to advert to what the former prophets had
spoken. It is no doubt but that they carried with them both the prophecy
of Isaiah and Jeremiah, so that the prophet Ezekiel is a commentary to
these words of Isaiah, where he saith, "Thy dead, O Lord, shall live, with
my body they shall arise." The prophet brings in this similitude of the
dew, to answer unto that part of their fidelity, who can believe no
further of God's promises than they are able to apprehend by natural
judgment; as if he would say, Think ye this impossible, that God should
give life unto you, and bring you to an estate of a commonwealth again,
after that ye are dead, and as it were rased from the face of the earth?
But why do you not consider what God worketh from year to year in the
order of nature? Sometimes you see the face of the earth decked and
beautified with herbs, flowers, grass, and fruits; again you see the same
utterly taken away by storms, and the vehemence of the winter: what does
God to replenish the earth again, and to restore the beauty thereof? He
sends down his small and soft dew, the drops whereof, in their descending,
are neither great nor visible, and yet thereby are the pores and secret
veins of the earth, which before by vehemence of frost and cold were shut
up, opened again, and so does the earth produce again the like herbs,
flowers, and fruits. Shall you then think, that the dew of God's heavenly
grace will not be as effectual in you to whom he hath made his promise, as
it is in the herbs and fruits which from year to year bud forth and decay?
If you do so, the prophet would say your unbelief is inexcusable; because
you neither rightly weigh the power, nor the promise of your God.

The like similitude the apostle Paul uses against such as called the
resurrection in doubt, because by natural judgment they could not
apprehend that flesh once putrified, and dissolved as it were into other
substance, should rise again, and return again to the same substance and
nature: "O fool," saith he, "that which thou sowest is not quickened,
except it die; and that which thou sowest, thou sowest not that body that
shall be, but bare corn, as it falleth, of wheat, or some other, but God
giveth it a body as it pleaseth him, even to every seed his own body." In
which words and sentence, the apostle sharply rebukes the gross ignorance
of the Corinthians, who began to call in doubt the chief article of our
faith, the resurrection of the flesh after it