effect.  For when Christ allegeth the Scripture, that God is Abraham's

God, and addeth too, that God is not the God of the dead but of the

living, and so proveth that Abraham must rise again: I deny Christ's

argument if I say with Master More, that Abraham is yet alive, not

because of the resurrection, but because his soul is in heaven.  And in

like manner, Paul's argument unto the Corinthians is nought worth: for

when he saith, If there be no resurrection, we be of all wretches the

miserablest; here we have no pleasure, but sorrow, care and oppression;

and therefore, if we rise not again, all our suffering is in vain; Nay,

Paul, thou art unlearned; go to Master More, and learn a new way.  "We

be not most miserable, though we rise not again; for our souls go to

heaven as soon as we be dead, and are there in as great joy as Christ

that is risen again".  And I marvel that Paul had not comforted the

Thessalonians with that doctrine, if he had wist it, that the souls of

their dead had been in joy; as he did with the resurrection, that their

dead should rise again.  If the souls be in heaven, in as great glory

as the angels, after your doctrine, show me what cause should be of

'And ye, putting them in heaven, hell, and purgatory destroy the

arguments wherewith Christ and Paul prove the resurrection.  What God

doth with them, that shall we know when we come to them.  The true

faith putteth the resurrection, which we are warned to look for every

hour.  The heathen philosophers, denying that, did put that the souls

did ever live.  And the Pope joineth the spiritual doctrine of Christ

and the fleshly doctrine of philosophers together; things so contrary

that they cannot agree, no more than the Spirit and the flesh do in a

Christian man ... .  And again, if the souls be in heaven, tell me why

they be not in as good case as the angels be?  And then what cause is

there of the resurrection?'

Controversy, however, while it may put an edge to our investigations

must give place to sober, unhurried, honest study of the Scriptures, with an

unchanging intention by the grace of God to abide by the teaching of Holy

Writ.  'To the law and the testimony' said Isaiah, in direct reference to the

very evil that we have canvassed here.

'And when they shall say unto you, Seek unto them that have familiar

spirits, and unto wizards that peep, and that mutter: should not a

people seek unto their God? for the living to the dead?

To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this

word, it is because there is no light in them' (Isa. 8:19,20).

It will be necessary in the course of our study to acquaint ourselves

with the teaching of the Word with such matters as the soul, the spirit,

hell, death, life, immortality and kindred themes, but to adopt the argument

of the apostle, 'If Christ be not raised from the dead' -- all such search

and study will be in vain.  Accordingly we turn our attention to the question

of fact, and consider the historicity of the resurrection, before we consider

its doctrinal importance.

Four men, inspired as we believe by God, took up their pens and wrote

four separate and distinct accounts of the birth, life, teaching, death and

resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ.  If, when we read the four Gospels we

persist in ignoring their independence, and their personal point of view, we

can discover 'discrepancies' by the dozen, but