worthiest friends, before whom I should lose my head
rather than be vicious; yet herein I found that there
was nought but moral honesty; and this was not to be
virtuous for his sake who must reward us at the last. I
have tried if I could reach that great resolution of his,
to be honest without a thought of heaven or hell; and,
indeed I found, upon a natural inclination, and inbred
loyalty unto virtue, that I could serve her without a
livery, yet not in that resolved and venerable way, but
that the frailty of my nature, upon an easy temptation,
might be induced to forget her. The life, therefore, and
spirit of all our actions is the resurrection, and a stable
apprehension that our ashes shall enjoy the fruit of our
pious endeavours; without this, all religion is a fallacy,
and those impieties of Lucian, Euripides, and Julian, are
no blasphemies, but subtile verities; and atheists have
been the only philosophers.

Sect. 48.--How shall the dead arise, is no question of
my faith; to believe only possibilities is not faith, but
mere philosophy. Many things are true in divinity,
which are neither inducible by reason nor confirmable
by sense; and many things in philosophy confirmable
by sense, yet not inducible by reason. Thus it is im-
possible, by any solid or demonstrative reasons, to per-
suade a man to believe the conversion of the needle to
the north; though this be possible and true, and easily
credible, upon a single experiment unto the sense. I
believe that our estranged and divided ashes shall unite
again; that our separated dust, after so many pilgrim-