and destruction. And admit they be not Phantasms, and delusions, but the very men, yet all men are liars, but God is truth. I told you what a Necromancer Saul was in the Old Testament, he would believe nothing unless a prophet rose from the grave to teach him. There is another as good as himself in the New Testament, and not another pattern in all the Scripture to my remembrance, Luke xvi. 27. The rich man in hell urged Abraham to send Lazarus to admonish his brethren of their wicked life; Abraham refers to Moses and the Prophets. He that could not teach himself when he was alive, would teach Abraham himself being in hell, _Nay, Father Abraham, but if one went unto them from the dead, they will repent._