The lively Oracles given to us, or The Christians birthright & duty. in the custody. & use of the holy Scripture.  burg. sculp.   

THE Lively Oracles given to us. OR The Christians Birthright and Duty, in the custody and use of the HOLY SCRIPTURE.  
By the Author of the WHOLE DUTY OF MAN, etc.  
Search the Scriptures,  Jo. 5.39.  depiction of the Sheldonian Theatre 
At the THEATER in OXFORD, 1678. And are to be Sold by William Leak at the Crown in Fleetstreet, Lond.  
 bookplate 
Beilby Thompson of Escrick    

Imprimatur.  
JO. NICHOLAS. Vice Cancel. Oxon. Junii 10. 1678.   

THE PREFACE.  
IN the Treatise of the Government of the Tongue published by me heretofore, I had occasion to take notice among the exorbitances of that unruly part, which sets on fire the whole course of nature, and its self is set on fire from hell, Jam. 3.6. of the impious vanity prevailing in this Age, whereby men play with sacred things, and exercise their wit upon those Scriptures by which they shall be judged at the last day, Joh. 12.48.  
But that holy Book not only suffering by the petulancy of the Tongue, but the malice of the heart, out of the abundance whereof the mouth speaks, Mat. 12.34. and also from that irreligion, prepossession, and supiness, which the pursuit of sensual pleasures certainly produces; the mischief is too much diffused, and deeply rooted, to be controlled by a few casual reflections. I have therefore thought it necessary, both in regard of the dignity and importance of the subject, as also the prevalence of the opposition, to attemt a professed and particular vindication of the holy Scriptures, by displaying their native excellence and beauty; and enforcing the veneration and obedience that is to be paid unto them.  
This I designed to do in my usual method, by an address to the affections of the Reader; soliciting the several passions of love, hope, fear, shame and sorrow, which either the majesty of God in his sublime being, his goodness derived to us, or our ingratitude returned to him, could actuate in persons not utterly obdurate.  
But whereas men, when they have learned to do amiss, quickly dispute and dictate; I found myself concerned to pass sometimes within the verge of controversy, and to discourse upon the principles of reason, and deductions from Testimony, which in the most important transactions of human life are justly taken for evidence. In which whole performance I have studied to avoid the entanglements of Sophistry, and the ambition of unintelligible quotations; and kept myself within the reach of the unlearned Christian Reader; to whose uses, my labours have been ever dedicated.  
All that I require, is that men would bring as much readiness to entertain the holy Scriptures, as they do to the reading profane Authors; I am ashamed to say, as they do to the incentives of vice and folly; nay, to the libels and invectives that are levelled against the Scriptures.  
If I obtain this, I will make no doubt that I shall gain a farther point; that from the perusal of my imperfect conceptions, the Reader will proceed to the study of the Scriptures themselves: there taste and see how gracious the Lord is, Ps. 34.8. and as the Angel commanded Saint John, Rev. 10.9. eat the Book; where he will experimentally find the words of David verified, Ps. 19.7. The Law of the Lord is an undefiled Law, converting the soul: the testimony of the Lord is sure, and giveth wisdom to the simple. The Statutes of the Lord are right, and rejoice the heart; the commandment of the Lord is pure, and giveth light to the eyes. The fear of the Lord is clean and endureth for ever, the judgements of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. More to be desired are they then gold, yea, than much fine gold, sweeter also than honey and the hony-comb. Moreover by them is thy servant taught, and in keeping of them there is great reward.  
It is said of Moses, Ex. 34.29. that having received the Law from God, and conversed with him in Mount Sina forty days together, his face shone, and had a brightness fixed upon it that dazzled the beholders; a pledge and short essay not only of the appearance at Mount Tabor, Mat. 17.1. where at the Transfiguration he again was seen in glory: but of that greater, and yet future change when he shall see indeed his God face to face, and share his glory unto all eternity. The same divine Goodness gives still his Law to every one of us. Let us receive it with due regard and veneration; converse with him therein, instead of forty days, during our whole lives; and so anticipate and certainly assure our interest in that great Transfiguration, when all the faithful shall put off their mortal flesh, be translated from glory to glory, eternally behold their God, see him as he is, and so enjoy him.  
Conversation has every where an assimilating power, we are generally such as are the men and Books, and business that we deal with: but surely no familiarity has so great an influence on Life and Manners, as when men hear God speaking to them in his Word. That Word which the Apostle, Heb. 4.12. declares to be quick and powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.  
The time will come when all our Books however recommended, for subtlety of discourse, exactness of method, variety of matter, or eloquence of Language; when all our curious Acts, like those mentioned Act. 19.19. shall be brought forth, and burnt before all men: When the great Book of nature, and heaven itself shall depart as a scroul rolled together, Rev. 6.14. At which important season 'twill be more to purpose, to have studied well, that is, transcribed in practice this one Book, then to have run thro' all besides, for then the dead small and great shall stand before God, and the Books shall be opened, and another Book shall be opened which is the Book of Life, and the dead shall be judged out of those things which were written in the Books, according to their works, Rev. 20.12.  
In vain shall men allege the want of due conviction, that they did not know how penal it would be, to disregard the Sanctions of God's Law, which they would have had enforced by immediate miracle; the apparition of one sent from the other world, who might testify of the place of torment. This expectation the Scripture charges every where with the guilt of temting God, and indeed it really involves this insolent proposal, that the Almighty should be obliged to break his own Laws, that men might be prevailed with to keep his. But should he think fit to comply herein, the condescension would be as successless in the event, as 'tis unreasonable in the offer. Our Saviour assures, that they who hear not Moses and the Prophets, the instructions and commands laid down in holy Scripture, would not be wrought upon by any other method, would not be persuaded, by that which they allow for irresistible conviction, though one rose again from the dead, Luke 16.31.   

THE LIVELY ORACLES GIVEN TO US, Or the Christians Birthright and Duty in the custody and use of the HOLY SCRIPTURE.  

SECT. I. The several Methods of Gods communicating the knowledge of himself.  
GOD, as he is invisible to human eyes, so is he unfathomable by human understandings; the perfection of his nature, and the impotency of ours, setting us at too great a distance to have any clear perception of him. Nay, so far are we from a full comprehension, that we can discern nothing at all of him, but by his own light; those discoveries he hath been pleased to make of himself.  
2. THOSE have been of several sorts; The first was by infusion in man's creation, when God interwove into Man's very constitution and being the notions and apprehensions of a Deity: and at the same instant when he breathed into him a living soul, impressed on it that native religion, which taught him to know and reverence his Creator, which we may call the instinct of humanity. Nor were those principles dark and confused, but clear and evident, proportionable to the ends they were designed to, which were not only to contemplate the nature, but to do the will of God; practice being even in the state of innocence preferable before an unactive speculation.  
3. BUT this Light being soon eclipsed by Adam's disobedience, there remained to his benighted posterity, only some faint glimmerings, which were utterly insufficient to guide them to their end, without fresh aids, and renewed manifestations of God to them. It pleased God therefore to repair this ruin, and by frequent revelations to communicate himself to the Patriarches in the first Ages of the World; afterwards to Prophets, and other holy men; till at last he revealed himself yet more illustriously in the face of Jesus Christ, 2 Cor. 4.6.  
4. THIS is the one great comprehensive Revelation wherein all the former were involved, and to which they pointed; the whole mystery of Godliness being comprised in this of Gods being manifested in the flesh, and the consequents thereof. 1 Tim. 3.16. whereby our Saviour as he effected our reconciliation with God by the sacrifice of his death; so he declared both that, and all things else that it concerned man to know in order to bliss, in his doctrine and holy life. And this Teacher being not only sent from God, Jo. 3. but being himself God blessed for ever; it cannot be that his instructions can want any supplement. Yet that they might not want attestation neither, to the incredulous world; he confirmed them by the repeated miracles of his life, and by the testimony of those who saw the more irrefragable conviction of his Resurrection and Ascension. And that they also might not want credit and enticement, the Holy Spirit set to his seal, and by his miraculous descent upon the Apostles, both asserted their commission, and enabled them for the discharge of it; by all gifts necessary for the propagating the Faith of Christ over the whole World.  
5. THESE were the ways by which God was pleased to revele himself to the Forefathers of our Faith, and that not only for their sakes, but ours also, to whom they were to derive those divine dictates they had received. Saint Stephen tells us, those under the Law received the lively Oracles to deliver down to their posterity, Acts 7.38. And those under the Gospel, who received yet more lively Oracles, from him who was both the Word and the Life, did it for the like purpose; to transmit it to us upon whom the ends of the world are come. By this all need of repeated Revelations is superseded, the faithful deriving of the former, being sufficient to us for all things that pertain to life and godliness, 2 Pet. 1.3.  
6. AND for this, God (whose care is equal for all successions of men) hath graciously provided, by causing Holy Scriptures to be writ; by which he hath derived on every succeeding Age the illuminations of the former. And for that purpose endowed the Writers not only with that moral fidelity requisite to the truth of History, but with a divine Spirit, proportionable to the great design of fixing an immutable rule for faith and manners. And to give us the fuller security herein, he has chosen no other penmen of the New Testament, than those who were the first oral promulgers of our Christian Religion; so that they have left to us the very same doctrine they taught the Primitive Christians; and he that acknowledges them divinely inspired in what they preached, cannot doubt them to be so in what they writ. So that we all may enjoy virtually and effectively that wish of the devout Father, who desired to be Saint Paul's Auditor: for he that hears any of his Epistles read, is as really spoke to by Saint Paul, as those who were within the sound of his voice. Thus God who in times past spoke at sundry times, and in divers manners to our Fathers by the Prophets, and in the latter days by his son, Heb. 1.1, 2. continues still to speak to us by these inspired Writers, and what Christ once said to his Disciples in relation to their preaching, is no less true of their writings: He that despiseth you, despiseth me, Luke 10.16. All the contemt that is at any time flung on these sacred Writings, rebounds higher, and finally devolves on the first Author of those doctrines, whereof these are the registers and transcripts.  
7. BUT this is a guilt which one would think peculiar to Infidels and Pagans, and not incident to any who had in their Baptism listed themselves under Christ's banner: yet I fear I may say, of the two parties, the Scripture has met with the worst treatment from the later. For if we measure by the frequency and variety of injuries, I fear Christians will appear to have outvied Heathens: These bluntly disbelieve them, neglect, nay perhaps scornfully deride them. Alas Christians do this and more; they not only put contemts, but tricks upon the Scripture, wrest and distort it to justify all their wild fancies, or secular designs; and suborn its Patronage to those things it forbids, and tells us that God abhors.  
8. INDEED so many are the abuses we offer it, that he that considers them would scarce think we owned it for the words of a sensible man, much less of the great omniscient God. And I believe 'twere hard to assign any one so comprehensive and efficacious cause of the universal depravation of manners, as the disvaluing of this divine Book, which was designed to regulate them. It were therefore a work worthy another inspired writing, to attemt the rescue of this, and recover it to its just estimate. Yet alas, could we hope for that, we have scoffers who would as well despise the New as the Old; and like the Husbandmen in the Gospel, Mat. 21.36. would answer such a succession of messages by repeating the same injuries.  
9 TO such as these 'tis I confess vain for man to address; nay 'twere insolence to expect that human Oratory should succeed where the divine fails; yet the spreading infection of these renders it necessary to administer antidotes to others; And besides, though (God be blest) all are not of this form, yet there are many who, though not arrived to this contemt, yet want some degrees of that just reverence they owe the sacred Scripture, who give a confused general assent to them as the word of God, but afford them not a consideration and respect answerable to such an acknowledgement. To such as these, I shall hope it may not be utterly vain to attemt the exciting of those drowsy notions that lie unactive in them, by presenting to them some considerations concerning the excellence and use of the Scripture: which being all but necessary consequences of that principle they are supposed to own, viz. that they are God's word, I cannot much question their assent to the speculative part: I wish I could as probably assure myself of the practic.  
10. INDEED were there nothing else to be said in behalf of holy Writ, but that it is God's word, that were enough to command the most awful regard to it. And therefore it is but just we make that the first and principal consideration in our present discourse. But then 'tis impossible that that can want others to attend it; since whatsoever God says is in all respects completely good. I shall therefore to that of its divine original add secondly the consideration of its subject matter; thirdly, of its excellent and no less diffusive end and design; and fourthly, of its exact propriety and fitness to that design, which are all such qualifications, that where they concur, nothing more can be required to commend a writing to the esteem of rational men. And upon all these tests, notwithstanding the cavil of the Romanists and others, whose force we shall examine with the unhappy issue of contrary counsels, this law of God will be found to answer the Psalmists character of it, Ps. 19.7. The Law of God is perfect: and will appear that the custody and use thereof, is the birthright and duty of every Christian. All which severals being faithfully deduced; it will only remain that I add such cautions as will be necessary to the due performance of the aforesaid duty; and our being in some degree rendered perfect, as this Law of God, and the Author thereof himself is perfect, Mat. 5.48.   

SECT. II. The divine Original, Endearments, and Authority of the Holy Scripture.  
men's judgements are so apt to be bias by their affections, that we often find them readier to consider who speaks, than what is spoken: a temper very unsafe, and the principle of great injustice in our inferior transactions with men; yet here there are very few of us that can wholly divest ourselves of it, whereas, when we deal with God (in whom alone an implicit faith may securely be reposed) we are nice and wary, bring our scales and mesures; will take nothing upon his word which holds not weight in our own balance. 'Tis true, he needs not our partiality to be justified in his sayings, Psal. 51.4. His words are pure, even as the silver tried seven times in the fire, Psal. 12.6. able to pass the strictest test that right reason (truly so called) can put them to. Yet it shows a great perverseness in our nature, that we who so easily resign our understandings to fallible men, stand thus upon our guard against God; make him dispute for every inch he gains on us; nor will afford him what we daily grant to any credible man; to receive an affirmation upon trust of his veracity.  
2. I am far from contradicting our Saviors Precept, of Search the Scriptures, Jo. 7. or Saint Paul's, of proving all things, 1 Thes. 5.21. we cannot be too industrious in our inquest after truth, provided we still reserve to God the decisive vote, and humbly acquiesce in his sense, how distant soever from our own; so that when we consult Scripture (I may add reason either) 'tis not to resolve us whether God be to be believed or no in what he has said, but whether he hath said such and such things; for if we are convinced he have; reason as well as religion commands our assent.  
3. WHATEVER therefore God has said, we are to pay it a reverence merely upon the account of its Author; over and above what the excellence of the matter exacts: and to this we have all inducements as well as obligation: there being no motives to render the words of men estimable to us, which are not eminently and transcendently appliable to those of God.  
4. THOSE motives we may reduce to four: first, the Authority of the Speaker; secondly, his kindness; thirdly, his wisdom; and fourthly, his truth. First, for that of Authority; that may be either native, or acquired; the native is that of a parent, which is such a charm of observance, that we see Solomon, when he would impress his counsels, assumes the person of a Father; Hear O my children the instructions of a Father, Prov. 4.1. And generally through that whole Book he uses the compellation of my Son, as the greatest endearment to engage attention and reverence. Nay so indispensible was the obligation of children in this respect, that we see the contumacious child that would not hearken to the advice of his Parents, was by God himself adjudged to death. Deut. 21.20.  
5. NOR have only Gods, but men's Laws exacted that filial reverence to the dictates of Parents. But certainly no Parent can pretend such a title to it as God, who is not only the immediate Father of our persons, but the original Father of our very nature; not only of our flesh, but of our spirits also, Heb. 12.9. So that the Apostles Antithesis in that place is as properly applied to counsels as corrections; and we may as rightly infer, that if we give reverence to the advices of our earthly Parents, much more ought we subject ourselves to this Father of our spirits. And we have the very same reason wherewith to enforce it: for the Fathers of our flesh do as often dictate, as correct according to their own pleasures; prescribe to their children not according to the exact mesures of right and wrong, but after that humour which most predominates in themselves. But God always directs his admonitions to our profit, that we may be partakers of his holiness, Heb. 12.11. So that we are as unkind to ourselves, as irreverent towards him, whenever we let any of his words fall to the ground; whose claim to this part of our reverence is much more irrefragable than that of our natural Parents.  
6. BUT besides this native Authority there is also an acquired; and that we may distinguish into two sorts; the one of dominion, the other of reputation; To the first kind belongs that of Princes, Magistrates, Masters, or any that have coercive power over us. And our own interest teaches us not to slight the words of any of these, who can so much to our cost second them with deeds. Now God has all these titles of jurisdiction; He is the great King, Ps. 48.2. Nor was it only a compliment of the Psalmists; for himself owns the stile, I am a great King, Mal. 1. He is the Judge of all the World; Gen. 18. yea, that Ancient of days, before whom the Books were opened, Dan. 7.10. He is our Lord and Master by right, both of creation and redemption; and this Christ owns even in his state of inanition; yea, when he was about the most servile employment; the washing his Disciples feet: when he was most literally in the form of a servant; yet he scruples not to assert his right to that opposite title; You call me Master, and Lord; and ye say well, for so I am; Jo. 13. Nor are these emty names, but effectively attended with all the power they denote. Yet so stupid are we, that whilst we awfully receive the dictates of our earthly Superiors, we slight and neglect the Oracles of that God who is King of Kings, and Lord of Lords. When a Prince speaks, we are apt to cry out with Herod's Flatterers, the voice of a God, and not of a man, Act. 12. Yet when it is indeed the voice of God, we choose to listen to any thing else rather than it. But let us sadly remember, that notwithstanding our contemts, this word shall (as our Saviour tells us) judge us at the last day, Jo. 12.48.  
7. A second sort of acquired Authority is that of reputation. When a man is famed for some extraordinary excellencies, whether moral or intellectual, men come with appetite to his discourses, greedily suck them in, nor need such a one bespeak attention; his very name has done it for him, and prepossessed him of his Auditor's regard. Thus the Rabbis among the Jews, the Philosophers among the Greeks, were listened to as Oracles, and to cite them was (by their admiring Disciples) thought a concluding argument. Nay, under Christianity this admiration of men's persons has been so inordinate, that it has crumbled Religion away in little insignificant parties; whilst not only Paul, Apollo, or Cephas, but names infinitely inferior, have become the distinctive characters of Sects and and separate Communions. So easily alas are we charmed by our prepossessions, and with itching ears run in quest of those doctrines which the fame of their Authors, rather than the evidence of truth commend to us.  
8. AND hath God done nothing to get him a repute among us? has he no excellencies to deserve our esteem? Is he not worthy to prescribe to his own creatures? if we think yes, why is he the only person to be disregarded? or why do we so unseasonably depart from our own humour, as not to give his Word a reverence proportionable to that we pretend for him; nay, which we actually pay to men of like passions with ourselves? A contemt so absurd as well as impious, that we have not the example of any the most barbarous people to countenance us. For though some of them have made very wild mistakes in the choice of their Deities, yet they have all agreed in this common principle, that whatever those Deities said, was to be received with all possible veneration; yea, such a deference gave they to all significations of the divine will, that as they would undertake no great enterprise without consulting their Auguries; so upon any inauspicious signs they relinquished their attemts. And certainly if we had the same reverence for the true God which they had for the false, we should as frequently consult him. We may do it with much more ease and certainty: we need not trust to the entrails of Beasts, or motion of Birds: we need not go to Delphos, or the Lybian Hammon for the resolving our doubts; but what Moses said to Israel is very applicable to us, the Word is nigh thee, Deut. 30.14. That Word which David made his Counsellor,, Psal. 119.24. his Comforter, ver. 50. his Treasure, ver. 72. his Study, ver. 99 And had we those awful apprehensions of God which he had, we should pay the like reverence to his Word. Did we well ponder how many titles of Authority he has over us, we should surely be ashamed to deny that respect to him in whom they all conspire; which we dare not deny to them separately in human Superiors.  
9 A second motive to esteem men's words, is the kindness of the speaker. This has such a fascinating power, as nothing but extreme ill nature can resist. When a man is assured of the kindness of him that speaks, whatever is spoken is taken in good part. This is it that distinguishes the admonitions of a friend from the reproaches of an enemy; and we daily in common conversation receive those things with contentment and applause from an intimte and familiar, which if spoken by a stranger or enemy would be despised or stomached. So insinuating a thing is kindness, that where it has once got itself believed, nothing it says after is disputed; it supples the mind, and makes it ductile and pliant to any impressions.  
10. BUT what human kindness is there that can come in any competition with the Divine? it surpasses that of the nearest and dearest relations; Mothers may forget, yet will not I forget thee, Isa. 49.15. And the Psalmist found it experimentally true, When my Father and my Mother forsake me, the Lord taketh me up, Ps. 27.10. the tenderest bowels compared to his are adamant and flint: so that 'tis a most proper epithet the Wise man gives him; O Lord, thou lover of souls; Wis. 11.26. Nor is this affection merely mental, but it attests itself by innumerable effects. The effects of love are all reducible to two heads, doing and suffering; and by both these God has most eminently attested his love to us.  
11. FOR the first, we cannot look either on our bodies or our souls, on the whole Universe about us, or that better World above us; but we shall in each see the Lord hath done great things for us, Psal. 114. Nay, not only our enjoiments, but even the capacity to enjoy, is his bounty. Had not he drawn mankind out of his original clay, what had we been concerned in all the other works of his Creation. So that if we put any value either upon what we have or what we are, we cannot but account ourselves so much indebted to this his active love. And though the passive was not practicable by the divine Nature simply and apart, yet that we might not want all imaginable evidences of his love, he who was God blessed for ever, linked his impassable to our passable nature; assumed our humanity, that he might espouse our sorrows, and was born on purpose that he might die for us. So that sure we may say in his own words, greater love than this hath no man; Io. 15.13.  
12. AND now 'tis very hard, if such an unparallelled love in God, may not as much affect us, as the slight benefactions of every ordinary friend: if it cannot so much recommend him to our regard, as to rescue his word from contemt, and dispose us to receive impressions from it; (especially when his very speaking is a new act of his kindness, and designed to our greatest advantage.)  
13. BUT if all he has done and suffered for us cannot obtain him so much from us, we must surely confess, our disingenuity is as superlative as his love. For in this instance we have no plea for ourselves. The discourses of men 'tis true may sometime be so weak and irrational, that though kindness may suggest pity, it cannot reverence; But this can never happen in God, whose wisdom is as infinite as his love. He talks not at our vain rate who often talk only for talk sake; but his words are directed to the most important ends and addressed in such a manner as befits him in whom are all the tresures of wisdom and knowledge, Col. 2. And this is our third consideration, the wisdom of the Speaker.  
14. HOW attractive a thing Wisdom is, we may observe in the instance of the Queen of Sheba, who came from the utmost parts of the earth, as Christ says Mat. 12.42. to hear the Wisdom of Solomon. And the like is noted of the Greek Sages, that they were addressed to from all parts, by persons of all ranks and qualities, to hear their Lectures. And indeed the rational nature of man does by a kind of sympathetic motion close with what ever hath the stamp of reason upon it. But alas, what is the profoundest wisdom of men, compared with that of God? He is the essential reason; and all that man can pretend to is but an emanation from him; a ray of his Sun, a drop of his Ocean: which as he gives, so he can also take away. He can infatuate the most subtle designers; And (as he says of himself) makes the diviners mad; turns the wise men back, and makes their wisdom foolishness, Esay 44.25.  
15. HOW impious a folly is it then in us, to Idolise human Wisdom with all its imperfections, and despise the divine? yet this every man is guilty of, who is not attracted to the study of sacred Writ by the supereminent wisdom of its Author. For such men must either affirm that God has not such a supereminency, or that, though he have in himself, he hath not exerted it in this writing: The former is downright blasphemy; and truly the later is the same, a little varied. For that any thing, but what is exactly wise can proceed from infinite wisdom, is too absurd for any man to imagine. And therefore he that charges God's Word with defect of wisdom, must interpretively charge God so too, For though 'tis true, a wise man may sometimes speak foolishly; yet that happens through that mixture of ignorance, or passion which is in the most knowing of mortals: but in God, who is a pure act, and essential wisdom, that is an impossible supposition.  
16. NAY, indeed it were to tax him of folly beyond what is incident to any sensible man; who will still proportion his instruments to the work he designs. Should we not conclude him mad, that should attemt to fell a mighty Oak with a Penknife, or stop a Torrent with a wisp of Straw? And sure their conceptions are not much more reverend of God, who can suppose that a writing designed by him for such important ends, as the making men wise unto salvation, 2 Tim. 3.15. the cast-down all that exalts itself against the obedience of Christ, 2 Cor. 10.5. should itself be foolish and weak: or that he should give it those great attributes of being sharper than a two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing a sunder of soul and spirit, of the joints and marrow, Heb. 4.14. if its discourses were so flat and insipid as some in this profane Age would represent them.  
17. 'TIS true indeed, 'tis not, as the Apostle speaks the wisdom of this world, 1 Cor. 2.6. The Scripture teaches us not the arts of undermining governments, defrauding and circumventing our brethren; but it teaches us that which would tend much more even to our temporal felicity; and as reason promts us to aspire to happiness, so it must acknowledge that is the highest wisdom which teaches us to attain it.  
18. AND as the Holy Scripture is thus recommended to us by the wisdom of its Author; so in the last place is it by his truth, without which the other might rather raise our jealousy then our reverence. For wisdom without sincerity degenerates into serpentine guile; and we rather fear to be ensnared then hope to be advantaged by it. The most subtle addresses, and most cogent arguments prevail not upon us, where we suspect some insidious design. But where wisdom and fidelity meet in the same person, we do not only attend, but confide in his counsels. And this qualification is most eminently in God. The children of men are deceitful upon the weights, Psal. 62.9. Much guile often lurks indiscernibly under the fairest appearances: but God's veracity is as essentially himself, as his wisdom, and he can no more deceive us, than he can be deceived himself. He is not man that he should lie, Num. 23.19. He designs not (as men often do) to sport himself with our credulity; and raise hopes which he never means to satisfy: he says not to the seed of Jacob, seek ye me in vain, Ex. 45.19. but all his promises are yea and Amen, 2 Cor. 1.20. He is perfectly sincere in all the proposals he makes in his Word: which is a most rational motive for us to advert to it, not only with reverence but love.  
19 AND now when all these motives are thus combined; the authority, the kindness, the wisdom, the veracity of the speaker, what can be required more to render his words of weight with us? If this fourfold cord will not draw us, we have sure the strength, not of men, but of that Legion we read of in the Gospel, Mat. 5.1. For these are so much the cords of a man, so adapted to our natures, nay to our constant usage in other things, that we must put off much of our humanity, disclaim the common mesures of mankind, if we be not attracted by them. For I dare appeal to the breast of any sober, industrious man, whether in case a person, who he were sure had all the forementioned qualifications, should recommend to him some rules as infallible for the certain doubling, or trebling his estate, he would not think them worth the pursuing, nay, whether he would not plod and study on them, till he comprehended the whole Art. And shall we then when God in whom all those qualifications are united, and that in their utmost transcendencies, shall we, I say, think him below our regard, when he proposes the improving our interests, not by the scanty proportions of two or three, but in such as he intimated to Abraham, when he showed him the Stars, as the representative of his numerous offspring, Gen. 15.5. when he teaches us that highest, and yet most certain Alchemy, of refining and multiplying our enjoyments, and then perpetuating them?  
20. ALL this God does in Scripture; and we must be stupidly improvident, if we will take no advantage by it. It was once the complaint of Christ to the Jews, I am come in my Father's name and ye receive me not, if another shall come in his own name, him ye will receive. Jo. 5.43. And what was said by him the eternal essential Word, is no less applicable to the written; which coming in the name, and upon the message of God, is despised and slighted, and every the lightest composure of men preferred before it. As if that signature of Divinity it carries, served rather as a Brand to stigmatize and defame, then adorn and recommend it. A contemt which strikes immediately at God himself, whose resentments of it, though for the present suppressed by his long-suffering, will at last break out upon all who persevere so to affront him, in a judgement worthy of God. Wis. 12.26.  
21. BUT after all that has been said, I foresee some may say, that I have all this while but beaten the air, have built upon a principle which some flatly deny, others doubt of, and have run away with a supposition that the Bible is of divine Original, without any attemt of proof. To such as these I might justly enough object the extreme hard measure they offer to Divinity above all other Sciences. For in those, they still allow some fundamental maxims, which are presupposed without proof; but in this they admit of no Postulata, no granted principle on which to superstruct. If the same rigour should be extended to secular cases, what a damp would it strike upon commerce! For example, a man expects fair dealing from his neighbour, upon the strength of those common notions of Justice he presumes writ in all men's hearts: but according to this measure, he must first prove to every man he deals with, that such notions there are, and that they are obligatory: that the wares exposed to sale are his own; that dominion is not founded in grace, or that he is in that state, and so has a property to confer upon another; that the person dealt with, pays a just price; does it in good money; and that it is his own; or that he is in the state of grace; or needs not be so, to justify his purchase, and at this rate the Market will be as full of nice questions as the Schools. But because complaints and retortions are the common refuge of causes that want better Arguments, I shall not insist here; but proceed to a defence of the questioned Assertion, that the Bible is the Word of God.  
22. IN which I shall proceed by these degrees. First, I shall lay down the plain grounds upon which Christians believe it. Secondly, I shall compare those with those of less credibility which have generally satisfied mankind in other things of the like nature. And thirdly, I shall consider whether those who are dissatisfied with those grounds would not be equally so with any other way of attestation.  
23. BEFORE I enter upon the first of these, I desire it may be considered, that matters of fact are not capable of such rigorous demonstrative evidences as mathematical propositions are. To render a thing fit for rational belief, there is no more required, but that the motives for it do over poise those against it; and in that degree they do so, so is the belief stronger or weaker.  
24. NOW the motives of our belief in the present case, are such as are extrinsic, or intrinsic to the Scriptures; of which the extrinsic are first, and preparative to the other; and indeed all that can reasonably be insisted on to a gainsaier, who must be supposed no competent judge of the later. But as to the former I shall adventure to say, that the divine Original of the Scripture hath as great grounds of credibility as can be expected in any thing of this kind. For whether God inspired the penmen of Holy Writ, is matter of fact, and being so is capable of no other external evidence but that of testimony: and that matter of fact being also in point of time so remote from us, can be judged of only by a series of testimonies derived from that Age wherein the Scriptures were written, to this: and the more credible the testifiers, and the more universal the testimony; so much the more convincing are they to all considering men.  
25. AND this attestation the Scripture hath in the highest circumstances, it having been witnessed to in all Ages, and in those Ages by all persons that could be presumed to know any thing of it. Thus the Old Testament was owned by the whole nation of the Jews, as the writings of men inspired by God; & that with such evidence of their mission, as abundantly satisfied those of that Age, of their being so inspired; and they derived those Writings with that attestation to their posterity. Now that those of the first Ages were not deceived, is as morally certain as any thing can be supposed. For in the first part of the Bible is contained the history of those miracles wherewith God rescued that people out of Egypt, and instated them in Canaan. Now if they who lived at that time knew that such miracles were never done, 'tis impossible they could receive an evident Fable as an inspired truth. No single person, much less a whole Nation can be supposed so stupid. But if indeed they were eie-witnesses of those miracles, they might with very good reason conclude, that the same Moses who was by God impower'd to work them, was so also for the relating them; as also all those precedent events from the Creation down to that time, which are recorded by him.  
26. SO also for the preceptive parts of those Books, those that saw those formidable solemnities, with which they were first published, had sure little temptation to doubt that they were the dictates of God, when written. Now if they could not be deceived themselves, 'tis yet less imaginable that they should conspire to impose a cheat upon their posterities; nor indeed were the Jews of so easy a credulity, that 'tis at all probable the succeeding Generations would have been so imposed on: their humour was stubborn enough, and the precepts of their Law severe and burdensome enough to have tempted them to have cast off the yoke, had it not been bound upon them by irresistible convictions of its coming from God. But besides this Tradition of their Elders, they had the advantage of living under a Theocracy, the immediate guidance of God; Prophets daily raised up among them, to foretell events, to admonish them of their duty, and reprove their backslidings: yet even these gave the deference to the written Word; nay, made it the test by which to try true inspirations from false: To the Law and to the Testimony; if they speak not according to it, there is no light in them, Esay 8.20. So that the veneration which they had before acquired, was still anew excited by fresh inspirations, which both attested the old, and became new parts of their Canon.  
27. NOR could it be esteemed a small confirmation to the Scriptures, to find in succeeding Ages the signal accomplishments of those prophecies which were long before registered in those Books; for nothing less than divine power and wisdom could foretell, and also verify them. Upon these grounds the Jews universally through all successions received the Books of the Old Testament as divine Oracles, and looked upon them as the greatest trust that could be committed to them: and accordingly were so scrupulously vigilant in conserving them, that their Masorits numbered not only the sections, but the very words, nay letters, that no fraud or inadvertency might corrupt or defalk the least iota of what they esteemed so sacred. A farther testimony and sepiment to which, were the Samaritan, Chaldee, and Greek versions: which being made use of in the Synagogs' of Jews, in their dispersions, and the Samaritans at Sichem could not at those distances receive a uniform alteration, and any other would be of no effect. Add to this, that the Original exemplar of the Law, was laid up in the Sanctuary, that the Prince was to have a Copy of it always by him, and transcribe it with his own hand; that every Jew was to make it his constant discourse and meditation, teach it his children, and wear part of it upon his hands and forehead. And now sure 'tis impossible to imagine any matter of fact to be more carefully deduced, or irrefragably testified, nor any thing believed upon stronger evidence.  
28. THAT all this is true in reference to the Jews, that they did thus own these Writings as divine, appears not only by the Records of past Ages, but by the Jews of the present, who still own them, and cannot be suspected of combination with the Christians. And if these were reasonable grounds of conviction to the Jews, (as he must be most absurdly sceptical that shall deny) they must be so to us Christians also; who derive them from them: and that with this farther advantage to our Faith, that we see the clear completion of those Evangelical prophecies which remained dark to them, and consequently have a farther Argument to confirm us, that the Scriptures of the Old Testament are certainly divine.  
29. THE New has also the like means of probation: which as it is a collection of the doctrine taught by Christ and his Apostles, must if truly related be acknowleged no less divine than what they orally delivered. So that they who doubt its being divine, must either deny what Christ and his Apostles preached to be so; or else distrust the fidelity of the relation: The former strikes at the whole Christian Faith; which if only of men, must not only be fallible, but is actually a deceit, whilst it pretends to be of God, and is not. To such Objectors we have to oppose those stupendous miracles with which the Gospel was attested; such as demonstrated a more than human efficacy. And that God should lend his omnipotence to abet the false pretensions of men, is a conceit too unworthy even for the worst of men to entertain.  
30. 'TIS true, there have been by God permitted lying miracles; as well as true ones have been done by him: Such as were those of the Magicians in Egypt, in opposition to the other of Moses; but then the difference between both was so conspicuous, that he must be more partial and disingenuous, then even those Magicians were, who would not acknowledge the disparity, and confess in those which were truly supernatural, the finger of God, Exod. 8.19. Therefore both in the Old and New Testament it is predicted, that false Prophets should arise, and do signs and wonders, Deut. 13.1. Mat. 24.11.24. as a trial of their fidelity who made profession of Religion; whether they would prefer the few and trivial sleights which recommended a deceiver, before those great and numberless miracles which attested the sacred Oracles delivered to the sons of men by the God of truth. Whether the trick of a Barchochebas to hold fire in his mouth; that of Marcus the heretic, to make the Wine of the Holy Sacrament appear blood; or that of Mahomet, to bring a Pigeon to his ear, aught to be put in balance against all the miracles wrought by Moses, our Saviour, or his Apostles. And in a word, whether the silly stories which jamblichus solemnly relates of Pythagoras, or those Philostratus tells of Apollonius Tyaneus, deserve to rival those of the Evangelists. It is a most just judgement, and accordingly threatened by Almighty God, that they who would not obey the truth, should believe a lie, 2 Thes. 2.11. But still the Almighty, where any man or devil does proudly, is evidently above him, Exod. 18.11. will be justified in his sayings, and be clear when he is judged, Rom. 3.4.  
31. BUT if men will be Sceptics, and doubt every thing, they are to know that the matter called into question, is of a nature that admits but two ways of solution; probability, and testimony. First for probability, let it be considered, who were the first promulgers of Christ's miracles. In his life time they were either the patients on whom his miracles were wrought, or the common people, that were spectators: the former, as they could not be deceived themselves, but must needs know whether they were cured or no; so what imaginable design could they have to deceive others? Many indeed have pretended impotency as a motive of compassion; but what could they gain by owning a cure they had not? As for the Spectators, as their multitude adds to their credibility; (it being morally impossible that so many should at once be deluded in a matter obvious to their senses) so does it also acquit them from fraud and combination. Cheats and forgeries are always hatched in the dark, in close Cabals, and private Juncto's. That five thousand men at one time, and four thousand at another, should conspire to say, that they were miraculously fed, when they were not; and all prove true to the fiction, and not betray it: is a thing as irrational to be supposed, as impossible to be paralleled.  
32. BESIDES, admit it possible that so many could have joined in the deceit, yet what imaginable end could they have in it? Had their lie been subservient to the designs of some potent Prince that might have rewarded it, there had been some temptation: but what could they expect from the reputed son of a Carpenter, who had not himself where to lay his head? Nay, who disclaimed all secular power; conveyed himself away from their importunities, when they would have forced him to be a King: And consequently, could not be looked on as one that would head a Sedition, or attemt to raise himself to a capacity of rewarding his Abettors. Upon all these considerations, there appears not the least shadow of probability; that either those particular persons who published the cures they had received, or those multitudes who were witnesses and divulgers of those, or his other miracles; could do it upon any sinister design, or indeed upon any other motive but gratitude and admiration.  
33. In the next place, if we come to those miracles which succeeded Christ's death, those most important, and convincing, of his Resurrection and Ascension, and observe who were the divulgers of those, we shall find them very unlikely to be men of design; a set of illiterate men, taken from the Fisher-boats, and other mean occupations: and such as needed a miracle as great as any of those they were to assert (the descent of the Holy Ghost) to fit them for their office. What alas could they drive at, or how could they hope that their testimony could be received, so much against the humour and interest of the present rulers; unless they were assured not only of the truth of the things, but also of some supernatural aids to back and fortify them? Accordingly we find, that till they had received those; till by the descent of the Holy Ghost they were endued with power from on high, Luk. 24.49. they never attemted the discovery of what they had seen: but rather hid themselves, kept all their assemblies in privacy and concealment for fear of the Jews, Jo. 20.19. and so were far enough from projecting any thing besides their own safety. Afterwards, when they began to preach, they had early essays, what their secular advantages would be by it; threatenings and revile, scourge and imprisonments, Act. 4.20.5.18.40. And can it be imagined, that men who a little before had showed themselves so little in love with suffering, that none of them durst stick to their Master at his apprehension, but one forswore, and all forsook him; can it, I say, be imagined that these men should be so much in love with their own Fable, as to venture all sorts of persecution for the propagating it? Or if they could, let us in the next place consider what probability there could be of success.  
34. THEIR preaching amounted to no less than the Deifying of one, whom both their Roman and Jewish Rulers, nay, the generality of the people had executed as a malefactor: so that they were all engaged, in defence of their own Act, to sift their testimony with all the rigour that conscious jealousy could suggest. And where were so many concerned inquisitors, there was very little hope for a forgery to pass. Besides the avowed displeasure of their Governors made it a hazardous thing to own a belief of what they asserted. Those that adhered to them could not but know, that at the same time they must espouse their dangers and sufferings. And men use not to incur certain mischiefs, upon doubtful and suspicious grounds.  
35. YET farther, their doctrine was designed to an end to which their Auditors could not but have the greatest reluctancy: they were to struggle with that rooted prepossession which the Jews had for the Mosaical Law, which their Gospel out-dated; and the Gentiles for the Rites and Religion of their Ancestors; and, which was harder than either, with the corruptions and vices of both: to plant humility and internal sanctity, so contrary to that ceremonial holiness, upon which the Jews so valued themselves, and despised others: and Temperance, Justice, and Purity, so contrary to the practice, nay, even the religion of the Heathen: and to attemt all this with no other allurement, no other promise of recompense but what they must attend in another world, and pass too through reproaches and afflictions, torments and death. These were all such invincible prejudices, as they could never hope to break thorough with a lie, nay, which they could not have encountered even with every common truth, but only with that, which being divine, brought its aids with it; without which 'twas utterly impossible for all the skill or oratory of men to overcome such disadvantages.  
36. AND yet with all these did these rude inartificial men contest, and that with signal success: no less than three thousand Proselytes made by Saint Peter's first Sermon; and that in Jerusalem, the Scene where all was acted, and consequently where 'twas the most impossible to impose a forgery. And at the like miraculous rate they went on, till as the Pharisees themselves complain, they had filled Jerusalem with their doctrine, Acts 5.28. nor did Judea set bounds to them; their sound went out into all Nations, Rom. 10.18. and their doctrine spread itself through all the Gentile world.  
37. AND sure so wonderful an event, so contrary to all human mesures, does sufficiently evince there was more than man in it. Nothing but the same creative Power that produced light out of darkness, could bring forth effects so much above the proportion of the cause. Had these weak instruments acted only by their natural powers, nothing of this had been achieved. Alas, could these poor rude men learn all Languages within the space of fifty days, which would take up almost as many years of the most industrious Student, and yet had they not been able to speak them, they could never have divulged the Gospel to the several Nations, nor so effectually have convinced the bystanders, Act. 2. that they acted by a higher impulse. And to convince the world they did so, they repeated their Master's miracles as well as his doctrine; healed the sick, cast out devils, raised the dead; And where God communicated so much of his power, we may reasonably conclude he did it to promote his own work, not the work of the devil, as it must have been if this whole Scene were a lie.  
38. WHEN all this is weighed, I presume there will remain little ground to suspect, that the first planters of Christian Faith had any other design then what they avowed, viz. the bringing men to holiness here, and salvation hereafter. The suspicion therefore, if any, must rest upon later times; and accordingly some are willing to persuade themselves and others, that the whole Scheme of our Religion, is but a lately devised Fable to keep the world in awe; whereof Princes have made some use, but Clergymen more; and that Christ and his Apostles are only actors whom themselves have conjured up upon the stage to pursue their plot.  
39 IN answer to this bold, this blasphemous suggestion, I should first desire these surmisers to point out the time when, and the persons who began this design; to tell us exactly whence they date this politic Religion, as they are pleased to suppose it. If they cannot, they are manifestly unjust to reject our account of it when they can give none themselves; and fail very much of that rigid demonstration they require from others. That there is such a profession as Christianity in the world, is yet (God be blest) undeniable; (though at the rate it has of late declined, God knows how long it will be so:) we say it came by Christ, and his Apostles, and that it is attested by an uninterrupted testimony of all the intervening Ages, the suffrage of all Christian Churches from that day to this. And sure they who embraced the doctrine, are the most competent witnesses from whence they received it.  
40. YET lest they should be all thought parties to the design, and their witness excepted against, it has pleased God to give us collateral assurances, and made both Jewish and Gentile Writers give testimony to the Antiquity of Christianity. Josephus does this, lib. 20. chap. 8. and lib. 18. chap. 4. where, after he has given an account of the crucifixion of Christ exactly agreeing with the Evangelists; he concludes, And to this day the Christian people, who of him borrow their name cease not to increase. I add not the personal elogium which he gives of our Saviour; because some are so hardy to control it: also I pass what Philo mentions of the religious in Egypt, because several Learned men refer it to the Essens, a Sect among the Jews, or some other. There is no doubt of what Tacitus and other Roman Historians speak of Christ as the Author of the Christian doctrine; which it had been impossible for him to have done, if there had then been no such doctrine, or if Christ had not been known as the Founder of it. So afterward Pliny gives the Emperor Trajan an account both of the manners, and multitude of the Christians; and makes the innocence of the one, and the greatness of the other, an Argument to slacken the persecution against them. Nay, the very bloody Edicts of the persecuting Emperors, & the scoffs and reproaches of Celsus, Porphyri, Lucian, and other profane opposers of this Doctrine, do undeniably assert its being. By all which it appears, that Christianity had in those Ages not only a being, but had also obtained mightily in the world, and drawn in vast numbers to its profession; and vast indeed they must needs be, to furnish out that whole Army of Martyrs, of which profane, as well as Ecclesiastic writers speak. And if all this be not sufficient to evince that Christianity stole not clancularly into the world, but took its rise from those times and persons it pretends, we must renounce all faith of testimony, and not believe an inch farther than we see.  
41. I suppose▪ I need say no more to show that the Gospel, and all those portentous miracles which attested it, were no forgeries, or stratagems of men. I come now to that doubt which more immediately concerns the Holy Scripture, viz. whether all those transactions be so faithfully related there, that we may believe them to have been dictated by the spirit of God. Now for this, the process need be but short, if we consider who were the penmen of the New Testament; even for the most part the Apostles themselves: Matthew, and John who wrote two of the Gospels were certainly so: and Mark, as all the Ancients aver, was but the Amanuensis to Saint Peter, who dictated that Gospel. Saint Luke indeed comes not under this first rank of Apostles; yet is by some affirmed to be one of the seventy Disciples: however an Apostolical person 'tis certain he was, and it was no wonder for such to be inspired. For in those first Ages of the Church men acted more by immediate inflation of the Spirit then since. And accordingly we find Stephen, though but a Deacon, had the power of miracles; and preached as divinely as the prime Apostles, Act. 7. And the gift of the Holy Ghost was then a usual concomitant of conversion, as appears in the Story of Cornelius, Acts 10.45, 46. Besides, Saint Luke was a constant attendant on Saint Paul (who derived the Faith not from man, but by the immediate revelation of Jesus Christ, as himself professes, Gal. 1.12.) and is by some said to have wrote by dictat from him, as Mark did from Saint Peter. Then as to the Epistles they all bear the names of Apostles, except that to the Hebrews, which yet is upon very good grounds, presumed to be Saint Paul's. Now these were the persons commissionated by Christ to preach the Christian doctrine, and were signally assisted in the discharge of that office; so that as he tells them, it was not they, who spoke, but the spirit of the Father that spoke in them, Mat. 13.11. And if they spoke by divine inspiration, there can be no question that they wrote so also. Nay, indeed of the two, it seems more necessary they should do the later. For had they erred in any thing they orally delivered, they might have retracted and cured the mischief: but these Books being designed as a standing immutable rule of Faith and manners to all successions, any error in them would have been irreparable, and have entailed itself upon posterity: which agreed neither with the truth, nor goodness of God to permit.  
42. NOW that these Books were indeed writ by them whose names they bear, we have as much assurance as 'tis possible to have of any thing of that nature, and that distance of time from us. For however some of them may have been controverted; yet the greatest part have admitted no dispute, whose doctrines agreeing exactly with the others, give testimony to them. And to the bulk of those writings, it is notorious that the first Christians received them from the Apostles, and so transmitted them to the ensuing Ages, which received them with the like esteem and veneration. They cannot be corrupted, says Saint Austin in the thirty second Book against Faustus the Manich. c. 16. because they are and have been in the hands of all Christians. And whosoever should first attemt an alteration, he would be confuted by the inspection of other ancienter Copies. Besides, the Scriptures are not in some one Language, but translated into many: so that the faults of one Book would be corrected by others more ancient, or in a different Tongue.  
43. And how much the body of Christians were in earnest concerned to take care in this matter, appears by very costly evidences; multitudes of them choosing rather to part with their lives then their Bibles. And indeed 'tis a sufficient proof, that their reverence of that Book was very avowed and manifest; when their heathen Persecuters made that one part of their persecution. So that as wherever the Christian Faith was received, this Book was also, under the notion we now plead for, viz. as the writings of men inspired by God: so it was also contended for even unto death; and to part with the Bible was to renounce the Faith. And now, after such a cloud of testimonies, we may sure take up that (ill-applied) saying of the high Priest, Mat. 26.65. what farther need have we of witnesses.  
44. YET besides these, another sort of witnesses there are, I mean those intrinsic evidences which arise out of the Scripture itself; but of these I think not proper here to insist, partly because the subject will be in a great degree coincident with that of the second general consideration; and partly because these can be argumentative to none who are not qualified to discern them. Let those who doubt the divine Original of Scripture, well digest the former grounds which are within the verge of reason; and when by those they are brought to read it with due reverence, they will not want Arguments from the Scripture itself to confirm their veneration of it.  
45. IN the mean time, to evince how proper the former discourse is to found a rational belief that the Scripture is the word of God; I shall compare it with those mesures of credibilty upon which all human transactions move, and upon which men trust their greatest concerns without diffidence or dispute.  
46. THAT we must in many things trust the report of others is so necessary, that without it humane society cannot subsist. What a multitude of subjects are there in the world, who never saw their Prince, nor were at the making of any Law? if all these should deny their obedience, because they have it only by hear-say, there is such a man, and such Laws, what would become of government? So also for property, if nothing of testimony may be admitted, how shall any man prove his right to any thing? All pleas must be decided by the sword, and we shall fall into that state (which some have fancied the primitive) of universal hostility. In like manner for traffic and commerce; how should any Merchant first attemt a trade to any foreign part of the world, if he did not believe that such a place there was? and how could he believe that, but upon the credit of those who have been there? Nay indeed how could any man first attemt to go but to the next Market Town, if he did not from the report of others, conclude that such a one there was? so that if this universal diffidence should prevail, every man should be a kind of Plantagnus, fixed to the soil he first sprung up in. The absurdities are indeed so infinite, and so obvious, that I need not dilate upon them.  
47. BUT it will perhaps be said, that in things that are told us by our contemporaries, and that relate to our own time, men will be less apt to deceive us, because they know 'tis in our power to examine and discover the truth. To this I might say, that in many instances it would scarce quit cost to do so; and the inconveniences of trial would exceed those of belief. But I shall willingly admit this probable Argument, and only desire it may be applied to our main question, by considering whether the primitive Christians who received the Scripture as divine, had not the same security of not being deceived, who had as great opportunities of examining, and the greatest concern of doing it throly, since they were to engage not only their future hopes in another world, but (that which to nature is much more sensible) all their present enjoiments, and even life itself upon the truth of it.  
48. BUT because it must be confessed that we who are so many Ages removed from them, have not their means of assurance, let us in the next place consider, whether an assent to those testimonies they have left behind them, be not warranted by the common practice of mankind in other cases. Who is there that questions there was such a man as William the Conqueror in this Island? or, to lay the Scene farther; who doubts there was an Alexander, a Julius Caesar, an Augustus? Now what have we to found this confidence on besides the faith of History? And I presume even those who exact the severest demonstrations for Ecclesiastic Story, would think him a very impertinent Sceptic that should do the like in these. So also, as to the Authors of Books; who disputes whether Homer writ the Iliads, or Virgil the Aeneids, or Caesar the Commentaries, that pass under their names? yet none of these have been attested in any degree like the Scripture. 'Tis said indeed, that Caesar ventured his own life to save his Commentaries, employing one hand to hold that above the water, when it should have assisted him in swimming. But who ever laid down their lives in attestation of that, or any human composure, as multitudes of men have done for the Bible?  
49. BUT perhaps 'twill be said, that the small concern men have, who wrote these, or other the like Books, inclines them to acquiesce in the common opinion. To this I must say, that many things inconsiderable to mankind have oft been very laboriously discussed, as appears by many unedifying Volumes, both of Philosophers and Schoolmen. But whatever may be said in this instance, 'tis manifest there are others, wherein men's real and greatest interests are entrusted to the testimonies of former Ages. For example, a man possesses an estate which was bought by his great Grandfather, or perhaps elder Progenitor: he charily preserves that deed of purchase, and never looks for farther security of his title: yet alas, at the rate that men object against the Bible, what numberless Cavils might be raised against such a deed? How shall it be known that there was such a man as either Seller or Purchaser? if by the witnesses; they are as liable to doubt as the other; it being as easy to forge the Attestation as the main writing: and yet notwithstanding all these possible deceits, nothing but a positive proof of forgery can invalidate this deed. Let but the Scripture have the same measure, be allowed to stand in force, to be what it pretends to be, till the contrary be (not by surmises and possible conjectures) but by evident proof evinced; and its greatest Advocats will ask no more.  
50. A like instance may be given in public concerns: the immunities and rights of any Nation, particularly here, of our Magna Charta, granted many Ages since, and deposited among the public Records: to make this signify any thing, it must be taken for granted, that this was without falsification preserved to our times; yet how easy were it to suggest that in so long a succession of its keepers, some may have been prevailed on by the influence of Princes to abridge and curtail its concessions, others by a prevailing faction of the people to amplify and extend it? Nay, if men were as great Sceptics in Law, as they are in Divinity, they might exact demonstrations that the whole thing were not a forgery. Yet, for all these possible surmises, we still build upon it, and should think he argued very fallaciously, that should go to evacuate it, upon the force of such remote suppositions.  
51. NOW I desire it may be considered whether our security concerning the holy Scripture be not as great, nay, greater than it can be of this. For first, this is a concern only of a particular Nation, and so can expect no foreign attestation; and secondly, it has all along rested on the fidelity of its keepers; which has either been a single person, or at best some small number at a time; whereas the Scriptures have been witnessed to by persons of all Nations, and those not single, but collective Bodies and Societies, even as many as there have been Christian Churches throout the world. And the same that are its Attestors have been its Guardians also, and by their multitudes made it a very difficult, if not an impossible thing to falsify it in any considerable degree; it being not imaginable, as I showed before from St. Austin, all Churches should combine to do it: and if they did not, the fraud could not pass undetected: and if no eminent change could happen, much less could any new, any counterfeit Gospel be obtruded, after innumerable Copies of the first had been translated into almost all Languages, and dispersed throughout the world.  
52. THE Imperial Law compiled by Justinian, was soon after his death, by reason of the inroads of the Goths, and other barbarous Nations, utterly lost in the Western world; and scarce once heard of for the space of five hundred years, and then came casually to be retrieved upon the taking of Amalsis by the Pisans; one single Copy being found there at the plundering of the City. And the whole credit of those Pandects, which have ever since governed the Western world, depends in a manner on that single Book, formerly called the Pisan; and now, after that Pisa was taken by the Florentines, the Florentine Copy. But notwithstanding this; the body of the Civil Law obtains; and no man thinks it reasonable to question its being really what it pretends to be, notwithstanding its single, and so long interrupted derivation. I might draw this parallel thro' many other instances, but these may suffice to show, that if the Scriptures might find but so much equity, as to be tried by the common mesures of other things, it it would very well pass the test.  
53. BUT men seem in this case (like our late Legislators) to set up new extraregular Courts of Justice, to try those whom no ordinary rules will cast, yet their designs re-require should be condemned: And we may conclude, 'tis not the force of reason, but of prejudice; that makes them so unequal to themselves as to reject the Scriptures, when they receive every thing else upon far weaker grounds. The bottom of it is, they are resolved not to obey its precepts; and therefore think it the shortest cut to disavow its authority: for should they once own that, they would find themselves entangled in the most inextricable dilemma; that of the Pharisees about John Baptist: If we say from heaven, he will say, why then did you not believe him? Mat. 21.25. If they confess the Scriptures divine, they must be self-condemned in not obeying them. And truly men that have such preingagements to their lusts, that they must admit nothing that will disturb them; do but prevaricate when they call for greater evidences and demonstrations: for those bosom Sophisters will elude the most manifest convictions; and like Jugglers, make men disbelieve even their own senses. So that any other ways of evidence will be as disputable with them, as those already offered: which is the third thing I proposed to consider.  
54. IT has been sometimes seen in popular mutinies, that when blanks have been sent them, they could not agree what to ask: and were it imaginable that God should so far court the infidelity of men, as to allow them to make their own demands, to set down what ways of proof would persuade them; I doubt not there are many have obstinacy enough, to defeat their own methods, as well as they now do Gods. 'Tis sure there is no ordinary way of conviction left for them to ask, God having already (as hath also been showed) afforded that. They must therefore resort to immediate revelation, expect instant assurances from heaven, that this book we call the Bible is the word of God.  
55. MY first question than is, in what manner this revelation must be made to appear credible to them. The best account we have of the several ways of revelation is from the Jews, to whom God was pleased upon new emergencies signally to revele himself. These were first dreams; secondly, visions; by both which the Prophets received their inspirations. Thirdly, Vrim and Thummim. Fourthly, the Bath-col (as they term it) Thunder and voice from Heaven. Let us consider them distinctly, and see whether our Sceptical men may not probably find somewhat to dispute in every one of these. And first for dreams; it is among us so hard to distinguish between those that arise from constitution, prepossession of fancy, diabolical or divine infusion, that those that have the most critically considered them, do rather difference them by their matter, than any certain discriminating circumstances: and unless we had some infallible way of discerning, our dependence on them may more probably betray then direct us. 'Tis unquestionable that usually fancy has the greatest stroke in them. And if he that should commit himself to the guidance of his waking fancy, is not like to be over-wisely governed, what can we expect from his sleeping? All this and more may doubtless be soberly enough objected against the validity of our common dreams.  
56. BUT admit there were now such divine dreams as brought their evidence along with them; yet sure 'tis possible for prejudiced men, to resist even the clearest convictions. For do we not see some that have made a shift to extinguish that natural light, those notions which are interwoven into the very frame and constitution of their minds, that so they may sin more at ease, and without reluctancy? and sure 'tis as possible for them to close their eyes against all rays from without too, to resist revelation as well as instinct; and more likely, by how much a transient cause is naturally less operative than a permanent. An instance of this we have in Balaam; who being in these nightly visitations prohibited by God to go to Balack; and though he knew then, what he afterwards says, Num. 23.19. that God was not a man that he should lie, nor the son of man that he should repent: yet he would not take God at his first word, but upon a fresh bait to his covetousness, tries again for an answer more indulgent to his interest. Besides, if God should thus revele himself to some particular persons, yet 'tis beyond all precedent or imagination, that he should do it to every man; and then how shall those who have these dreams, be able to convince others that they are divine?  
57 'TIS easy to guests what reception a man that produces no other authority, would have in this ludicrous Age: he would certainly be thought rather to want sleep, then to have had revelations in it. And if Jacob and the Patriarches, who were themselves acquainted with divine dreams, yet did not believe joseph's; any man that should now pretend in that kind, would be sure to fall under the same irony that he did, to be entertained with a behold this dreamer cometh, Gen. 37.19.  
58. THE second way of revelation by vision was, where the man was wrapped into an ecstasy, his spirit for a while suspended from all sensible communication with the body, and entertained with supernatural light. In these the Prophets saw emblematical representations of future events, received knowledge of divine Mysteries, and commission and ability to discharge the whole prophetic office. Now suppose God should now raise us Prophets, and inspire them after this manner; what would the merry men of this time say to it? Can we think that they who rally upon all that the former Prophets have writ, would look with much reverence on what the new ones should say? Some perhaps would construe their raptures to be but like Mahomet's Epilepsy; others a fit of frenzy, others perhaps a being drunk with new wine; Act. 2.13. but those that did the most soberly consider it, would still need a new revelation to attest the truth of this: there being far more convincing arguments to prove the Scriptures divine, than any man can allege to prove his inspiration to be so. And 'tis sure a very irrational method, to attemt the clearing of a doubt, by somewhat which is itself more doubtful.  
59 A third way, was by Vrim and Thummim, which Writers tell us was an Oracle resulting from the Letters which were graven the High Priests Pectoral, to which in all important doubts the Jews of those Ages resorted, and received responses; but whether it were by the sudden prominency, or resplendency of the letters, or by any other way, is not material in this place to inquire: one thing is certain, that the Ephod, and consequently the Pectoral was in the Priest's custody, and that he had the administration of the whole affair. Now I refer it to consideration, whether this one circumstance would not (to those prejudiced men I speak of) utterly evacuate the credit of the Oracle. They have taught themselves to look on Priesthood, whether Legal or Evangelical, only as a better name for imposture and cozenage: and they that can accuse the Priests for having kept up a cheat for so many Ages; must needs think them such omnipotent Jugglers, that nothing can be fence against their Legerdemain: and by consequence, this way of revelation would rather foment their displeasure at the Ecclesiastics, then satisfy their doubts of the Scripture.  
60. LASTLY, for the fourth way, that of thunder and voice from Heaven, though that would be a signal way of conviction to unprejudiced men, yet it would probably have as little effect as the rest upon the others: men that pretend to such deep reasoning would think it childish to be frighted out of their opinion by a clap of Thunder; some philosophical reason shall be found out, to satisfy them that 'tis the effect only of some natural cause, and any the most improbable shall serve turn to supplant the fear of its being a divine testimony to that, which they are so unwilling should be true. As for the voice from Heaven, it must either be heard by others, and related to them; or else immediately by themselves: if the former, 'twill lie under the same prejudice which the Bible already does; that they have it but by hear-say, and reporters would fall under the reproach either of design or frenzy; that they meant to deceive, or were themselves deceived by their own distempered fancy. But if themselves should be Auditors of it; 'tis odds but their bottomless jealousies in divine Matters would suggest a possibility of fraud, though they knew not how to trace it: nay 'tis more then possible that they will rather disbelieve their own senses, then in this instance take their testimony with all its consequences.  
61. NOR is this a wild supposition: for we see it possible not only for single men, but multitudes to disbelieve their senses, thro' an excess of credulity; witness the doctrine of Transubstantiation. Why may it not then be as possible for others to do the like thro' a greater excess of incredulity? Besides, men's prepossessions and affections have a strange influence on their Faith: men many times will not suffer themselves to believe the most credible things, if they cross their inclination. How often do we see irregular patients that will not believe any thing that their appetite craves will do them hurt, though their Physicians, nay, their own even sensitive experience attest it to them? And can we think that a diseased mind, gasping with an Hydropic thirst after the pleasures of sin, will ever assent to those premises, whose conclusion will engage to the renouncing them? Will not a luxurious voluptuous person be willing rather to give his ears the lie, to disbelieve what he hears, then permit them more deeply to disoblige his other senses, by bringing in those restraints and mortifications which the Scripture would impose upon them?  
62. THUS we see how little probability there is, that any of these ways of revelation would convince these incredulous men. And indeed, those that will not believe upon such inducements as may satisfy men of sober reason, will hardly submit to any other method, according to that Assertion of Father Abraham; If they hear not Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead, Luk. 16.31. Now at this rate of infidelity, what way will they leave God to manifest any thing convincingly to the world? which is to put him under an impotency greater than adheres to humanity: for we men have power to communicate our minds to others, to tell whether we own such or such a thing, to which we are entitled; and we can satisfy our Auditors that it is indeed we that speak to them: but if every method God uses, does rather increase then satisfy men's doubts, all intercourse between God and man is intercepted; and he must do that of necessity, which Epicurus phancied he did of choice; viz. keep himself unconcerned in the affairs of mortals, as having no way of communicating with them. Nay (what is yet, if possible, more absurd) he must be supposed to have put the works of his Creation out of his own reach, to have given men discursive faculties, and left himself no way of address to them.  
63. THESE inferences how horridly soever they sound, yet I see not how they can be disclaimed by those, who are unsatisfied with all those ways by which God hath hitherto revealed himself to the world. For can it be imagined, that God who created man a reasonable creature, that himself might be glorified in his free and rational obedience; (when all other creatures obey upon impulse and instinct) can it, I say, be imagined, that he should so remissly pursue his own design, as to let so many Ages pass since the Creation, and never to acquaint mankind with the particulars wherein that obedience was to be exercised. This sure were so disagreeable to his wisdom and goodness, that it cannot be charged upon his will: and consequently they who own not that he has made any such revelation, must tacitly tax him of impotence, that he could not do it. But if any man will say he has, and yet reject all this which both Jews and Christians receive as such, let him produce his testimonies for the others, or rather (to retort his own measure) his demonstrations. And then let it appear whether his Scheme of doctrine, or ours, will need the greater aid of that easy credulity he reproaches us with.  
64. I have now gone thro' the method I proposed for evincing the Divine Original of the Scriptures, and shall not descend to examine those more minute and particular Cavils which profane men make against them; the proof of this, virtually superseding all those. For if it be reasonable to believe it the Word of God, it must be reasonable also to believe it of perfection proportionable to the Author; and then certainly it must be advanced beyond all our objections. For to those who except to the stile, the incoherence, the contradictions, or whatever else in Scripture; I shall only ask this one question, whether it be not much more possible that they (who can pretend to be nothing above fallible men) may misjudg, then that the infallible God should dictate any thing justly liable to those charges; I am sure they must depart as much from Reason as Religion, to affirm the contrary. But alas, instead of this implicit submission to God's Word, men take up explicit prejudices against it; condemn it without ever examining the truth of the Allegation. 'Tis certain, that in a writing of such Antiquity, whose original Language has Idioms and Phrases so peculiar, whose Country had customs so differing from the rest of the world; 'tis impossible to judge of it without reference to all those circumstances. Add to this, that the Hebrew has been a dead Language for well nigh two thousand years, no where in common use: nor is there any other ancient Book now extant in it, besides those, yet not all neither, of the Old Testament.  
65. Now of those many who defame Holy Writ, how few are there that have the industry to inquire into those particulars? And when for want of knowledge, some passages seem improper, or perhaps contradictory; the Scripture must bear the blame of their ignorance, and be accused as absurd and unintelligible, because themselves are stupid and negligent. It were therefore methinks but a reasonable proposal, that no man should araign it, till they have used all honest diligence, taken in all probable helps for the understanding it: and if this might be obtained, I believe most of its Accusers would like those of the woman in the Gospel, Jo. 8.9. drop away, as conscious of their own incompetency: the loudest out-cries that are made against it, being commonly of those who fall upon it only as a fashionable theme of discourse, and hope to acquire themselves the reputation of wits by thus charging God foolishly. But he that would candidly and uprightly endeavour to comprehend before he judges, and to that end industriously use those means which the providence of God by the labours of pious men hath afforded him, will certainly find cause to acquit the Scripture of those imputations which our bold Critics have cast upon it. I do not say that he shall have all the obscurities of it perfectly cleared to him; but he shall have so many of them as is for his real advantage, and shall discern such reasons why the rest remain unfathomable, as may make him not only justify, but celebrate the wisdom of the Author.  
66. YET this is to be expected only upon the forementioned condition, viz. that he come with sincere and honest intentions; for as for him that comes to the Scripture with design, and wishes to find matter of cavil, and accusations; there is little doubt but that spirit of impiety and profaneness which sent him thither, will meet him there as a spirit of delusion and occecation. That Prince of the Air will cast such mists, raise such black vapours; that as the Apostle speaks, the light of the glorious Gospel of Christ shall not shine unto him, 2 Cor. 4.5. Indeed were such a man left only to the natural efficacy of prejudice, that is of itself so blinding, so infatuating a thing, as commonly fortifies against all conviction. We see it in all the common instances of life; mens very senses are often enslaved by it: the prepossession of a strong fancy will make the objects of sight or hearing appear quite different from what they are. But in the present case, when this shall be added to Satanical illusions, and both left to their operations by God's withdrawing his illuminating grace, the case of such a man answers that description of the Scripture. They have eyes and see not, ears have they and hear not, Rom. 11.8. And that God will so withdraw his grace, we have all reason to believe; he having promised it only to the meek; to those who come with malleable ductile spirits, to learn, not to deride or cavil. Saint Peter tells us, that the unlearned and unstable wrest the Scripture to their own destruction, 2 Pet. 3.15. And if God permit such to do so, much more will he the proud and malicious.  
67. I say not this, to deter any from the study of Holy Scripture, but only to caution them to bring a due preparation of mind along with them; God's Word being like a generous sovereign medicament; which if simply and regularly taken, is of the greatest benefit; but if mixed with poison, serves only to make that more fatally operative. To conclude, he that would have his doubts solved concerning Scripture, let him follow the method our blessed Lord has prescribed: Let him do the will of God, and then he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, Jo. 7.17 Let him bring with him a probity of mind, a willingness to assent to all convictions he shall there meet with: and then he will find grounds sufficient to assure him that it is God's Word and consequently to be received with all the the submission and reverence, that its being so exacts.   

SECT. III. The subject matter treated of in the Holy Scripture is excellent, as is also its end and design.  
WE have hitherto considered the holy Scripture only under one notion, as it is the Word of God; we come now to view it in the subject matter of it, the several parts whereof it consists; which are so various and comprehensive, as shows the whole is derived from him who is all in all, 1 Cor. 19.28. But that we may not speak only loosely, and at rovers, we will take this excellent frame in pieces, and consider its most eminent parts distinctly. Now the parts of Holy Writ seem to branch themselves into these severals. First, the Historical; secondly, the Prophetic; thirdly, the Doctrinal; fourthly, the Preceptive; fifthly, the Minatory, sixthly, the Promissory. These are the several veins in this rich Mine, in which he who industriously labours, will find the Psalmist was not out in his estimate, when he pronounces them more to be desired then gold, yea, than much fine gold, Psal. 19.10.  
2. TO speak first of the Historical part; the things which chiefly recommend a History are the dignity of the subject, the truth of the relation, and those pleasant or profitable observations which are interwoven with it. And first, for the dignity of the subject, the History of the Bible must be acknowledged to excel all others: those show the rise and progress of some one people or Empire; this shows us the original of the whole Universe; and particularly of man, for whose use and benefit the whole Creation was designed. By this mankind is brought into acquaintance with itself; made to know the elements of its constitution, and taught to put a differing value upon that Spirit which was breathed into it by God, Gen. 2.7. and the flesh whose foundation is in the dust, Job 4.19. And when this Historical part of Scripture contracts and draws into a narrow channel, when it records the concerns but of one Nation, yet it was that which God had dignified above all the rest of the world, marked it out for his own peculiar; made it the repository of his truth, and the visible stock from whence the Messias should come, in whom all the Nations of the earth were to be blessed, Gen. 18.18. so that in this one people of the Jews, was virtually enfolded the highest and most important interests of the whole world; and it must be acknowledged, no Story could have a nobler subject to treat of.  
3. SECONDLY, as to the truth of the relation, though to those who own it God's Word there needs no other proof; yet it wants not human Arguments to confirm it. The most undoubted symtome of sincerity in an Historian is impartiality. Now this is very eminent in Scripture writers: they do not record others faults, and balk their own; but indifferently accuse themselves as well as others. Moses mentions his own diffidence and unwillingness to go on God's message, Ex. 4.13. his provocation of God at the waters of Meribah, Num. 20. Jonah records his own sullen behaviour towards God, with as great aggravations as any of his enemies could have done. Peter in his dictating Saint Marks Gospel, neither omits nor extenuates his sin; all he seems to speak short in, is his repentance. Saint Paul registers himself as the greatest of sinners.  
4. AND as they were not indulgent to their own personal faults, so neither did any nearness of relation, any respect of quality bribe them to a concelement: Moses relates the offence of his sister Miriam in mutining. Num. 12.1. of his brother Aaron in the matter of the Calf, Ex. 32.4. with as little disguise as that of Korah and his company. David though a King, hath his adultery and murder displayed in the blackest characters; and King Hezekiahs' little vanity of showing his tresures, does not escape a remark. Nay, even the reputation of their Nation could not bias the sacred Writers; but they freely tax their crimes: the Israelites murmurings in the wilderness; their Idolatries in Canaan, are set down without any palliation or excuse. And they are as frequently branded for their stubborness and ingratitude, as the Canaanites are for their abominations. So that certainly no History in the world does better attest its truth by this evidence of impartiality.  
5. IN the last place it commends itself both by the pleasure and profit it yields. The rarity of those events it records surprises the mind with a delightful admiration; and that mixture of sage Discourses, and well-coucht Parables wherewith it abounds, does at once please and instruct. How ingenuously apt was nathan's Apologue to David, whereby with holy artifice he ensnared him into repentance? And it remains still matter of instruction to us, to show us with what unequal scales we are apt to weigh the same crime in others and ourselves. So also that long train of smart calamities which succeeded his sin, is set out with such particularity, that it seems to be exactly the crime reversed. His own lust with Bathsheba, was answered with Amnons' towards Thamar; his murder of Vriah with that of Amnon; his treacherous contrivance of that murder, with Absoloms' traitorous conspiracy against him. So that every circumstance of his punishment, was the very echo and reverberation of his guilt. A multitude of the like instances might be produced out of holy Writ; all concurring to admonish us, that God exactly marks, and will repay our crimes; and that commonly with such propriety, that we need no other clue to guide us to the cause of our sufferings, than the very sufferings themselves. Indeed innumerable are the profitable observations arising from the historical part of Scripture, that flow so easily and unconstreined; that nothing but a stupid inadvertence in the reader can make him balk them: therefore 'twould be impertinent here to multiply instances.  
6. LET us next consider the prophetic part of Scripture, and we shall find it no less excellent in its kind. The prophetic Books are for the most part made up (as the prophetic Office was) of two parts; prediction and instruction. When God raised up Prophets, 'twas not only to acquaint men with future events, but to reform their present manners: and therefore as they are called Seers in one respect, so they are Watchmen and Shepherds in another. Nay, indeed the former was often subservient to the other as to the nobler end: their gift of foretelling was to gain them authority; to be as it were the seal of their commission; to convince men that they were sent from God: and so to render them the more pliant to their reproofs and admonitions. And the very matter of their prophecies was usually adapted to this end: the denouncing of judgements being the most frequent theme, and that designed to bring men to repentances; as appears experimentally in the case of Nineveh. And in this latter part of their office, the Prophets acted with the greatest incitation and vehemence.  
7. WITH what liberty and zeal does Elijah arraign Ahab of Naboths murder, and foretell the fatal event of it, without any fear of his power, or reverence of his greatness? And Samuel when he delivers Saul the fatal message of his rejection, does passionately and convincingly expostulate with him concerning his sin, 1 Sam. 15.17. Now the very same Spirit still breathes in all the prophetic Writings: the same truth of prediction, and the same zeal against vice.  
8. FIRST, for the predictions what signal completions do we find? How exactly are all the denunciations of judgements fulfilled, where repentance has not intervened? He that reads the 28. chap. of Deut. and compares it with the Jew's calamities, both under the Assyrians and Babylonians, and especially under the Romans, would think their oppressors had consulted it, and transcribed their severities thence. And even these Nations, who were the instruments of accomplishing those dismal presages, had their own ruins foretold, and as punctually executed. And as in Kingdoms and Nations, so to private persons none of the prophetic threatenings ever returned emty. The sentence pronounced against Ahab, Jezabel, and their posterity, was fulfilled even to the most minute circumstances of place and manner; as is evident by comparing the denunciation of Elijah, 1 Kings. 21.19.23. with their tragical ends recorded in the following chapters. And as for Jehu, whose service God was pleased to use in that execution, though he rewarded it with entailing the crown of Israel on him for four descents; yet he foretold those should be the limits; and accordingly we find Zachariah, the fourth descendent of his line, was the last of it that sat on that throne, 2 Kings 15.10. So also the destruction of Achitophel and Judas, the one immediate, the other many hundred years remote, are foretell by David, Psal. 109. and we find exactly answered in the event.  
9 NOR was this exactness confined only to the severe predictions, but as eminent in the more gracious. All the blessings which God by himself, or the Ministry of his Prophets promised, were still infallibly made good. At the time of life God returned and visited Sarah with conception; notwithstanding those natural improbabilities which made her not only distrust, but even deride and laugh at the promise, Gen. 18. The posterity of that Son of Promise; the whole race of Abraham was delivered from the Egyptian bondage, and possessed of Canaan, at the precise time which God had long before signified to Abraham, Gen. 15. So likewise the return of the Jews from the Babylonish captivity, was foretell many years before their deportation, and Cyrus named for their restorer, before he had either name or being save only in God's prescience, Is. 44.28. But I need not multiply instances of national or personal promises. The earliest, and most comprehensive promise of all was that of the Messiah, in whom all persons and Nations of the world were to be blest, Gen. 22.11. that seed of the woman that should bruise the Serpent's head, Gen. 3.15. To him give all the Prophet's witness, as Saint Peter observes, Acts 10. And he who was the subject, made himself also the expounder of those prophecies in his walk to Emmaus with the two Disciples, Lu. 24.13. beginning at Moses, and all the Prophets, he expounded to them in all the Scriptures, the things concerning himself.  
10. THIS as it was infinitely the greatest blessing afforded mankind, so was it the most frequently and eminently predicted; and that with the most exact particularity as to all the circumstances. His immaculate conception, the union of his two natures implied in his name Immanuel; Behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel; is most plainly foretold by Is. Chap. 7.14. Nay the very place of his birth so punctually foretell; that the Priests and Scribes could readily resolve Herod's question upon the strength of the prophecy, and assure him Christ must be born in Bethlehem, Mat. 2.5. As for the whole business and design of his life, we find it so described by Isaiah chap. 61. as Christ himself owns it, Luk. 4.18. The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach good tidings to the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the broken hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord.  
11. IF we look farther to his death, the greatest part of the Old Testament has a direct aspect on it. All the Levitical oeconomy of Sacrifices and Ablutions were but prophetic Rites, and ocular Predictions of that one expiatory Oblation. Nay, most of God's providential dispensations to the Jews, carried in them types and prefigurations of this. Their rescue from Egypt, the sprinkling of blood to secure from the destroying Angel; the Manna with which they were fed, the Rock which supplied them water: these and many more referred to Christ, as their final and highest signification.  
12. BUT besides these darker adumbrations, we have (as the Apostle speaks) a more sure word of prophecy. Saint Peter in his calculation begins with Moses, takes in Samuel and the whole succession of Prophets after him, as bearing witness to this great event of Christ's passion, Acts 4.22.24. And indeed he that reads the Prophets consideringly, shall find it so punctually described, that the Evangelists do not much more fully instruct him in the circumstances of it. Daniel tells us, his death, as to the kind of it, was to be violent: The Messiah shall be cut off; and as to the design of it, 'twas not for himself, Dan. 9.26. But the Prophet Isaiah gives us more than a bare negative account of it; and expressly says, he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was on him, and by his stripes we were healed, chap. 53.5. And again, ver. 10. Thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin; and ver. 11. my righteous Servant shall justify many, for he shall bear their iniquities. Nor is Job an Idumean much short of even this Evangelical Prophet, in that short Creed of his, wherein he owns him as his Redeemer, I know that my Redeemer liveth, etc. Job. 19.25.  
13. AND as the end, so the circumstances of his sufferings are most of them under prediction: His extension upon the Cross is mentioned by the Psalmist: They pierced my hands, and my feet; I may tell all my bones, Psal. 22.16.17. As for his inward dolours, they are in that Psalm so pathetically described, that Christ chose that very form to breathe them out in: My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? ver. 1. So his revilers did also transcribe part of their reproaches from ver. 8. He trusted in God; let him deliver him now if he will have him, Mat. 27.43. That vinegar which was offered him on the cross, was a completion of a prophecy; In my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink, Ps 69.21. the piercing of his side was expressly foretell by Zachary; they shall look on him whom they have pierced, Zach. 10.12. The company in which he suffered, and the interment he had, are also intimated by Isaiah, he made his grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death, Isai. 53.9. Nay even the disposal of his garments was not without a prophecy: they parted my garments among them, and upon my vesture did they cast lots, Ps. 22.18. Here are a cloud of witnesses, which as they serve eminently to attest the truth of Christian Religion; so do they to evince the excellency of sacred Scripture; as to the verity of the prophetic part.  
14. AS to the admonitory part of the prophetic Writings, they are in their kind no way inferior to the other. The reproofs are autoritative and convincing. What piercing exprobrations do we find of Israel's ingratitude? How often are they upbraided with the better examples of the bruit creatures? with the Ox and the Ass by Isaiah, chap. 1.3. with the Stork, and the Crane, and the Swallow, by Jeremiah, chap. 8.7. Nay the constancy of the Heathen to their false gods is instanced to reproach their revolt from the true. Hath a Nation changed their gods which yet are no gods? but my people have changed their glory for that which doth not profit, Jer. 2.11. What awful, what majestic representations do we find of God's power, to awake their dread! Fear ye not me saith the Lord? will ye not tremble at my presence; who have placed the sand for the bounds of the sea by a perpetual decree, that it cannot pass over; and though the waves thereof toss themselves, yet can they not prevail; though they roar, yet can they not pass over it, Jer. 22. And again, Thus saith the high and lofty one that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is holy: I dwell in the high and holy place, Is. 57.15. So we find him described as a God glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders, Ex. 15.11. These and many other the like heights of divine eloquence we meet with in the prophetic Writings: which cannot but strike us with an awful reverence of the divine Power.  
15. NOR are they less pathetic in the gentler strains. What instance is there of the greatest tenderness and love which God has not adopted to express his by? He personates all the nearest and most endearing relations; that of a Husband; I will marry thee to myself, Hos. 2.19. of a Father; I am a Father to Israel, and Ephraim is my first born: nay, he vies bowels with the tender sex; and makes it more possible for a mother to renounce her compassions towards the son of her womb, then for him to withdraw his, Isa. 49.15. By all these endearments, these cords of a man, these bands of love, as himself styles them, Hos. 11.4. endeavouring to draw his people to their duty, and their happiness. And when their perverseness frustrates all this his holy Artifice; how passionately does he expostulate with them? how solemnly protest his averseness to their ruin? Why will ye die O house of Israel? for I have no pleasure in the death of him that dieth, saith the Lord God, Ezek. 18.31, 32. with what regrets and relent does he think of abandoning them? How shall I give thee up Ephraim? how shall I deliver thee Israel? how shall I make thee as Admah! how shall I set thee as Zeboim? my heart is turned within me, my repentings are kindled together; Hos. 11.8. In short, 'twere endless to cite the places in these prophetic Books, wherein God does thus condescend to solicit even the sensitive part of man; and that with such moving Rhetoric, that I cannot but wonder at the exception some of our late Critics make against the Bible, for its defect in that particular: for Oratory is nothing but a dextrous application to the affections and passions of men. And certainly we find not that don with greater advantage any where then in sacred Writ.  
16. YET it was not the design of the Prophets (no more than of the Apostle) to take men with guile; 2 Cor. 12.16. to inveigle their affections unawares to their understandings; but they address as well to their reasons, make solemn appeals to their judicative faculties. And now judge I pray between me and my vineyard, says Isa. 5.3. Nay, God by the Prophet Ezekiel solemnly pleads his own cause before them, vindicates the equity of his proceedings from the aspersions they had cast on them; and by most irrefragable Arguments refutes that injurious proverb which went currant among them; and in the close appeals to themselves, O house of Israel are not my ways equal, are not your ways unequal? Ezek. 18. the evidences were so clear that he remits the matter to their own determination. And generally we shall find that among all the Topics of dissuasion from sin, there is none more closely pressed, then that of the folly of it. Idolatry was a sin to which Israel had a great propension, and against which most of the Prophet's admonitions were directed. And certainly it can never be more exposed, and the sottish unreasonableness of it better displayed, than we find it in the 44. chap. of Isaiah. In like manner we may read the Prophet Jeremy dissuading from the same sin by Arguments of the most irrefragable conviction, Jer. 10.  
17. AND as the Prophets omitted nothing as to the manner of their address, to render their exhortations effectual, the matter of them was likewise so considerable as to command attention; It was commonly either the recalling them from their revolts and Apostasies from God by Idolatry, or else to convince them of the insignificancy of all those legal ceremonial performances they so much confided in; when taken up as a supersedeas to moral duties. Upon this account it is, that they often depreciate, and in a manner prohibit the solemnest of their worships. To what purpose are the multitude of your sacrifices unto me? bring no more vain oblations; incense is an abomination to me; the new moons and sabbaths, the calling of assemblies I cannot away with: it is iniquity even your solemn meetings, etc. Is. 1.11.13. Not that these things were in themselves reprovable; for they were all commanded by God; but because the Jews depended so much on these external observances, that they thought by them to commute for the weightier matters of the Law (as our Saviour after styles them) judgement, mercy and faith, Mat. 23.23. looked on these rites which discriminated them from other Nations, as dispensations from the universal obligations of nature and common justice.  
18. THIS deceit of theirs is sharply upbraided to them by the Prophet Jeremy; where he calls their boasts of the Temple of the Lord, the Temple of the Lord, lying words; and on the contrary, lays the whole stress of their obedience, and expectation of their happiness on the justice and innocence of their conversation, ch. 7.4. And after does smartly reproach their insolence in boldly resorting to that house, which by bringing their sins along with them, they made but an Asylum, and Sanctuary for those crimes. Will ye steal, murder and commit adultery, and swear falsely, and burn incense to Baal, and walk after other gods whom ye know not, and come and stand before me in this house? Is this house which is called by my name become a den of robbers in your eyes? chap. 7.9, 10, 11. Indeed all the Prophets seem to conspire in this one design, of making them look thro' shadows and ceremonies, to that inward purity, Justice and Honesty, which they were designed to inculcate, not to supplant. And this design as it is in itself most excellent, most worthy the command of God, and the nature of man; so we have seen that it has been pursued by all the most apt, and most powerful mediums, that the thing or persons addressed to were capable of; and so that the Prophets are no less eminent for the discharge of this exhortatory part of their office, than they were in the former, of the predicting.  
19 THE next part of Scripture we are to consider, is the Doctrinal; by which I shall not in this place understand the whole complex of Faith and Manners together; but restrain it only to those Revelations which are the object of our Belief: and these are so sublime, as shows flesh and blood never revealed them. Those great mysteries of our Faith, the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Hypostatical union, the redemption of the world by making the offended party the sacrifice for the offence; are things of so high and abstruse speculation, as no finite understanding can fully fathom. I know their being so, is by some made an Argument for disbelief; but doubtless, very unjustly: for (not to insist upon the different natures of Faith and Science, by which that becomes a proper object of the one which is not of the other) our non-comprehension is rather an indication that they have a higher rise; and renders it infinitely improbable that they could spring from man's invention. For 'twere to suppose too great a disproportion between human faculties to think men could invent what themselves could not understand. Indeed these things lie so much out of the road of human imagination, that I dare appeal to the breasts of the most perverse gainsayers, whether ever they could have fallen into their thoughts without suggestion from without. And therefore 'tis a malicious contradiction to reject these truths because of their dissonancy from human reason, and yet at the same time to ascribe their original to man. But certainly there can be nothing more inconsistent with mere natural reason, then to think God can be or do no more than man can comprehend. Never any Nation or person that owned a Deity, did ever attemt so to circumscribe him: and it is proportionable only to the licentious profaneness of these later days, thus to measure immensity and omnipotence by our narrow scantling.  
20. THE more genuine and proper effect of these supernatural truths is, to raise our admiration of that divine Wisdom, whose ways are so past finding out; and to give us a just sense of that infinite distance which is between it, and the highest of that reason wherein we so pride ourselves. And the great propriety these doctrines have to that end, may well be reckoned as one part of their excellency.  
21. INDEED there is no part of our holy Faith, but is naturally productive of some peculiar virtue; as the whole Scheme together engages us to be universally holy in all manner of conversation, 1 Pet. 1.15. And it is the supereminent advantage true Religion hath over all false ones; that it tends to so laudable an end.  
22. THE Theology of the Heathens was in many instances an extract and quintessence of vice. Their most solemn Rites, and sacredest Mysteries were of such a nature, that instead of refining and elevating, they corrupted and debased their Votaries; immersed them in all those abominable pollutions which sober nature abhorred. Whereas the principles of our Faith serve to spiritualise and rectify us, to raise us as much above mere manhood as theirs cast them below it.  
23. AND as they are of this vast advantage to us, so also are they just to God, in giving us right notions of him. What vile unworthy apprehensions had the Heathen of their Deities; in titling them not only to the passions, but even to the crimes of men: making Jupiter an adulterer, Mercury a thief, Bacchus a drunkard, etc. proportionably of the rest? Whereas our God is represented to us as an essence, so spiritual, and incorporal, that we must be unbodied ourselves before we can perfectly conceive what he is: so far from the impotent affections and inclinations of men, that he has neither parts, nor passions; and is fain to veil himself under that disguise, to speak sometimes as if he had, merely in condescension to our grosser faculties. And again, so far from being an example, a patron of vice, that his eyes are too pure to behold iniquity, Hab. 1.13. Holiness is an essential part of his nature, and he must deny himself to put it off.  
24. THE greatest descent that ever he made to humanity, was in the incarnation of the second person: yet even in that though he linked with a sinful nature, yet he preserved the person immaculate; and while he had all the sins of the world upon him by imputation, suffered not any one to be inherent in him.  
25. TO conclude, the Scripture describes our God to us by all those glorious Attributes of infinity, Power and Justice, which may render him the proper object of our Adorations and Reverence: and it describes him also in those gentler Attributes of Goodness, Mercy and Truth, which may excite our love of, and dependence on him. These are representations something worthy of God, and such as impress upon our mind great thoughts of him.  
26. BUT never did the divine Attributes so concur to exert themselves as in the mystery of our redemption: where his Justice was satisfied without diminution to his Mercy; and his Mercy without entrenching on his Justice: his Holiness most eminent in his indignation against sin, and yet his love no less so in sparing sinners: these contradictions being reconciled, this discord composed into harmony by his infinite Wisdom. This is that stupendous Mystery into which the Angels desired to look, 1 Pet. 1.12. And this is it which by the Gospel is preached unto us; as it follows, ver. 25.  
27. AND as the Scripture gives us this knowledge of God, so it does also of ourselves; in which two all profitable knowledge is comprised. It teaches us how vile we were in our original dust; and how much viler yet in our fall: which would have sunk us below our first principles; sent us not only to earth, but hell. It shows the impotence of our lapsed estate; that we are not able of ourselves so much as to think a good thought: and it shows us also the dignity of our renovated estate, that we are heirs of God, and fellow-heirs with Christ, Ro. 8.17. yet lest this might puff us up with mistaken hopes; it plainly acquaints us with the condition on which this depends; that it must be our obedience both active and passive, which is to entitle us to it: that we must be faithful to death if we mean to inherit a crown of life, Rev. 2.10. and that we must suffer with Christ, if we will be glorified with him, Ro. 8.17. And upon supposition that we perform our parts of the condition, it gives us the most certain assurance, engages God's veracity that he will not fail on his. By this it gives us support against all the adversities of life; assuring us the sufferings of it are not worthy to be compared with the glory we expect, Rom. 8.18. yea, and against the terrors of death too; by assuring us that what we look on as a dissolution, is but a temporary parting; and we only put off our bodies, that they may put off corruption, and he clothed with immortality.  
28. THESE and the like are the doctrines the holy Scripture offers to us: and, we may certainly say, they are faithful sayings, and worthy of all acceptation, 1 Tim. 4.15. The notions it gives us of God are so sublime and great, that they cannot but affect us with reverence, and admiration: and yet withal, so amiable and endearing that they cannot but raise love and gratitude, affiance and delight.  
29. AND, which is yet more, these milder Attributes are apt to inspirit us with a generous ambition of assimilation; excite us to transcribe all his imitable excellencies: in which the very Heathens could discern consisted the accomplishment of human felicity.  
30. AND then the knowledge it gives us of ourselves, does us the kindest office imaginable: keeps us from those swelling thoughts we are too apt to entertain, and shows us the necessity of bottoming our hopes upon a firmer foundation: and then again keeps us from being lazy or secure, by showing us the necessity of our own endeavours. In a word, it teaches us to be humble and industrious; and whoever is so ballasted can hardly be shipwrackt.  
31. THESE are the excellencies of the doctrinal part of Scripture, which also renders them most aptly preparative for the preceptive. And indeed, so they were designed: the Credenda, and the Agenda being such inseparable relations, that whoever parts them, forfeits the advantage of both. The most solemn profession of Christ, the most importunate invocations, Lord, Lord, will signify nothing to them which do not the things which he says, Mat. 7. And how excellent, how rational those precepts are which the Scripture proposes to us from him, is our next point of consideration.  
32. THE first Law which God gave to mankind was that of nature. And though the impressions of it upon the mind be by adam's fall exceedingly dimmed and defaced; yet that derogates nothing from the dignity and worth of that Law; which God has been so far from cancelling, that he seems to have made it the rule and square of his subsequent Laws: so that nothing is enjoined in those, but what is consonant and agreeable to that. The Moral Law given in the Decalogue to the Jews, the Evangelical Law given in the Gospel to Christians, have this natural Law for their basis and foundation. They licence nothing which that prohibits, and very rarely prohibit any thing which it licences.  
33. 'TIS true, Christ in his Sermon on the Mount, raises Christians to a greater strictness than the Jews thought themselves obliged to; but that was not by contradicting either the natural, or moral Law, but by rescuing the later from those corruptions which the false glosses of the Scribes and Pharisees had mixed with it; and reducing it to its primitive integrity, and extent. In a word, as the Decalogue was given to repair the defacings, and renew the impressions of the natural Law; so the precepts of the Gospel were designed to revive and illustrate both. And accordingly we find Christ in the matter of divorce calls them back to this natural Law; In the beginning it was not so, Mat. 19.8. I say not but that even these natural notions are in some instances refined and elevated by Christ; the second Adam being to repair the fall of the first with advantage: but yet he still builds upon that groundwork, introduces nothing that is inconsistent with it.  
34. AND this accordance between these several Laws is a circumstance that highly recommends Scripture precepts to us. We cannot imagine but that God who made man for no other end but to be an instrument of his glory, and a recipient of all communicable parts of his happiness, would assign him such rules and mesures as were most conducive to those ends. And therefore since the Scripture injunctions are of the same mould, we must conclude them to be such as tend to the perfection of our being; the making us what God originally intended us: and he that would not be that, will certainly choose much worse for himself.  
35. I know there have been prejudices taken up against the precepts of Christ, as if they imposed unreasonable, unsupportable stricknesses upon men, and some have assumed liberty to argue mutinously against them; nay, against God too for putting such natural appetites into men, and then forbidding them to satisfy them.  
36. BUT the ground of this cavil is the not rightly distinguishing of natural appetites, which are to be differenced according to the two states of rectitude and depravation: those of the first rank are the appetites God put into man; and those were all regular and innocent; such as tended to the preservation of his being: nature in its first integrity mesuring its desires by its needs. Now Christ's prohibitions are not directed against these: he forbids no one kind of these desires. And though the precept of self-denial may sometimes restrain us in some particular acts; yet that is but proportionable to that restraint Adam was under in relation to the forbidden tree, a particular instance of his obedience and fence of his safety. So that if men would consider nature under this its first and best notion; they cannot accuse Christ of being severe to it.  
37. BUT 'tis manifest they take it in another acception, and mean that corruption of nature which inordinately inclines to sensitive things; and on this account they call their riots, their luxuries, appetites put into them by God: whereas 'tis manifest this was super-induced from another coast: The wise man gives us its true pedigree in what he says of death, which is its twin-sister: By the envy of the devil came death into the world, Wis. 2.24. And can they expect that Christ who came to destroy the works of the devil 1 Joh. 3.8. should frame Laws in their favour, make Acts of toleration and indulgence for them? This were to annul the whole design of his coming into the world, which was to restore us from our lapsed estate, and elevate us to those higher degrees of purity which he came not only to prescribe but to exemplify to us.  
38. BUT in this affair men often take nature in a yet wider and worse notion; and under natural desires comprehend whatever upon any sort of motive they have a mind to do. The awe of a superior, the importunity of a companion, custom, and example make men do many ill things, to which their nature would never promt them; nay, many times such as their nature relucts to, and abhors. 'Tis certainly thus in all debauchery and excess. 'Tis evident, it gratifies no man's nature to be drunk, or to lie under undigested loads of meats: these are outrages and violences upon nature; take it only in the most sensitive notion; such as she struggles to avert: and yet men make her bear not only the oppression, but the blame too.  
39 BUT besides 'tis to be considered, that the nature of a man includes reason as well as sense, and to this all sorts of luxury are yet more repugnant: as that which clouds the mind, and degrades the man (who in his constitution is a rational being) and sets him in the rank of mere animals: and certainly these can be no appetites of nature, which thus subvert it.  
40. THE like may be said concerning revenge, particularly that absurdest sort of it duels; which certainly are as great contradictions to nature as can be imagined, the unravelling and cancelling its very first principle of self-preservation, (which in other instances men bring in bar against duty.) And yet men will say the generosity of their natures compels them to it; so making their natures a kind of felo de se; to promt the destroying itself: when alas 'tis only the false notion they have got of honour that so engages them. And if men would but soberly consider, they must be convinced that there is nothing more agreeable to reason then that precept of Christ of not retaliating injuries; which is in effect but to bid us to choose a single inconvenience before a long train of mischiefs. And certainly if nature even in its depraved estate were left to determine, it would resolve it a better bargain to go off with a reproachful word, then to lose a limb, perhaps a life in the revenge of it. There being no maxim more indisputable, then that of evils the least is to be chosen. And the innate principle of self-love does more strongly bias nature to preserve itself, than any external thing can to destroy it.  
41. I know 'twill be said to this, that revenge is a natural appetite: but I say still, self-preservation is more so; and would prevail against as much of revenge as is natural, were it not heightened and fortified by fancy, and that Chimaera of point of honour, which, as it is now stated, is certainly one of the most emty nothings that ever was brought in balance with solid interests. And indeed 'tis to belie nature, and suppose it to have forfeited all degrees of reason, as well as virtue, to fasten so absurd a choice upon her. But admit revenge to be never so much the dictate of corrupt nature; 'tis certain 'tis not of primitive regular nature. Revenge is but a relative to injury: and he that will say God put the appetite of revenge into man, must say he put the appetite of injury into him also: which is such an account of the sixth day's creation, as is hardly consistent with Gods own testimony of its being very good, Gen. 1.  
42. BESIDES 'tis certain all the desires God infused into human nature, were such as tended to its preservation; but this of revenge is of all other the most destructive, as is too sadly attested by the daily tragical effects of it. In short, the wiseman gives a good summary of the whole matter: God made man upright, but he sought out many inventions. Eccl. 7.29.  
43. NOW if man have by his own voluntary act depraved himself, it would be neither just nor kind in God to warp his Laws to man's now distorted frame; but it is both, to keep up the perfect rectitude of those, and call upon man to reduce himself to a conformity with them: and when to this is added such a supply of grace as may silence the plea of disability, there can nothing be imagined more worthy of God, or more indulgent to man.  
44. AND all this Christ does in the Gospel, in those precepts which the blind world makes the subject of their cavil or scorn. It were an easy task to evince this in every particular precept of the Gospel; but I shall content myself with the instances already given, and not swell this Tract by insisting upon what has already been the subject of so many pious and excellent discourses, as must already have convinced all but the obstinate.  
45. WE proceed therefore to a view of the promissory parts of Scripture; in which we are first in general to observe the great goodness of God, in making any promises at all to us; and next to examine of what nature and excellence these promises are. And first if we consider how many titles God has to our obedience, we must acknowledge he may challenge it as his undoubted right. We are the work of his hands; and if the Potter have power over the clay (the materials whereof are not of his making) much more has God over his creatures, whose matter as well as form is wholly owing to him. We are the price of his blood. And if men account purchase an indefeisible title, God must have absolute dominion over what he has bought, and at so dear a price too as his own blood. Lastly we depend upon him for the support of that being he has given us: we live merely upon his bounty, spend upon his stock. And what Patron will not expect observance from one who thus subsists by him?  
46. YET as if God had none of these claims, these preingagements upon us, he descends to treat with us as freemen; by way of Article and compact; buys his own of us, and engages to reward that obedience, which he might upon the utmost penalties exact: which is such an astonishing indulgence as our highest gratitude cannot reach: and of this the sacred Scriptures are the evidences and records; and therefore upon that account deserve at once our reverence, and our joy.  
47. BUT this will yet farther appear, if we look in the second place into the promises themselves; which are so extensive as to take in both our present and future state: according to that of the Apostle; Godliness hath the promise of this life, and of that which is to come, Tim. 4.8. For the present they are proportioned to the several parts of our composition; the body, and the mind: the outward and the inward man, so stretching themselves to all we can really be concerned for in this world.  
48. AND first for the body, the Old Testament abounds in promises of this sort. The first part of the 28 of Deut. contains a full catalogue of all temporal blessings; and those irreversibly entailed upon the Israelites obedience, ver. 1. The Psalmist tells us, they that fear the Lord shall lack nothing, Ps. 34.9. that they shall not be confounded in the perilous time, and in the days of dearth they shall have enough, Psa. 37.19. And Solomon, that the Lord will not suffer the righteous to famish, Pro. 10.3. And though under the Gospel, the promises of temporal affluence seem not so large; (its design being to spiritualise us, and raise our minds to higher injoiments;) yet it gives us ample security of so much as is really good for us. It supersedes our care for ourselves by assuring us all these things shall be added to us; Mat. 6.33. that is, all those things which our heavenly Father knows we have need of, ver. 32. which is all the limitation the context gives. And certainly we have little temptation to fear want, who have him for our provider; whose are all the beasts of the Forest, and the cattle upon a thousand hills, Psal. 50.10.  
49. AND when we are thus secured of all things necessary, it may perhaps be an equal mercy to secure us from great abundance; which at the best, is but a lading one's self with thick clay, in the Prophet's phrase, Hab. 2.6. but is often a snare as well as a burden.  
50. BESIDES, the Gospel by its precepts of temperance and self-denial, does so contract our appetites, that a competence is a more adequate promise to them then that of superfluity would have been: and 'tis also the measure wherein all the true satisfaction of the senses consist; which are gratified with moderate pleasures, but suffocated and overwhelmed with excessive. The temperate man tastes and relishes his portion; whilst the voluptuous may rather be said to wallow in his plenty then enjoy it.  
51. AND as the necessaries of life, so life itself, and the continuance of that, is a Scripture promise. The fifth Commandment affixes it to one particular duty: but it is in a multitude of places in the Old Testament annexed to general obedience. Thus it is, Deut. 11.9. and again, ver. 21. And Solomon proposes this practical wisdom as the multiplier of days: By me thy days shall be multiplied, and the years of thy life shall be increased, Pro. 9.11. and chap. 3. Length of days is in her right hand, ver. 16. And though we find not this promise repeated in the New Testament, yet neither is it retracted: 'tis true, the Gospel bids us be ready to lay down our lives for Christ's sake; but it tells us withal, that he that will lose his life, shall save it: which though it be universally true only in the spiritual sense, yet it often proves so in a literal. It did so eminently in the destruction of Jerusalem, where the most resolute Christians escaped, while the base compliers perished together with those they sought to endear. This is certain, that if the New Testament do not expressly promise long life, yet it does by its rules of temperance and sobriety, contentedness and cheerfulness, very much promote it: and so does virtually and efficaciously ratify those the Old Testament made.  
52. THE next outward blessing is reputation: and this also is a Scripture promise. The wise shall inherit glory, Prov. 3.38. And the virtuous woman Solomon describes is not only blessed by her children and husband, but, she is praised in the gate, Pro. 31. ult. Nay, this blessing is extended even beyond life: The memory of the just shall be blessed, Pro. 10.7. Nor does the Gospel evacuate this promise; but rather promts us to the ways of having it made good to us: by advising us to abstain from all appearance of evil, 1 Thes. 5.22. to provide for honest things, not only in the sight of God, but also in the sight of men, 2 Cor. 8.21.  
53. 'TIS true indeed, Christ forewarns his Disciples that they shall be reviled, and have all manner of evil spoken against them falsely, for his name's sake: but then the cause transformed the sufferings, and made it so honourable, that they were to count it matter of joy, Mat. 5.11.12. Neither was this any paradox even in relation to their reputation; which though sullied by a few ill men of that Age, yet has been most illustrious among all Ages since. Their sufferings and indignities gave them a new title of honour, and added the Martyr to the Apostle. And the event has been proportionable in all successions since. Those holy men that filled up the Pagan prisons, filled up the Church's Diptics also, and have been had as the Psalmist speaks, in everlasting remembrance, Ps. 112.6.  
54. AND as Scripture promises thus take in all the concerns of the outward man, so do they also of the inward. The fundamental promise of this kind, is that of sending Christ into the world, and in him establishing the new Covenant; which we find, Jer. 31.31. and is referred to by the Author to the Hebrews, I will put my Laws in their hearts, and write them in their minds; and their sins and iniquities will I remember no more, Heb. 10.16.  
55. AND this is so comprehensive a promise as includes all the concerns of the inward man. The evils incident to the mind of man may be reduced to two; impurity, and inquietude: and here is a cure to both. The divine Law written in the heart, drives thence all those swarms of noisome lusts, which like the Egyptian Frogs overrun and putrify the soul. Where that is seated and enshrined, those can no more stand before it, than Dagon before the Ark. This repairs the divine Image in us (in which consists the perfection of our nature) renews us in the spirits of our minds, Eph. 4.22. and purges our consciences from dead works, Heb. 9.4. which all the Cathartics and Lustrations among the Heathen, all the sacrifices and ceremonies of the Law were not able to do.  
56. SECONDLY, this promise secures the mind from that restlessness and unquietness, which attends both the dominion and guilt of sin. To be subject to a man's lusts and corrupt appetites is of all others the vilest vassalage: they are the cruelest taskmasters, and allow their slaves no rest, no intermission of their drudgery. And then again, the guilt that tortures and racks the mind with dreadful expectations, keeps it in perpetual agitation and tumult; which is excellently described by the Prophet Isaiah, The wicked is like the troubled sea, when it cannot rest; whose waters cast out mire and dirt: there is no peace saith my God to the wicked, Is. 48.22. How prosperous soever vice may seem to be in the world, yet there are such secret pangs and horrors that dog it, that as Solomon says, even in laughter the heart is sorrowful, Prov. 14.13.  
57 BUT this Evangelical promise of being merciful to our iniquities, and remembering our sins no more, calms this tempest, introduces peace and serenity into the mind, and reconciles us at once to God and ourselves. And sure we may well say with the Apostle, these are great and precious promises, 2. Pet. 1.4.  
58. THERE are besides many other which spring from these principal, as suckers from the root: such are the promises of fresh supplies of grace upon a good employment of the former. To him that hath shall be given, Mat. 25.29. Nay, even of the source and fountain of all grace. He shall give the holy spirit to them that ask him, Mat. 7.11. Such is that of supporting us in all difficulties and assaults: the not suffering us to be tempted above that we are able, 1 Cor. 10.13. which like Gods bow set in the clouds, Gen. 9 is our security, that we shall not be overwhelmed by any deluge of temptation: and (to instance no more) such is that comprehensive promise of hearing our prayers, Ask and it shall be given you, Mat. 7.7. This puts all good things within our reach, gives us the key of God's Storehouse, from whence we may furnish ourselves with all that is really good for us. And if a few full Barns could temt the rich man in the Gospel, to pronounce a Requiem to his soul; what notes of acquiescence may they sing, who have the command of an inexhaustible store; that are supplied by him whose is the earth, and the fullness thereof.  
59 AND certainly, all these promises together must be (to use the Apostles phrase) strong consolation; such as may quiet and calm all the fears and griefs, all the tumults and perturbations of the mind, in relation to its present state. But then there are others relating to the future of a much higher elevation: those glories and felicities of another world, which are so far beyond our narrow conceptions, that the comprehension and injoiment must begin together. The Scripture shadows it out to us by all the notions we have of happiness: by glory, Rom. 8.18. by a kingdom, Mat. 25.14. by joy, Mat. 25.21. and which comprehends all, by being with the Lord, 1 Thes. 4.17. seeing him face to face, 1 Cor. 13.12. being like to him, 1 Jo. 3.2. In a word 'tis bliss in the utmost extent: immense for quantity, and eternal for duration.  
60. AND surely this promise is so excellent for kind, so liberal in its degree, so transcendently great in all respects, that did it stand single, stripped of all those that relate to this life, it alone would justify the name of Gospel, and be the best tidings that ever came to mankind. For alas, if we compare the hopes that other Religions propose to their Votaries with these, how base, how ignoble are they! The Heathens Elysium, the Mahometan Paradise, were but higher gratifications of the sensual part, and consequently were depressions and debasements of the rational. So that in effect they provided a heaven for the beast, and a hell for the man. We may therefore confidently resume our conclusion; and pronounce the Scripture promises to be so divine and excellent, that they could as little have been made, as they can be performed by any but an holy and almighty Author.  
61. NOR is their being conditional any impeachment to their worth, but an enhansement. Should God have made them (as some fancy he has his decrees) absolute and irrespective; he had set his promises at war with his precepts, and these should have superseded what those enjoin. We are all very niggardly towards God, and should have been apt to have asked Judas' question; to what purpose is this waist? Mat. 26.8. What needs the labour of the course if the prize be certain? And it must have been infinitely below the wisdom and majesty of the supreme Legislator, to make Laws, and then evacuate them by dispencing rewards without any aspect on their observance. 'Tis the Sanction which inspirits the Law, without which the divine as well as the human, would to most men be a dead letter.  
62. BUT against this God has abundantly provided, not only by the conditionality of the promises, but by the terror of his threats too; which is the last part of Scripture which falls under consideration. And these are of the most direful kinds; and cannot better be illustrated then by the opposition they stand in to the promises: for as those included all things that might make men happy either as to this life or the next; so these do all that may make them miserable. If we make our reflection on all the particulars of the promises, we shall find the threats answering them as their reverse or dark shadow.  
63. AND first as concerning the outward state, if we look but into the 28 of Deut. we shall find, that after all the gracious promises which begun the chapter, it finally ends in thunder, in the most dreadful denunciations imaginable; and those adapted by a most peculiar opposition to the former promises: as the Reader may see at large in that Chapter. And the whole tenor of the Scripture goes in the like stile. Thus, Psal. 140.11. A wicked person shall not prosper in the earth, evil shall hunt the wicked man to overthrow him. The Lord will not suffer the righteous to famish, but he casteth out the substance of the wicked; Pro. 10.3. And again, the righteous eateth to the satisfying of his soul, but the belly of the wicked shall want, Pro. 13.25. Multitudes of like general threatenings of temporal improsperity there are every where scattered throout the Scripture; and many more applied to particular vices, as sloth, unmercifulness, luxury, and the like; which would be here too long to enumerate.  
64. AND although these threatenings may seem sometimes to be literally confuted by the wealth and opulency of wicked men, yet they never miss of being really and virtually verified. For either their prosperities are very short, and only preparative to a more eminent ruin, which was the Psalmists resolution of this doubt, Psal. 72. or else if God leave them the matter of temporal happiness, yet he substracts the virtue and spirit of them, renders them emty and unsatisfying. This is well expressed by the Psalmist in the case of the Israelites: He gave them their desire, and sent leaness withal into their soul, Psa. 106.15. and by Zophar, Job 20.22. where speaking of the wicked, he saith; In the fullness of his sufficiency shall he be in straits. And to this Solomon seems to refer, when he saith, the blessing of the Lord maketh rich, and be addeth no sorrow with it, Pro. 10.22.  
65. NEITHER is it only the comforts of life, but life itself that is threatened to be taken from wicked men: untimely death is throout the Old Testament frequently mentioned as the guerdon of impiety: 'tis often assigned judicially in particular cases: He shall be cut off from his people, being the usual sentence upon most offenders under the Levitical Law. But 'tis also menaced more generally as an immediate judgement from God: The bloodthirsty and deceitful men shall not live out half their days, Psal. 55.23. Farther yet, their names shall putrify as soon as their Carcases: the name of the wicked shall rot; Pro. 10.7. Nay both their infamy and their ruin are entailed upon their posterity. The seed of evil doers shall never be renowned. Prepare slaughter for his children, for the iniquity of their fathers; Isa. 14.20.21.  
66. IF now we look on Scripture threatenings in relation to the mind of man, we shall find them yet more severe: wilful impenitent sinners being cut off from the benefits of the new covenant; nor barely so, but looked upon as despisers of it, and that blood of Christ in which it was sealed; Heb. 10.29. nay as those murderous Wretches that shed it: They crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh; Heb. 6.6. And this is the fatallest sentence that can fall on any man in this life; to be thus disfranchised of all the privileges of the Gospel, and ranked as well in punishment as guilt, with the most criminous of mankind.  
67. FROM hence 'tis consequent, that the mind remains not only in its native impurity, but in a greater and more incurable one: whilst that blood which alone could cleanse it, serves but to imbrue and pollute it; and as it were flush, and excite it to all immanities' and vilenesses: and he that is thus filthy, 'tis the doom pronounced against him, that he shall be filthy still, Rev. 22.11.  
68 AND then in the second place, what calm can there be to such a mind? what remains to such a person, but that fearful expectation of wrath and fiery indignation, which the Apostle mentions, Heb. 10.27. Indeed, were there none but temporal mischiefs to fear; yet it were very unplesant to think one's self, like Cain, outlawed from the presence and protection of God; to be afraid that every man that meets us should slay us, Gen. 4.14. Nay, those confused indistinct fears of indefinite evils which attend guilt, are very unquiet uneasy inmates in the mind. This is excellently described by Moses; The Lord shall give thee a trembling heart, and failing of eyes, and sorrow of mind, and thy life shall hang in doubt before thee, and thou shalt fear day and night; in the morning thou shalt say, would God it were evening, and in the evening, would God it were morning, Deut. 28.65, 66, 67.  
69. AND what can be more wretched then to have a mind thus agitated and tossed, racked and tortured; especially when thro' all these clouds it sees a glimpse of the eternal Tophet; and knows, that from the billows of this uneasy state, it must be tossed into that Lake of fire. And this is indeed the dregs of the cup of God's wrath, the dread fullest and most astonishing of all Scripture denunciations. This comprehends all that the nature of man is capable of suffering. Divines distinguish it into the pain of sense, and of loss: that of sense is represented to us in Scripture by fire; and that accended, and rendered noisome as well as painful by brimstone, that afflicts the smell as well as the touch: sometimes by outer darkness, wailing and gnashing of teeth, to grate the ears, and consume the eyes; by intolerable thirst, to torment the palate. Not that we are to think the sensitive pains of Hell do not infinitely exceed all these; but because these are the highest mesures our present capacities can make, and are adequate to those senses for whose carnal satisfactions we incur them.  
70. THE pain of loss is yet more dismal; as being seated in the soul; whose spiritual nature will then serve it only to render its torments more refined, and acute. With what anguish will it then see itself banished from the presence of God; and consequently from all that may give satisfaction and bliss to the creature? But yet with how much deeper anguish will it reflect on itself as the Author of that deprivation? How will it recollect the many despised tenders of grace, the easy terms on which salvation might have been had? And how sadly will conscience then revenge all it's stifled admonitions by an unsilenceable clamour, that worm which never dies, Mar. 9.48. How wounding will it then be to see Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and all the Saints in the kingdom of God, Luk. 13.28. (nay, that poor Lazarus, whom here men turned over to the charity of their dogs;) and itself in the company of the devil and his angels; who will then upbraid what they once enticed to.  
71. NATURE abhors nothing more than to have our misery insulted over by those who drew us into it: yet that no circumstance may be lacking to their torment, this must be the perpetual entertainment of damned souls. And to all this Eternity is the dismal adjunct; which is of all other circumstances the most disconsolate; as leaving not so much as a glimpse of hopes; which here uses still to be the reserve, and last resort of the miserable.  
72. THIS Eternity is that which gives an edge, infuses a new acrimony into the torments: and is the highest strain, the vertical point of misery. These are those terrors of the Lord, with which the Scripture acquaints us: and sure we cannot say that these are flat contemptible menaces; but such as suit the dreadful Majesty of that God who is a consuming fire, Heb. 12.29. So that these are as aptly accommodated for the exciting our dread, as the promises were of our love: both jointly concur to awake our industry.  
73. FOR God has been so good to mankind, as to make the threats conditional as well as the promises: so that we as well know the way to avoid the one, as we do to attain the other. Nor has he any other intendment or end in proposing them, but that we may do so. See to this purpose, with what solemnity he protests it by Moses; I call heaven and earth to record against you this day, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live, Deut. 30.19.  
74. I have now run thro' the several parts of Scripture I proposed to speak of. And though I have in each given rather short instances and essays than an exact description, yet even in these contracted lineaments the exquisite proportions may be discerned. And if the Reader shall hence be encouraged to extend his contemplations, and as he reads holy Scripture, observe it in all its graces, and full dimensions; I doubt not he will pronounce from his experience, that the matter of the divine Book is very correspondent to the Author: which is the highest Eulogy imaginable.  
75. IN the next place we are to consider the holy Scripture in relation to its end and design; in proportion to which every thing is more or less valuable. The most exquisite frame, and curious contrivance, that has no determinat end or use, is but a piece of industrious folly, a Spider's web, as the Prophet speaks, Isa, 59.5. Now those designs have always been esteemed the most excellent that have had the most worthy subjects, and been of the greatest extent. Accordingly those who have projected the obliging and benefiting of other men (though but within a private Sphere) have always been looked on as men of generous and noble designs. Those who have taken their level higher, and directed their aim to a more public good, though but of a City or Nation, have proportionably acquired a greater esteem. But those who have aspired to be universal benefactors, to do something for the common benefit of the world, their fame has commonly reached as far as their influence; men have reverenced, nay sometimes (according to the common excesses of man's nature) adored them. Many of the heathen deities (especially their demigods) having been only those persons, who by introducing some useful Art, or other part of knowledge, had obliged mankind. So we see what a natural gratitude men are apt to pay to worthy and generous designs. And if we will be content but to stand to this common award of our nature, the Scripture will have the fairest claim imaginable to our reverence and thankfulness, upon this very account, of the excellency of its designs.  
76. NOR need we borrow the balance of the Sanctuary to weigh them in; we may do it in our own scales; for they exactly answer the two properties above mentioned, of profit and diffusiveness: which in secular concerns are the standard rules of good designs. For first, it is the sole scope and aim of Scripture, the very end for which 'twas writ, to benefit and advantage men; and that secondly, not only some small select number, some little angle or corner of the world, but the whole race of mankind; the entire Universe; and he that can imagine a more diffusive design, must imagine more worlds also.  
77. NOW for the first of these, that it is the design of the Scripture to benefit men; we need appeal but to Scripture itself; which surely can give the best account to what ends 'tis directed; and that tells us, it is to make us wise unto salvation, 2 Tim. 3.15. In which is comprehended the greatest benefit that man's nature is capable of: the making us wise while we live here, and the saving us eternally. And this sure is the most generous, the most obliging design, that 'tis possible even for the Creator to have upon the creature: and this is it which the holy Scripture negotiates with us.  
78. AND first, the making us wise, is so inviting a proposal to humanity, that we see when that was much wiser than now it is, it caught at a fallacious tender of it; the very sound of it, though out of the devil's mouth, fascinated our first Parents, and hurried them to the highest disobedience, and certainest ruin. And therefore now God by the holy Scriptures makes us an offer as much more safe, as it is more sincere; when he sends his Word thus to be a lamp to our feet, and a light to our paths, Ps. 119.105. to teach us all that is good for us to know, our affectation of ignorance will be more culpable than theirs of knowledge, if we do not admire the kindness, & embrace the bounty of such a tender.  
79. NOW the making us wise must be understood according to the Scripture notion of wisdom, which is not the wisdom of this world, nor of the Princes of this world, which come to nought, as the Apostle speaks, 1 Cor. 2.5. but that wisdom which descends from above, Ja. 3.17. which he there describes to be first pure, then peaceable, gentle and easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy. Indeed the Scripture usually comprehends these and all other graces under Wisdom; for it makes it synonymous to that which includes them all, viz. the fear of the Lord. Thus we find throout the whole Book of Proverbs these used as terms convertible. In short, Wisdom is that practical knowledge of God and ourselves which engages us to obedience and duty; and this is agreeable to that definition the Wise man gives of it; The wisdom of the prudent is to understand his way, Pro. 14.8. Without this, all the most refined and aerial speculations, are but like Thales' stargazing; which secured him not from falling in the water; nay, betrayed him to it. In this is all solid wisdom comprised.  
80. THE utmost all the wise men in the world have pretended to, is but to know what true happiness is, and what is the means of attaining it: and what they sought with so much study, and so little success, the Scripture presents us with in the greatest certainty, and plainest characters, such as he that runs may read, Hab. 2.2. It acquaints us with that supreme felicity, that chief good whereof Philosophy could only give us a name; and it shows us the means, marks us out a path which will infallibly lead us to it. Accordingly we find that Solomon after all the accurate search he had made to find what was that good for the sons of men; he shuts up his inquest in this plain conclusion: Fear God and keep his commandments; for God shall bring every work unto judgement, Eccles. 12.13, 14. The regulating our lives so by the rules of Piety, as may acquit us at our final account, is the most eligible thing that falls within human cognizance; and that not only in relation to the superlative happiness of the next world, but even to the quiet and tranquillity of this. For alas, we are impotent giddy creatures, swayed sometimes by one passion, sometimes by another; nay often the inter fearing of our appetites makes us irresolute which we are to gratify; whilst in the interim their struggling agitates and turmoils the mind. And what can be more desirable in such a case, then to put ourselves under a wiser conduct than our own; and as oppressed States use to defeat all lesser pretenders by becoming homagers to some more potent: so for us to deliver ourselves from the tyranny of our lusts, by giving up our obedience to him whose service is perfect freedom.  
81. WERE there no other advantage of the exchange, but the bringing us under fixed and determinat Laws, 'twere very considerable. Every man would gladly know the terms of his subjection, and have some standing rule to guide himself by; and God's Laws are so; we may certainly know what he requires of us: but the mandates of our passions are arbitrary and extemporary: what pleases them to day disgusts them to morrow; and we must always be in readiness to do we know not what, and of all the Arbitrary governments that men either feel or fear, this is doubtless the most miserable. I wish our apprehensions of it were but as sensible: and then we should think the holy Scripture did us the office of a Patriot, in offering us a rescue from so vile a slavery.  
82. AND that it does make us this offer, is manifest by the whole tenor of the Bible. For first it rouses and awakes us to a sense of our condition, shows us that what we call liberty, is indeed the saddest servitude; that he that committeth sin is the servant of sin; Jo. 8.34. that those vices which pretend to serve and gratify us, do really subdue and enslave us, and fetter when they seem to embrace: and whereas the will in all other oppressions retains its liberty, this tyranny brings that also into vassalage: renders our spirits so mean and servile, that we choose bondage; are apt to say with the Israelites, Let us alone that we may serve the Egyptians, Ex. 14.12.  
83. AND what greater kindness can be done for people in this forlorn abject condition, then to animate them to cast off this yoke, and recover their freedom. And to this are most of the Scripture exhortations addressed; as may be seen in a multitude of places, particularly in the sixth chapter to the Romans, the whole scope whereof is directly to this purpose.  
84. NOR does it only sound the alarm, put us upon the contest with our enemies, but it assists us in it, furnishes us with that whole armour of God which we find described, Eph. 6.13. Nay further it excites our courage, by assuring us that if we will not basely surrender ourselves, we can never be overpowered if we do but stand our ground; resist our enemy, he will fly from us; Ja. 4.7. And to that purpose it directs us under what banner we are to list ourselves; even his who hath spoiled principalities and powers, Col. 2.15. to whose conduct and discipline if we constantly adhere, we cannot miss of victory.  
85. AND then lastly it sets before us the prize of this conquest; that we shall not only recover our liberty, manumit ourselves from the vilest bondage to the vilest and cruelest oppressors; but we shall be crowned for it too, be rewarded for being kind to ourselves, and be made happy eternally hereafter for being willing to be happy here.  
85. AND sure these are terms so apparently advantageous, that he must be infinitely stupid (foolish to destruction) that will not be thus made wise unto salvation, that despises or cavils at this divine Book, which means him so much good, which designs to make him live here generously and according to the dignity of his nature, and in the next world to have that nature sublimated, and exalted, made more capacious of those refined and immense felicities, which there await all who will qualify themselves for them; who (as the Apostle speaks) by patient continuance in well doing seek for glory, and honour, and immortality, eternal life, Rom. 2.7.  
87. BUT besides the greatest and principal advantages which concern our spiritual interest, it takes in also the care of our secular, directs us to such a managery of ourselves, as is naturally apt to promote a quiet and happy life. It's injunction to live peaceable with all men, keeps us out of the way of many misadventures, which turbulent unruly spirits meet with, and so secures our peace. So also as to wealth, it puts us into the fairest road to riches by prescribing diligence in our callings: what is thus got being like sound flesh, which will stick by us; whereas the hasty growth of illgotten wealth is but a tumour and imposthume, which the bigger it swells, the sooner it bursts and leaves us lanker then before. In like manner it shows us also how to guard our reputation, by providing honest things not only in the sight of God, but also in the sight of men, Cor. 8.28. by abstaining even from all appearance of evil, 1 Thes. 5.22. and making our light shine before men, Mat. 5.16. It provides too for our ease and tranquillity, supersedes our anxious cares and sollicituds, by directing us to cast our burden upon the Lord, Psal. 55.22. and by a reliance on his providence how to secure to ourselves all we really want. Finally it fixes us in all the changes; supports us under all the pressures, comforts us amidst all the calamities of this life, by assuring us they shall all work together for good to those that love God; Ro. 8.28.  
88 NOR does the Scripture design to promote our interests considered only singly and personally, but also in relation to Societies and Communities; it gives us the best rules of distributive and commutative Justice; teaches us to render to all their deuce, Ro. 13.7. to keep our words, to observe inviolably all our pacts and contracts; nay though they prove to our damage, Psa. 15.4. and to preserve exact fidelity and truth; which are the sinews of human commerce. It infuses into us noble and generous principles, to prefer a common good before our private: and that highest flight of Ethnic virtue, that of dying for one's Country, is no more than the Scripture prescribes even for our common brethren, 1 Jo. 3.16.  
89. BUT besides these generals, it descends to more minute directions accommodated to our several circumstances; it gives us appropriate rules in reference to our distinct relations, whether natural, civil, ecclesiastical or oeconomical. And if men would but universally conform to them, to what a blessed harmony would it tune the world? what order and peace would it introduce? There would then be no oppressive Governors, nor mutinous Subjects; no unnatural Parents, nor contumacious Children: no idle Shepherds, or straying Flocks: none of those domestic jars which oft disquiet, and sometimes subvert families: all would be calm and serene; and give us in reality that golden Age, whereof the Poets did but dream.  
90. THIS tendency of the Scripture is remarkably acknowledged in all our public Judicatories, where before any testimony is admitted, we cause the person that is to give his testimony, first to lay hold of with his hands, then with his mouth to kiss the holy Scriptures: as if it were impossible for those hands, which held the mysteries of Truth, to be immediately employed in working falsehood; or that those lips which had adored those holy Oracles, should be polluted with perjuries and lies. And I fear, the civil Government is exceedingly shaken at this day in its firmest foundation, by the little regard is generally had of the holy Scriptures, and what is consequent thereto, the oaths that are taken upon them.  
91. 'tIS true, we are far removed from that state which Esaiah prophesied of under the Gospel, though we have the Bible among us; that when the Law should go forth of Zion, and the Word of the Lord from Jerusalem; they should beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks, Es. 2.4. but that is not from any defect in it, but from our own perverseness: we have it, but (as the Apostle speaks in another sense) as if we had it not, 1 Cor. 7.29. We have it (that is, use it) to purposes widely different from what it means. Some have it as a Supersedeas to all the duty it injoins; and so they can but cap texts, talk glibly of Scripture, are not all concerned to practise it: some have it as their Arsenal, to furnish them with weapons, not against their spiritual enemies, but their secular: applying all the damnatory sentences they there find, to all those to whose persons or opinions they have prejudice. And some have it as a Scene of their mirth, a topic of raillery, dress their profane and scurrilous jests in its language; and study it for no other end but to abuse it. And whilst we treat it at this vile rate, no wonder we are never the better for it. For alas, what will it avail us to have the most sovereign Balsam in our possession, if instead of applying it to our wounds, we trample it under our feet?  
92. BUT though we may frustrate the use, we cannot alter the nature of things. God's design in giving us the Scripture was to make us as happy as our nature is capable of being; and the Scripture is excellently adapted to this end: for as to our eternal felicity, all that believe there is any such state, must acknowledge the Scripture chalks us out the ready way to it: not only because 'tis dictated by God who infallibly knows it, but also by its prescribing those things which are in themselves best; and which a sober Heathen would adjudge fittest to be rewarded. And as to our temporal happiness, I dare appeal to any unprejudiced man, whether any thing can contribute more to the peace and real happiness of mankind, than the universal practice of the Scripture rules would do. Would God we would all conspire to make the experiment; and then doubtless, not only our reason, but our sense too would be convinced of it.  
93. AND as the design is thus beneficial, so in the second place is it as extensive also. Time was when the Jews had the enclosure of divine Revelation; when the Oracles of God were their peculiar depositum, and the Heathen had not the knowledge of his Laws, Ps. 147. ult. but since that by the goodness of God the Gentiles are become fellow-heirs, Eph. 3.6. he hath also delivered into their hands the deeds and evidences of their future state, given them the holy Scriptures as the exact and authentic registers of the covenant between God and man, and these not to be like the heathen Oracles appropriated to some one or two particular places; so that they cannot be consulted but at the expense of a pilgrimage; but laid open to the view of all that will believe themselves concerned.  
94. IT was a large commission our Saviour gave his Disciples: go preach the Gospel to every creature, Mar. 16.15. (which in the narrowest acception must be the Gentile world) and yet their oral Gospel did not reach farther than the written: for wherever the Christian Faith was planted, the holy Scriptures were left as the records of it; nay as the conservers of it too; the standing rule by which all corruptions were to be detected. 'Tis true, the entire Canon of the New Testament, as we now have it, was not all at once delivered to the Church; the Gospels and Epistles being successively writ, as the needs of Christians, and the encroachments of Heretics gave occasion; but at last they became all together the common magazine of the Church, to furnish arms both defensive and offensive. For as the Gospel puts in our hands the shield of Faith, so the Epistles help us to hold it, that it may not be wrested out of our hands again, either by the force of persecution, or the sly insinuations of vice or heresy.  
95. THUS the Apostles like prudent leaders have beat up the Ambushes; discovered the snares that were laid for us; and by discomfiting Satan's forlorn hope, that earliest Set of false teachers and corrupt practices which then invaded the Church; have laid a foundation of victory to the succeeding Ages, if they will but keep close to their conduct, adhere to those sacred Writings they have left behind them in every Church for that purpose.  
96. NOW what was there deposited, was designed for the benefit of every particular member of that Church. The Bible was not committed (like the Regalia, or rarities of a Nation) to be kept under lock and key (and consequently to constitute a profitable office for the keepers) but exposed like the Brazen Serpent for universal view and benefit: that sacred Book (like the common air) being every man's propriety, yet no man's enclosure: yet there are a generation of men whose eyes have been evil, because Gods have been good: who have sealed up this spring, monopolised the word of Life; and will allow none to partake of it but such persons, and in such proportions as they please to retail it: an attemt very insolent in respect of God, whose purpose they contradict; and very injurious in respect of man, whose advantage they obstruct. The iniquity of it will be very apparent if we consider what is offered in the following Section.   

SECT. IV. The Custody of the holy Scripture is a privilege and right of the Christian Church, and every member of it; which cannot without impiety to God, and injustice unto it and them, be taken away or impeached.  
BESIDES the keeping of the divine Law, which is obsequious, and imports a due regard to all its Precepts, commonly expressed in Scripture by keeping the commandments, harkening to, and obeying the voice of the Lord; walking in his ways, and observing and doing his statutes and his judgements: there is a possessory keeping it, in reference to ourselves and others; in respect whereof, Almighty God, Deut. 6. and elsewhere frequently, having enjoined the people of Israel, to love the Lord their God with all their heart, and with all their soul, and with all their might, and that the words which he commanded them should be in their heart, he adds, that they shall teach them diligently to their children, and shall talk of them when they sit down in their houses, and when they walk by the way, and when they lie down, and when they rise up: and that they bind them for a sign upon their hand, and that they shall be as frontlets between their eyes, and that they shall write them upon the posts of their house, and on their gates. So justly was the Law called the Scripture, being written by them, and worn upon the several parts of the body, inscribed upon the walls of their houses, the entrance of their doors, and gates of their Cities; and in a word, placed before their eyes wherever they conversed.  
2. AND this was granted to the Jews, as matter of privilege and favour. To them, says Saint Paul, Rom. 9.4. pertaineth the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the Law. And the same Saint Paul, at the 3. chap. 2. v. of that Epistle, unto the question, what advantage hath the Jew, or what profit is there of circumcision, answers that it is much every way, chiefly because unto them were committed the Oracles of God. This depositum or trust was granted to the Fathers, that it should be continued down unto their children. He made a covenant, says David, Ps. 78. v. 5. with Jacob, and gave Israel a Law, which he commanded our Forefathers to teach their children, that their posterity might know it, and the children which were yet unborn: to the intent that when they came up, they might show their children the same. Which Scripture by a perpetual succession was to be handed down unto the Christian Church; the Apostles on all occasions appealing unto them, as being read in the Synagogues every Sabbath day, Act. 13.27. and also privately, in their hands; so that they might at pleasure search into them, Jo. 5.39. Act. 17.11. Hereupon the Jews are by Saint Austin called the Capsarii, or servants that carried the Christians books. And Athanasius in his Tract of the Incarnation, says, The Law was not for the Jews only, nor were the Prophets sent for them alone; but that Nation was the Divinity-Schole of the whole world; from whence they were to fetch the knowledge of God, and the way of spiritual living: which amounts to what the Apostle says, Galat. 3.24. That the Law was a Schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ.  
3. AND 'tis observable that the very same word, Rom. 3.2. in the Text even now recited, which expresses the committing of the Oracles of God to the Jews, is made use of constantly by Saint Paul, when he declares the trust and duty encumbent on him in the preaching of the Gospel: of which, see 1 Cor. 9.17. Gal. 2.7. 1 Thes. 2.4. 1 Tim. 1.11. Tit. 1.3. And therefore, as he says, 1 Cor. 9 Tho I preach the Gospel, I have nothing to glory of; for necessity is laid upon me, yea, woe is unto me if I preach not the Gospel, for if I do this thing willingly, I have a reward; but if against my will, a dispensation of the Gospel is committed unto me: So may all Christians say; if we ourselves keep and transmit to our posterities the holy Scriptures, we have nothing to glory of, for a necessity is laid upon us, and woe be unto us if we do not ourselves keep, and transmit to our posterity the holy Scriptures. If we do this thing willingly, we have a reward; but if against our will, the custody of the Gospel, and at least that dispensation of it, is committed to us. But if we are Traditors, and give up our Bibles, or take them away from others; let us consider how black an apostasy and sacrilege we shall incur.  
4. THE Mosaic Law was a temporary constitution, and only a shadow of good things to come, Heb. 10.1. but the Gospel being in its duration as well as its intendment, everlasting, Rev. 14.6. and to remain when time shall be no more, Rev. 10.6. it is an infinitely more precious depositum, and so with greater care and solemner attestation to be preserved. Not only the Clergy, or the people of one particular Church, nor the Clergy of the universal are entrusted with this care, but 'tis the charge, the privilege and duty of every Christian man, that either is, or was, or shall be in the world; even that collective Church which above all competition, is the pillar and ground of truth, 1 Tim. 3.15. against which the assaults of men and devils, and even the gates of hell shall not prevail, Mat. 16.18.  
5. THE Gospels were not written by their holy Penmen to instruct the Apostles, but to the Christian Church, that they might believe Jesus was the Christ, the son of God, and that believing they might have life thro' his name, Jo. 20.31. The Epistles were not addressed peculiarly to the Bishops and Deacons, but all the holy brethren, to the Churches of God that are sanctified in Jesus Christ, and to all those that call upon the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, Rom. 1.7. 1 Cor. 1.2. 2 Cor. 1.1. Galat. 1.2. Eph. 1.1. Col. 4.16. 1 Thes. 5.27. Phil. 1.1. Jam. 1.1. 1 Pet. 1.1. 2 Pet. 1.1. Revel. 1.4. Or if by chance some one or two of the Epistles were addressed to an Ecclesiastic person, as those to Timothy and Titus, their purport plainly refers to the community of Christians, and the depositum committed to their trust; Tim. 6.20. And Saint John on the other side directs his Epistles to those who were plainly secular; to fathers, young men, and little children; and a Lady and her children, Epist. 1. chap. 2.12, 13, 14. and Epist. 2.1.1.  
6. BUT besides the interest which every Christian has in the custody of the Scripture upon the account of its being a depositum entrusted to him; he has also another no less forcible; that 'tis the Testament of his Saviour, by which he becomes a Son of God, no more a Servant but a Son; and if he be a Son; it is the Apostles inference, that he is then an heir, an heir of God thro' Christ, Gal. 4.7. Now as he who is heir to an estate, is also to the deeds and conveyances thereof; which without injury cannot be detained, or if they be, there is a remedy at Law for the recovery of them: So it fares in our Christian inheritance; every believer by the privilege of faith, is made a son of Abraham, and an heir of the promises made unto the fathers, whereby he has an hereditary interest in the Old Testament; and also by the privilege of the same Faith he has a firm right to the purchased possession, Eph. 1.14. and the charter thereof, the New. Therefore the detention of the Scriptures, which are made up of these two parts, is a manifest injustice and sacrilegious invasion of right, which the person wronged is empowered, nay is strictly obliged by all lawful means to vindicate.  
7. WHICH invasion of right; will appear more flagrant when the nature and importance of it is considered; which relating to men's spiritual interest, renders the violation infinitely more injurious than it could be in any secular. I might mention several detriments consequent to this detention of Scripture, even as many as there are benefits appendent to the free use of it; but there is one of so fundamental and comprehensive a nature, that I need name no more; and that is, that it delivers men up to any delusion their teachers shall impose upon them, by depriving them of means of detecting them. Where there is no standard or mesures, 'tis easy for men to falsify both; and no less easy is it to adulterate doctrines, where no recourse can be had to the primary rule. Now that there is a possibility that false teachers may arise, we have all assurance; nay we have the word of Christ, and his Apostles that it should be so: and all Ecclesiastic story to attest it has been so. And if in the first and purest times (those Ages of more immediate illumination) the God of this world found instruments whereby to blind men's minds, 2 Cor. 4.4. it cannot be supposed impossible or improbable he should do so now.  
8. BUT to leave generals, and to speak to the case of that Church which magisterially prohibits Scripture to the vulgar she manifestly stands liable to that charge of our Saviour, Luk. 11 52. Ye have taken away the key of knowledge: and by allowing the common people no more Scripture than what she affords them in their Sermons and private Manuals, keeps it in her power to impose on them what she pleases. For 'tis sure those portions she selects for them, shall be none of those which clash with the doctrines she recommends: and when ever she will use this power to the corrupting their faith, or worship (yea, or their manners either) they must brutishly submit to it, because they cannot bring her dictates to the test.  
9 BUT 'twill be said, this danger she wards by her doctrine of infallibility: that is, she enervates a probable supposition attested by event, by an impossible one confuted by event. For 'tis certain, that all particular Churches may err; and though the consciousness of that, forces the Roman Church upon the absurd pretence of universality, to assert her infallibility; yet alas, Tiber may as well call itself the Ocean, or Italy the world, as the Roman Church may name itself the universal; whilst 'tis so apparent that far the the less part of Christians are under her communion. And if she be but a particular Church, she has no immunity from errors, nor those under her from having those errors (how pernicious soever) imposed upon them. As to her having actually erred, and in divers particulars, the proof of that has been the work of so many Volumes, that 'twould be impertinent here to undertake it: I shall only instance in that of Image-worship; a practice perfectly irreconcilable with the second Commandment; and doubtless, clearly discerned by her to be so: upon which account it is, that though by Translations and Paraphrases she wrists and moulds other Texts to comply with her doctrines, yet she dares not trust to those arts for this: but takes a more compendious course, and expunges the Commandment; as is evident in her Catechisms and other Manuals. Now a Church that can thus sacrilegiously purloin one Commandment (and such a one as God has owned himself the most jealously concerned in) and to delude her children split another to make up the number, may as her needs require, subtract and divide what others she please: and then whilst all resort to Scripture is obstructed; how fatal a hazard must those poor souls run, who are obliged to follow these blind, or rather these winking guides into the ditch?  
10. BUT all these criminations she retorts, by objecting the dangers of allowing the Scriptures to the vulgar; which she accuses as the spring of all Sects, Schisms, and Heresies. To which I answer first, that supposing this were true, 'twas certainly fore-seen by God, who notwithstanding laid no restraint; probably as foreseeing, that the dangers of implicit faith (to which such a restraint must subject men) would be far greater: and if God saw fit to indulge the liberty, those that shall oppose it, must certainly think they do not only partake, but have transplanted infallibility from God to themselves.  
11. BUT secondly, 'tis not generally true, that Sects, Schisms, and Heresies are owing to this liberty: All Ecclesiastical Story shows us that they were not the illiterate Laymen, but the learned Clerks who were usually the broachers of Heresies. And indeed many of them were so subtle and aerial, as could never have been forged in grosser brains; but were founded not on Scripture merely mistaken, but racked and distorted with nice criticisms, and quirks of Logic, as several of the Ancients complain: some again sprang from that ambition of attaining, or impatience of missing Ecclesiastical dignities: which appropriates them to the Clergy. So that if the abuse infer a forfeiture of the use, the Learned have of all others the least title to the Scriptures; and perhaps those who now engross them, the least title of all the Learned.  
12. ON the other side, Church-story indeed mentions some lay-propugners of Heresies; but those for the most part were either so gross and bestial, as disparaged and confuted themselves and Authors, and rose rather from the brutish inclination of the men, then from their mistakes of Scripture: or else they were by the immediate infusion of the devil, who backed his heretical suggestions with sorceries and lying wonders, as in Simon Magus, Menander, etc. And for later times, though sometimes there happens among the vulgar a few pragmatic spirits, that love to tamper with the obscurests Texts, and will undertake to expound before they understand; yet that is not their common temper: the generality are rather in the other extreme, stupid and unobservant even of the plainest doctrines. And if to this be objected the multitude of Quakers and Fanatics, who generally are of the ignorant sort; I answer, that 'tis manifest the first propugners of those tenets in Germany were not seduced into them by mistakes of Scripture, but industriously formed them, at once to disguise and promote their villainous designs of sedition and rapine: and as for those amongst us, it is not at all certain that their first errors were their own productions: there are vehement presumtions that the seeds were sown by greater Artificers; whose first business was to unhinge them from the Church, and then to fill their heads with strange Chimeras of their privileges and perfections; and by that intoxication of spiritual pride, dispose them for all delusions: and thereby render them, like Samsons Foxes, fit instruments to set all in combustion.  
13. BUT admit this were but a conjecture, and that they were the sole Authors of their own frenzy; how appears it that the liberty of reading the Scripture was the cause of it? Had these men been of the, Romish communion, and so been interdicted private reading, yet some broken parts of Scripture would have been in Sermons and Books of devotion communicated to them; had it not been as possible for them to have wrested what they heard as what they read? In one respect it seems rather more likely: for in those loose and incidental quotations the connexion is sometimes not so discernible: and many Texts there are whose sense is so interwoven with the context, that without consulting that, there may be very pernicious mistakes: on which account it is probably more safe that the Auditors should have Bibles to consult. So that this restraint of Scripture is a very fallible expedient of the infallible Church. And indeed themselves have in event found it so; for if it were so sovereign a prophylactic against error, how comes it to pass that so many of their members who were under that discipline have revolted from them into that which they call heresy? If they say, the defection was made by some of the Learned to whom the Scripture was allowed, why do they not (according to their way of arguing) take it from them also upon that experiment of its mischief, and confine it only to the infallible chair? but if they own them to have been unlearned (as probably the Albigenses and Waldenses, etc. were) they may see how insignificant a guard this restraint is against error: and learn how little is got by that policy which controls the divine Wisdom.  
14. NOR can they take shelter in the example of the primitive Christians, for they in the constant use of the holy Scriptures yielded not unto the Jews. Whereas the Jews had the Scriptures read publicly to them every Sabbath day; which Josephus against Appion thus expresses: Moses propounded to the Jews the most excellent and necessary learning of the Law; not by hearing it once or twice, but every seventh day laying aside their works, he commanded them to assemble for the hearing of the Law, and throughly and exactly to learn it. Parallel to this was the practice of the primitive Church, performed by the Lector, or Reader, of which Justin Martyr in his 2. Apol. gives this account. On the day called Sunday, all that abide in towns, or the countries about, meet in one place, and the writings of the Apostles and Prophets are read, so far as there is place. So Tertullian in his Apol. describing the offices in the public Assemblies: We feed our faith with the sacred Words, we raise our hopes, and establish our reliance.  
15. AND as the Jews thought it indecent for persons professing piety, to let three days pass without the offices thereof in the congregation; and therefore met in their Synagogues upon every Tuesday and Thursday in the week, and there performed the duties of fasting, prayer, and hearing the holy Scriptures; concerning which is the boast of the Pharisee, Luk. 18.12. in conformity hereto the Christians also, their Sabbath being brought forward from the Saturday to the day following; that the like number of days might not pass them without performing the aforesaid duties in the congregation; met together on the Wednesdays and Fridays, which were the days of Station, so frequently mentioned in Tertullian, and others, the first writers of the Church. Tertullian expressly says, that the Christians dedicated to the offices of Piety, the fourth and sixth day of the week: and Clemens Alex. says of the Christians, that they understood the secret reasons of their weekly fasts, to wit, those of the fourth day of the week, and that of preparation before the Sabbath; commonly called Wednesday and Friday. Where, by the way, we may take notice what ground there is for the observation of the Wednesday and Friday in our Church, and the Litanies then appointed, so much neglected in this profligate Age.  
16. BUT secondly, as the Jews were diligent in the private reading of the Scripture; being taught it from their infancy: which custom Saint Paul refers to 1 Tim. 3.15. whereof Josephus against Appion says, That if a man ask any Jew concerning the Laws, he will tell every thing readier than his name: for learning them from the first time they have sense of any thing, they retain them imprinted in their minds. So were the first Christians equally industrious in improving their knowledge of divine Truth. The whole life of a Christian, says Clem. Alex. Strom. l. 7. is a holy solemnity: there his sacrifices are prayers and praises; before every meal he has the readings of the holy Scriptures; and Psalms, and Hymns at the time of his meals. Which Tertullian also describes in his Apol. and Saint Cyprian in the end of the Epist. to Donatus.  
17. AND this is farther evidenced by the early and numerous versions of the Scriptures into all vulgar Languages; concerning which Theodoret speaks in his Book of the Cure of the Affections of the Greeks, Serm. 5. We Christians (says he) are enabled to show the power of Apostolic and prophetic doctrines, which have filled all Countries under Heaven. For that which was formerly uttered in Hebrew, is not only translated into the Language of the Grecians, but also the Romans, Egyptians, Persians, Indians, Armenians, Scythians, Samaritans; and in a word to all the Languages that are used by any Nation. The same is said by Saint Chrysostom in his first Homily upon Saint john.  
18. NOR was this don by the blind zeal of inconsiderable men, but the most eminent Doctors of the Church were concerned herein: such as Origen who with infinite labour contrived the Hexapla. Saint Chrysostom, who translated the New Testament, Psalms, and some part of the Old Testament into the Armenian Tongue, as witnesses Geor Alex. in the life of Chrysost. So ulphilas the first Bishop of the Goths translated the holy Scripture into the Gothic; as Socrat. Eccl. Hist. l. 4. cap. 33. and others testify. Saint Jerom, who translated them not only into Latin from the Hebrew, the Old Italic version having been from the Greek; but also into his native vulgar Dalmatic: which he says himself in his Epistle to Sophronius.  
19 BUT the people's having them for their private and constant use appears farther, by the Heathens making the extorting of them a part of their persecution: and when divers did faint in that trial, and basely surrendered them, we find the Church levelled her severity only against the offending persons, did not (according to the Romish equity) punish the innocent, by depriving them of that sacred Book, because the others had so unworthily prostituted it (though the prevention of such a profanation for the future had been as fair a plea for it as the Romanists do now make:) but on the contrary the primitive Fathers are frequent, nay indeed importunate in their exhortations to the private study of holy Scripture, which they recommend to Christians of all Ranks, Ages, and Sexes.  
20. AS an instance hereof, let us hear Clemens of Alex. in his Exhort. The Word, says he, is not hid from any; it is a common light that shineth to all men; there is no obscurity in it; hear it you that be far off, and hear it you that are nigh.  
21. TO this purpose St. Jerom speaks in his Epistle to Leta, whom he directs in the education of her young daughter, and advises, that instead of gems and silk, she be enamoured with the holy Scripture; wherein not gold, or skins, or Babylonian embroideries, but a correct and beautiful variety producing faith, will recommend its self. Let her first learn the Psalter, and be entertained with those songs; then be instructed unto life by the Proverbs of Solomon: let her learn from Ecclesiastes to despise worldly things; transcribe from Job the practice of patience and virtue: let her pass then to the Gospels, and never let them be out of her hands: and then imbibe with all the faculties of the mind, the Acts of the Apostles, and Epistles. When she has enriched the store-house of her breast with these tresures, let her learn the Prophets, the Heptateuch, or books of Moses, Joshua and Judges, the books of Kings and Chronicles, the volumes of Ezra and Esther; and lastly the Canticles. And indeed, this Father is so concerned to have the unlettered female sex skilful in the Scriptures, that though he sharply rebukes their pride and overwening; he not only frequently resolves their doubts concerning difficult places in the said Scriptures, but dedicates several of his Commentaries to them.  
22. THE same is to be said of Saint Austin, who in his Epistles to unlettered Laics, encourages their inquiries concerning the Scripture, assuring Volusianus Ep. 3. that it speaks those things that are plain to the heart of the learned and unlearned, as a familiar friend; in the mysterious, mounts not up into high phrases which might deter a slow and unlearned mind, (as the poor are in their addresses to the rich;) but invites all with lowly speech, feeding with manifest truth, and exercising with secret. And Ep. 1.21. tells the devout Proba, that in this world where we are absent from the Lord, and walk by faith and not by sight, the soul is to think itself desolate, and never cease from prayer, and the words of divine and holy Scripture, etc.  
23. SAINT Chrysostom in his third Homily of Lazarus thus addresses himself to married persons, householders', and people engaged in trades and secular professions; telling them, that the reading of the Scripture is a great defensative against sin; and on the other side, the ignorance thereof is a deep and headlong precipice; that not to know the Law of God, is the utter loss of salvation; that this has caused heresies, and corruption of life, and has confounded the order of things: for it cannot be by any means, that his labour should be fruitless, who emploies himself in a daily and attentive reading of the Scripture.  
24. I am not, says the same St. Chry. Hom. 9 on Colos. 3. a Monk, I have wife and children, and the cares of a family. But 'tis a destructive opinion, that the reading of the Scripture pertains only to those who have addicted themselves to a monastic life; when the reading of Scripture is much more necessary for secular persons: for they who converse abroad, and receive frequent wounds, are in greatest need of remedies and preservatives, so Hom. 2. on Mat. Harken all you that are secular, how you ought to order your wives and children; and how you are particularly enjoined to read the Scriptures, and that not perfunctorily, or by chance, but very diligently.  
25. LIKEWISE Hom. 3. on Laz. What sayest thou, O man? it is not thy business to turn over the Scripture, being distracted by innumerable cares; no, thou hast therefore the greater obligation: others do not so much stand in need of the aids of the Scripture, as they who are conversant in much business. Farther, Hom. 8. on Heb. 5. I beseech you neglect not the reading of the Scriptures; but whether we comprehend the meaning of what is spoken or not, let us always be conversant in them: for daily meditation strengthens the memory; and it frequently happens, that what you now cannot find out, if you attemt it again, you will the next day discover: for God of his goodness will enlighten the mind. It were endless to transcribe all the Exhortations of the ancient Doctors and Fathers of the Church; they not only permitted, but earnestly pressed upon all Christians, whatever their estate or condition were, the constant reading of the holy Scripture. Nor indeed was their restraint ever heard of till the Church of Rome had espoused such doctrines as would not bear the test of Scripture: and then as those who deal in false wares are used to do, they found it necessary to proportion their lights accordingly.  
26. THIS Peter Suitor in his second Book cap. 22. of the Translation of the Scripture honestly confesses, saying, that whereas many things are enjoined which are not expressly in Scripture, the unlearned observing this, will be apt to murmur and complain that so heavy burdens are laid upon them, and their Christian liberty infringed. They will easily be with-drawn from observing the Constitutions of the Church, when they find that they are not contained in the Law of Christ. And that this was not a frivolous suggestion, the desperate attemt of the Romanists above mentioned, in leaving out the second Commandment in their Primers and Catechisms which they communicate to the people, may pass for an irrefragable evidence; For what Layman would not be shockt, to find Almighty God command, not to make any graven image, nor the likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or in the earth beneath, or in the water under the earth; that no one should bow down to them, nor worship them: when he sees the contrary is practised and commanded by the Church.  
27. BUT would God none but the Romamanist were impeachable of this detention of Scripture: there are too many among us that are thus false and envious to themselves: and what the former do upon policy and pretence of reverence, those do upon mere oscitancy and avowed profaneness; which are much worse inducements. And for such as these to declaim against detention of the Scripture, is like the Lawsuits of those who contend only about such little punctilios as themselves design no advantage from, but only the worsting their Adversaries: and it would be much safer for them to lie under the interdict of others, than thus to restrain themselves: even as much as the errors of obedience are more excusable, than those of contemt and profaneness.  
28. AND here I would have it seriously considered that the Edict of Diocletian for the demolishing the Christian Churches, and the burning their Bibles; became the character and particular aggravation of his most bloody persecution. Now should Almighty God call us to the like trial, should Antichristian violence, whether heathen or other, take from us our Churches and our Bibles, what comfort could we have in that calamity, if our contemt of those blessings drove them from us; nay, prevented persecution, and bereft us of them even whilst we had them in our power? He who neglects to make his constant resort unto the Church, which by God's mercy now stands open; or to read diligently the holy Scriptures, which by the same divine Goodness are free for him to use, is his own Diocletian; and without the terrors of death, or torments, has renounced, if not the Faith, the great instruments of its conveyance, and pledge of God Almighty's presence among the sons of men.  
29. BUT what if mwn either upon the one motive or the other, will not read; yet the Scriptures continue still most worthy to be read: they retain still their propriety for all those excellent ends to which God designed them: and as the Prophet tells the Jews, Ez. 2.5. whether they will hear, or whether they will forbear, they shall know there has been a Prophet among them; so whether we will take the benefit or no, we shall one day find that the holy Scriptures would have made us wise unto salvation. If thro' our fault alone they fail to do so, they will one day assume a less grateful office; and from guides and assistants, become accusers and witnesses against us.   

SECT. V. The Scripture has great propriety and fitness toward the attainment of its excellent end.  
WE are now in the next place to consider how exactly the holy Scriptures are adapted to those great ends to which they are directed: how sufficient they are for that important negotiation on which they are sent: and that we shall certainly find them, if we look on them either intrinsically, or circumstantially. For the first of these notions we need only to reflect on the third part of this discourse, where the Scripture in respect of the subject Matter is evinced to be a system of the most excellent Laws, backed with the most transcendent rewards and punishments; and the certainty of those confirmed by such pregnant instances of God's mercies and vengeance in this world, as are the surest gauges and earnests of what we are bid to expect in another.  
2. NOW what method imaginable can there be used to rational creatures of more force and energy? Nay it seems to descend even to our passions and accommodates itself to our several inclinations. And seeing how few Proselytes there are to bare and naked virtue, and how many to interest and advantage; God closes with them upon their own terms, and does not so much enjoin as buy those little services he asks from us.  
3. BUT because some men's natures are so disingenuous as to hate to be obliged no less then to be reformed, the Scripture has goads and scourges to drive such beasts as will not be led; terrors and threatenings, and those of most formidable sorts, to affright those who will not be allured. Nay lest incredulous men should question the reality of future rewards or punishments, the Scripture gives as sensible evidence of them as we are capable of receiving in this world; by registering such signal protections and judgements proportioned to virtue and vice, as sufficiently attests the Psalmists Axiom: Doubtless there is a God that judgeth the earth, Psal. 58.11. and leaves nothing to the impenitent sinner, but a fearful expectation of that fiery indignation threatened hereafter; Heb. 10.27.  
4. AND now methinks the Scripture seems to be that net our Saviour speaks of, that caught of every sort, Mat. 13.47. it is of so vast a compass, that it must, one would think, fetch in all kind of tempers: and sure had we not mixed natures with fiends, contracted some of their malice and obstinacy, mere human pravity could not hold out.  
5. AND as the holy Scripture is thus fitly proportioned to its end in respect of the subject matter, so is it also in reference to its circumstances, which all conspire to render it, the power of God unto salvation, Ro. 1.16. In the first rank of those we must place its divine original, which stamps it with an uncontrollable authority, and is an infallible security that the matter of it is perfectly true: since it proceeds from that essential verity which cannot abuse us with fraudulent promises or threatenings: and from that infinite power that cannot be impeded in the execution of what he purposes.  
6. YET to render this circumstance efficacious, there needs another; to wit, that its being the word of God be sufficiently testified to us: and we have in the foregoing discourse evinced it to be so; and that in the utmost degree that a matter of that kind is capable of; beyond which no sober man will require evidence in any thing. And certainly these two circumstances thus united, have a mighty force to impress the dictates of Scripture on us. And we must rebel against God and our own convictions too, to hold out against it.  
7. A third circumstance relates to the frame and composure of this divine Book, both as to method, and stile: concerning which I have already made some reflections. But now that I may speak more distinctly, I observe it takes its rise from the first point of time wherein 'twas possible for mankind to be concerned; and so gradually proceeds to its fall and renovation: shows us first our need of a Redeemer, and then points us out who it is, by types and promises in the Old Testament, and by way of history and completion in the New. In the former it acquaints us with that pedagogy of the Law which God designed as our Schoolmaster to bring us to Christ, Gal. 3.25. and in the Gospel shows us yet a more excellent way; presents us with those more sublime elevated doctrines, which Christ came down from heaven to revele.  
8. AS for the stile, that is full of grateful variety, sometimes high and majestic, as becomes that high and holy one that inhabiteth eternity: Esai. 57.15. and sometimes so humble and after the manner of men, as agrees to the other part of his Character, his dwelling is with him that is of an humble spirit, Esay 57.15. I know profane wits are apt to brand this as an unevenness of stile: but they may as well accuse the various notes of Music as destructive to harmony, or blame an Orator for being able to tune his tongue to the most different strains.  
9 ANOTHER excellency of the stile, is its propriety to the several subjects it treats of. When it speaks of such things as God would not have men pry into; it wraps them up in clouds and thick darkness; by that means to deter inquisitive man (as he did at Sinai) from breaking into the mount, Ex. 20. And that he gives any intimation at all of such, seems designed only to give us a just estimate how shallow our comprehensions are; and excite us to adore and admire that Abyss of divine Wisdom which we can never fathom.  
10. THINGS of a middle nature, which may be useful to some, but are indispensibly necessary to all, the Scripture leaves more accessible; yet not so obvious as to be within every man's reach: but makes them only the prize of industry, prayer, and humble endeavours. And it is no small benefit, that those who covet the knowledge of divine Truth, are by it engaged to take these virtues in the way. Besides there is so much time required to that study, as renders it inconsistent with those secular businesses wherein the generality of men are immersed: and consequently 'tis necessary that those who addict themselves to the one, have competent vacancy from the other: And in this it hath a visible use by being very contributive to the maintaining that spiritual subordination of the people of the Pastors; which God has established. Miriam and Corahs' Partisans are a pregnant instance how much the opinion of equal knowledge unfits for subjection: and we see by sad experience how much the bare pretence of it has disturbed the Church, and made those turn preachers who never were understanding hearers.  
11. BUT besides these more abstruse, there are easier truths in which every man is concerned; the explicit knowledge whereof is necessary to all: I mean the divine Rules for saving Faith and Manners. And in those the Scripture stile is as plain as is possible: condescends to the apprehensions of the rudest capacities: so that none that can read the Scripture but will there find the way to bliss evidently chalked out to him. That I may use the words of Saint Gregory, the Lamb may wade in those waters of life, as well as the Elephant may swim. The Holy Ghost, as St. Austin tells us, lib. 2. of Christian doctrine, cap. 6. has made in the plainer places of Scripture magnificent and healthful provision for our hunger; and in the obscure, against satiety. For there are scarce any things drawn from obscure places, which in others are not spoken most plainly. And he farther adds, that if any thing happen to be no where explained, every man may there abound in his own sense.  
12. SO again, in the same Book, cap. 9 he says, that all those things which concern Faith and Manners, are plainly to be met with in the Scripture: and Saint Jerom in his Comment on Es. 19 tells us, that 'tis the custom of the Scripture to close obscure sayings with those that are easy; and what was first expressed darkly, to propose in evident words: which very thing is said likewise▪ by Saint Chrysostom, Hom. 9 2 Cor. 4.11. who in his first homily on Saint Mat. farther declares, that the Scriptures are easy to be understood, and exposed to vulgar capacities.  
13. He says again, Hom, upon Esay, that th' Scriptures are not metals that require the help of Miners, but afford a treasure easily to be bad to them that seek the riches contained in them. It is enough only to stoop down, and look upon them, and depart replenished with wealth; it is enough only to open them, and behold the splendour of those Gems. Again, Hom. 3. on the second Ep. to the Thess. 2. All things are evident and straight, which are in the holy Scripture; whatever is necessary is manifest. So also Hom. 3. on Gen. 14. It cannot be that he who is studious in the holy Scripture should be rejected: for though the instruction of men be wanting, the Lord from above will enlighten our minds, shine in upon our reason, revele what is secret, and teach what we do not know. So Hom. 1. on Jo. 11. Almighty God involves his doctrine with no mists, and darkness, as did the Philosophers: his doctrine is brighter than the Sunbeams, and more illustrious; and therefore every where diffused: and Hom. 6. on Jo. 11. His doctrine is so facile, that not only the wise, but even women, and youths must comprehend it. Hom. 13. on Gen. 2. Let us go to the Scripture as our Mark, which is its own interpreter. And soon after says, that the Scripture interprets itself, and suffers not its Auditor to err. To the same purpose says Cyril in his third Book against Julian. In the Scripture nothing is difficult to them, who are conversant in them as they ought to be.  
14. It is therefore a groundless cavil which men make at the obscurity of the Scripture; since it is not obscure in those things wherein 'tis our common interest it should be plain: which sufficiently justifies its propriety to that great end of making us wise unto salvation. And for those things which seem less intelligible to us, many of them become so, not by the innate obscurity of the Text, but by extrinsic circumstances (of which perhaps the overbusy tampering of Paraphrasts, pleased with new notions of their own, may be reckoned for one.) But this subject the Reader may find so well pursued in Mr. Boils Tract concerning the stile of Scripture, that I shall be kindest both to him and it, to refer him thither; as also for answer to those other querulous objections which men galled with the sense of the Scripture, have made to its stile.  
15. A third circumstance in which the Scripture is fitted to attain its end, is its being committed to writing, as that is distinguished from oral delivery. It is most true, the word of God is of equal authority and efficacy which way soever it be delivered: The Sermons of the Apostles were every jot as divine and powerful out of their mouths, as they are now in their story. All the advantage therefore that the written Word can pretend to, is in order to its perpetuity; as it is a securer way of derivation to posterity, then that of oral Tradition. To evince that it is so, I shall first weigh the rational probabilities on either side. Secondly, I shall consider to which God himself appears in Scripture to give the deference.  
16. FOR the first of these, I shall propose this consideration; which I had occasion to intimate before; that the Bible being writ for the universal use of the faithful, 'twas as universally dispersed amongst them: The Jews had the Law not only in their Synagogues, but in their private houses, and as soon as the Evangelical Books were writ, they were scattered into all places where the Christian Faith had obtained. Now when there was such a vast multitude of copies, and those so revered by the possessors, that they thought it the highest pitch of sacrilege to expose them, it must surely be next to impossible entirely to suppress that Book. Besides it could never be attempted but by some eminent violence, as it was by the heathen Persecutors; which (according to the common effect of opposition) served to enhance the Christians value of the Bible; and consequently when the storm was past, to excite their diligence for recruiting the number. So that, unless in after Ages, all the Christians in the world should at once make a voluntary defection, and conspire to eradicate their Religion, the Scriptures could not be utterly extinguished.  
17. AND that which secures it from total suppression, does in a great degree do so from corruption and falsification. For whilst so many genuine copies are extant in all parts of the world, to be appealed to, it would be a very difficult matter to impose a spurious one; especially if the change were so material as to awaken men's jealousies. And it must be only in a place and age of gross ignorance, that any can be daring enough to attemt it. And if it should happen to succeed in such a particular Church, yet what is that to the universal? And to think to have the forgery admitted there, is (as a learned man says) like attemting to poison the sea.  
18. ON the other side, oral Tradition seems much more liable to hazards, error may there insinuate itself much more insensibly. And though there be no universal conspiracy to admit it at first; yet like a small eruption of waters, it widens its own passage, till it cause an inundation. There is no impression so deep, but time and intervening accidents may wear out of men's minds; especially where the notions are many, and are founded not in nature, but positive institution, as a great part of Christian Religion is. And when we consider the various tempers of men, 'twill not be strange that succeeding Ages will not always be determined by the Traditions of the former. Some are pragmatic, and think themselves fitter to prescribe to the belief of their posterity, then to follow that of their Ancestors: some have interests and designs which will be better served by new Tenets: and some are ignorant and mistaking, and may unawares corrupt the doctrine they should barely deliver: and of this last sort we may guests there may be many, since it falls commonly to the mother's lot to imbue children with the first rudiments.  
19 NOW in all these cases how possible is it that primitive Tradition may be either lost or adulterated; and consequently, and in proportion to that possibility, our confidence of it must be staggered. I am sure according to the common estimate in seculars it must be so. For I appeal to any man whether he be not apt to credit a relation which comes from an eie-witness then at the third or fourth, much more at the hundredth rebound: (as in this case.) And daily experience tells us; that a true and probable story by passing thro' many hands, often grows to an improbable lie. This man thinks he could add one becoming circumstance; that man another: and whilst most men take the liberty to do so, the relation grows as monstrous as such a heap of incoherent fancies can make it.  
20. IF to this it be said, that this happens only in trivial secular matters, but that in the weighty concern of Religion mankind is certainly more serious and sincere: I answer that 'tis very improbable that they are; since 'tis obvious in the common practice of the world, that the interests of Religion are postponed to every little worldly concern. And therefore when a temporal advantage requires the bending and warping of Religion, there will never be wanting some that will attemt it.  
21. BESIDES there is still left in human nature so much of the venom of the Serpents first temptation, that though men cannot be as God, yet they love to be prescribing to him, and to be their own Assessors as to that worship and homage they are to pay him.  
22. BUT above all 'tis considerable that in this case Satan has a more peculiar concern, and can serve himself more by a falsification here then in temporal affairs. For if he can but corrupt Religion, it ceases to be his enemy, and becomes one of his most useful engines, as sufficiently appeared in the rites of the heathen worship. We have therefore no cause to think this an exempt case, but to presume it may be influenced by the same pravity of human nature, which prevails in others; and consequently are obliged to bless God that he has not left our spiritual concerns to such hazards, but has lodged them in a more secure repository, the written Word.  
23. BUT I foresee 'twill be objected, that whilst I thus disparage Tradition, I do virtually invalidate the Scripture itself, which comes to us upon its credit. To this I answer first that since God has with-drawn immediate revelation from the world, Tradition is the only means to convey to us the first notice that this Book is the word of God: and it being the only means he affords, we have all reason to depend on his goodness, that he will not suffer that to be evacuated to us: and that how liable soever Tradition may be to err, yet that it shall not actually err in this particular.  
24. BUT in the second place; This Tradition seems not so liable to falsification as others: It is so very short and simple a proposition; such and such writings are the word of God, that there is no great room for Sophistry or mistake to pervert the sense; the only possible deception must be to change the subject, and obtrude supposititious writings in room of the true, under the title of the word of God. But this has already appeared to be unpracticable, because of the multitude of copies which were dispersed in the world; by which such an attemt would soon have been detected. There appears more reason as well as more necessity, to rely upon Tradition in this, then in most other particulars.  
25. NEITHER yet do I so far decry oral Tradition in any, as to conclude it impossible it should derive any truth to posterity: I only look on it as more casual, and consequently a less fit conveyance of the most important and necessary verities than the written Word: In which I conceive myself justified by the common sense of mankind; who use to commit those things to writing, which they are most solicitous to derive to posterity. Does any Nation trust their fundamental Laws only to the memory of the present Age, and take no other course to transmit them to the future? does any man purchase an estate, and leave no way for his children to lay claim to it, but the Tradition the present witnesses shall leave of it? Nay does any considering man ordinarily make any important pact or bargain (though without relation to posterity) without putting the Articles in writing? And whence is all this caution but from a universal consent that writing is the surest way of transmitting?  
26. BUT we have yet a higher appeal in this matter then to the suffrage of men: God himself seems to have determined it; And what his decision is, 'tis our next business to inquire.  
27. AND first he has given the most real and comprehensive attestation to this way of writing, by having himself chose it. For he is too wise to be mistaken in his estimate of better and worse, and too kind to choose the worst for us: and yet he has chosen to communicate himself to the latter Ages of the world by writing; and has summed up all the Eternal concerns of mankind in the sacred Scriptures, and left those sacred Records by which we are to be both informed and governed; which if oral Tradition would infallibly have done, had been utterly needless: and God sure is not so prodigal of his spirit, as to inspire the Autors of Scripture to write that, whose use was superseded by a former more certain expedient.  
28. NAY, under the Mosaic oeconomy, when he made use of other ways of revelling himself, yet to perpetuate the memory even of those Revelations; he chose to have them written. At the delivery of the Law, God spoke then viva voce, and with that pomp of dreadful solemnity, as certainly was apt to make the deepest impressions; yet God foresaw that thro' every succeeding Age that stamp would grow more dim, and in a long revolution might at last be extinct. And therefore how warm soever the Israelites apprehensions then were, he would not trust to them for the perpetuating his Law, but committed it to writing; Ex. 31.18. nay wrote it twice himself.  
29. YET farther even the ceremonial Law though not intended to be of perpetual obligation; was not yet referred to the traditionary way, but was wrote by Moses, and deposited with the Priests, Deut. 31.9. And after-event showed this was no needless caution. For when under Manasses, Idolatry had prevailed in Jerusalem, it was not by any dormant Tradition, but by the Book of the Law found in the Temple, that Josiah was both excited to reform Religion, and instructed how to do it; 2. Kings 22.10. And had not that or some other copy been produced, they had been much in the dark as to the particulars of their reformation; which that they had not been conveyed by Tradition, appears by the sudden startling of the King upon the reading of the Law; which could not have been, had he been before possessed with the contents of it. In like manner we find in Nehemiah, that the observation of the Feast of Tabernacles was recovered by consulting the Law; the Tradition whereof was wholly worn out; or else it had sure been impossible that it could for so long a time have been intermitted, Neh. 8.18. And yet men's memories are commonly more retentive of an external visible rite, than they are of speculative Propositions, or moral Precepts.  
30. THESE instances show how fallible an expedient mere oral Tradition is for transmission to posterity. But admit no such instance could be given, 'tis argument enough that God has by his own choice of writing, given the preference to it. Nor has he barely chosen it, but has made it the standard by which to measure all succeeding pretences. 'Tis the means he prescribes for distinguishing divine from diabolical Inspirations: To the Law and to the Testimony: if they speak not according to this Word, there is no light in them, Isai. 8.20. And when the Lawyer interrogated our Saviour what he should do to inherit eternal life, he sends him not to ransac Tradition, or the cabalistical divinity of the Rabbins, but refers him to the Law: What is written in the Law? how readest thou? Luk. 10.26. And indeed, throout the Gospel, we still find him in his discourse appealing to Scripture, and asserting its authority: as on the other side inveighing against those Traditions of the Elders which had evacuated the written Word: Ye make the Word of God of none effect by your Tradition, Mat. 15.6. Which as it abundantly shows Christ's adherence to the written Word, so 'tis a pregnant instance how possible it is for Tradition to be corrupted, and made the instrument of imposing men's fancies even in contradiction to God's commands.  
31. AND since our blessed Lord has made Scripture the test whereby to try Traditions, we may surely acquiesce in his decision, and either Embrace or reject Traditions, according as they correspond to the supreme rule, the written Word. It must therefore be a very unwarrantable attemt to set up Tradition in competition with (much more in contradiction to) that to which Christ himself hath subjected it.  
32. Saint Paul reckons it as the principal privilege of the Jewish Church, that it had the Oracles of God committed to it; i.e. that the holy Scriptures were deposited, and put in its custody: and in this the Christian Church succeeds it, and is the guardian and conservator of holy Writ. I ask then, had the Jewish Church by virtue of its being keeper, a power to supersede any part of those Oracles entrusted to them? if so, Saint Paul was much out in his estimate, and aught to have reckoned that as their highest privilege. But indeed, the very nature of the trust implies the contrary; and besides, 'tis evident, that is the very crime Christ charges upon the Jews in the place above cited. And if the Jewish Church had no such right, upon what account can the Christian claim any? Has Christ enlarged its Charter? has he left the sacred Scriptures with her, not to preserve and practice, but to regulate and reform? to fill up its vacancies, and supply its defects by her own Traditions? if so, let the commission be produced; but if her office be only that of guardianship and trust, she must neither subtract from, nor by any superadditions of her own evacuate its meaning and efficacy: and to do so, would be the same guilt that it would be in a person entrusted with the fundamental Records of a Nation, to foist in such clauses as himself pleases.  
33. IN short, God has in the Scriptures laid down exact rules for our belief and practice, and has entrusted the Church to convey them to us: if she vary, or any way enervate them, she is false to that trust, but cannot by it oblige us to recede from that rule she should deliver, to comply with that she obtrudes upon us. The case may be illustrated by an easy resemblance. Suppose a King have a foreign principality for which he composes a body of Laws; annexes to them rewards and penalties, and requires an exact and indispensable conformity to them. These being put in writing, he sends by a select messenger: now suppose this messenger deliver them, yet says withal, that himself has authority from the King to supersede these Laws at his pleasure; so that their last resort must be to his dictates, yet produces no other testimony but his own bare affirmation. Is it possible that any men in their wits should be so stupidly credulous, as to incur the penalty of those Laws upon so improbable an indemnity? And sure it would be no whit less madness in Christians, to violate any precept of God, on an ungrounded supposal of the Church's power to dispense with them.  
34. AND if the Church universal have not this power, nor indeed ever claimed it, it must be a strange insolence for any particular Church to pretend to it, as the Church of Rome does; as if we should owe to her Tradition all our Scripture, and all our Faith; insomuch that without the supplies which she affords from the Oracle of her Chair, our Religion were imperfect, and our salvation insecure. Upon which wild dictates I shall take liberty in a distinct Section, farther to animadvert.   

SECT. VI The suffrage of the primitive Christian Church, concerning the propriety and fitness which the Scripture hat towards the attainment of its excellent end.  
AGAINST what has been hitherto said to the advantage of the holy Scripture, there opposes itself (as we have already intimated) the authority of the Church of Rome; which allows it to be only an imperfect rule of Faith, saying in the fourth Session of the Council of Trent, that Christian faith and discipline, are contained in the Books written, and unwritten Tradition. And in the fourth rule of the Index put forth by command of the said Council, the Scripture is declared to be so far from useful, that its reading is pernicious if permitted promiscuously in the vulgar Tongue, and therefore to be withheld: insomuch that the study of the holy Bible is commonly by persons of the Roman Communion, imputed to Protestants as part of their heresy; they being called by them in contemt the Evangelical men, and Scripturarians. And the Bible in the vulgar Tongue of any Nation, is commonly reckoned among prohibited Books, and as such, publicly burnt when met with by the Inquisitors: and the person who is found with it, or to read therein, is subjected to severe penalties.  
2. FOR the vindication of the truth of God, and to put to shame those unhappy Innovators, who amidst great pretences to antiquity, and veneration to the Scriptures prevaricat from both: I think it may not be amiss, to show plainly the mind of the primitive Church herein; and that in as few words as the matter will admit.  
3. FIRST I premise that Ireneus and Tertullian having to do with Heretics, who boasted themselves to be emendators of the Apostles, and wiser than they; despising their authority, rejecting several parts of the Scripture, and obtruding other writings in their steed, have had recourse unto Tradition, with a seeming preference of it unto Scripture. Their adversaries having no common principle besides the owning the name of Christians; it was impossible to convince them, but by a recourse to such a medium which they would allow. But these Father's being to set down and establish their Faith, are most express in resolving it into Scripture: and when they recommend Tradition, ever mean such as is also Apostolical.  
4. IRENEUS in the second Book, 47. c. tells us, that the Scriptures are perfect, as dictated by the word of God and his spirit. And the same Father begins his third Book in this manner, The disposition of our salvation is no otherwise known by us, then by those by whom the Gospel was brought to us; which indeed they first preached, but afterward delivered it to us in the Scripture, to be the foundation and pillar of our Faith. Nor may we imagine, that they began to preach to others, before they themselves had perfect knowledge, as some are bold to say; boasting themselves to be emendators of the Apostles. For after our Lord's Resurrection, they were endued with the power of the holy Spirit from on high, and having perfect knowledge, went forth to the ends of the earth, preaching the glad tidings of salvation, and celestial praise unto men. Each and all of whom had the Gospel of God. So Saint Matthew wrote the Gospel to the Hebrews, in their tongue. Saint Peter and Saint Paul preached at Rome, and there founded a Church: Mark the Disciple and interpreter of Peter, delivered in writing what he had preached, and Luke the follower of Paul set down in his Book the Gospel he had delivered. Afterward Saint John at Ephesus in Asia published his Gospel, etc. In his fourth Book, c. 66. he directs all the Heretics with whom he deals, to read diligently the Gospel delivered by the Apostles, and also read diligently the Prophets, assuring they shall there find every action, every doctrine, and every suffering of our Lord declared by them.  
5. THUS Tertullian in his Book of Prescriptions, c. 6. It is not lawful for us to introduce any thing of our own will, nor make any choice upon our arbitrement. We have the Apostles of our Lord for our Authors, who themselves took up nothing on their own will or choice; but faithfully imparted to the Nations the discipline which they had received from Christ. So that if an Angel from heaven should teach another doctrine, he were to be accursed. And c. 25. 'Tis madness, says he of the Heretics, when they confess that the Apostles were ignorant of nothing, nor taught things different; to think that they did not revele all things to all: which he enforces in the following chapter. In his Book against Hermogenes, c. 23. he discourses thus; I adore the plenitude of the Scripture, which discovers to me the Creator, and what was created. Also in the Gospel I find the Word was the Arbiter and Agent in the Creation. That all things were made of preexistent matter I never read. Let Hermogenes, and his journeymen show that it is written. If it be not written, let him fear the woe, which belongs to them that add or detract. And in the 39 ch. of his Prescript. We feed our faith, raise our hope, and establish our reliance with the sacred Words.  
6. IN like manner Hippolytus in the Homily against Noetus declares, that we acknowledge only from Scripture that there is one God. And whereas secular Philosophy is not to be had, but from the reading of the doctrine of the Philosophers; so whosoever of us will preserve piety towards God, he cannot otherwise learn it then from the holy Scripture. Accordingly Origen in the fifth Homily on Leviticus, says, that in the Scripture every word appertaining to God, is to be sought and discussed; and the knowledge of all things is to be received.  
7. WHAT Saint Cyprians opinion was in this point, we learn at large from his Epistle to Pompey. For when Tradition was objected to him, he answers; Whence is this Tradition? is it from the authority of our Lord and his Gospel; or comes it from the commands of the Apostles in their Epistles? Almighty God declares that what is written should be obeyed and practised. The Book of the Law, says he in Joshua, shall not depart from thy mouth, but thou shalt meditate in it day and night, that you may observe and keep all that is written therein. So our Lord sending his Apostles, commands them to baptise all Nations, and teach them to observe all things that he had commanded. Again, what obstinacy and presumption is it to prefer human Tradition to divine Command: not considering that God's wrath is kindled as often as his Precepts are dissolved and neglected by reason of human Traditions. Thus God warns and speaks by Isaiah: This people honours me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; but in vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men. Also the Lord in the Gospel checks and reproves, saying; you reject the Law of God, that you may establish your Tradition. Of which Precept the Apostle Saint Paul being mindful, admonishes and instructs, saying; If any man teaches otherwise, and hearkens not to sound doctrine, and the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, he is proud, knowing nothing: From such we must depart. And again he adds, There is a compendious way for religious and sincere minds, both to deposit their errors, and find out the truth. For if we return to the source and original of divine Tradition, human error will cease, and the ground of heavenly Mysteries being seen, whatsoever was hid with clouds and darkness, will be manifest by the light of truth. If a pipe that brought plentiful supplies of water fail on the sudden, do not men look to the fountain, and thence learn the cause of the defect, whether the spring itself be dry; or if running freely, the water is stopped in its passage; that if by interrupted or broken conveyances, it was hindered to pass, they being repaired, it may again be brought to the City, with the same plenty as it flows from the spring? And this God's Priests ought to do at this time, obeying the commands of God, that if truth have swerved or failed in any particular, we go backward to the source of the Evangelical and Apostolical Tradition, and there found our actings; from whence their order and origination began.  
8. IT is true Bellarmine reproaches this discourse as erroneous; but whatever it might be in the inference which Saint Cyprian drew from it, in itself it was not so. For Saint Austin, though sufficiently engaged against Saint Cyprians conclusion allows the position as most Orthodox; saying, in the fourth Book of Baptism, c. 35. Whereas he admonishes to go back to the fountain, that is, the Tradition of the Apostles, and thence bring the stream down to our times; 'tis most excellent, and without doubt to be done.  
9 THUS Eusebius expresses himself in his second Book against Sabellius. As it is a point of sloth, not to seek into those things, whereof one may inquire; so 'tis insolence to be inquisitive in others. But what are those things which we ought to inquire into? Even those which are to be found in the Scriptures: those things which are not there to be found, let us not seek after. For if they ought to be known, the holy Ghost had not omitted them in the Scripture.  
10. ATHANASIUS in his Tract of the Incarnation, says, It is fit for us to adhere to the word of God, and not relinquish it, thinking by syllogisms to evade, what is there clearly delivered. Again in his Tract to Serap. of the holy Ghost: Ask not, says he, concerning the Trinity, but learn only from the Scriptures. For the instructions which you will find there, are sufficient. And in his Oration against the Gentiles, declares, That the Scriptures are sufficient to the manifestation of the truth.  
11. AGREEABLE to these is Optatus in his 5. Book against Parmen. who reasons thus, You say 'tis lawful to rebaptize, we say 'tis not lawful: betwixt your saying and our gainsaying the people's minds are amused. Let no man believe either you or us. All men are apt to be contentious. Therefore Judges are to be called in. Christians they cannot be; for they will be parties; and thereby partial. Therefore a Judge is to be looked out from abroad. If a Pagan, he knows not the mysteries of our Religion. If a Jew, he is an enemy to our baptism. There is therefore no earthly Judge; but one is to be sought from heaven. Yet there is no need of a resort to heaven, when we have in the Gospel a Testament: and in this case, celestial things may be compared to earthly. So it is as with a Father who has many children; while he is present he order them all, and there is no need of a written Will: Accordingly Christ when he was present upon earth, from time to time commanded the Apostles whatsoever was necessary. But as the earthly father finding himself to be at the point of death, and fearing that after his departure his children should quarrel among themselves, he calls witnesses, and puts his mind in writing; and if any difference arise among the brethren, they go not to their Father's Sepulchre, but repair to his Will and Testament; and he who rests in his grave, speaks still in his writing, as if he were alive. Our Lord who left his Will among us, is now in heaven; therefore let us seek his commands in the Gospel, as in his Will.  
12. THUS Cyril of jerus. Cat. 4. Nothing, no not the least concernment of the divine and holy Sacraments of our Faith, is to be delivered without the holy Scripture: believe not me unless I give you a demonstration of what I say from the Scripture.  
13. SAINT Basil in his Book of the true Faith says, If God be faithful in all his sayings, his words, and works, they remaining for ever, and being done in truth and equity; it must be an evident sign of infidelity and pride, if any one shall reject what is written, and introduce what is not written. In which Books he generally declares that he will write nothing but what he receives from the holy Scripture: and that he abhors from taking it elsewhere. In his 29. Homily against the Antitrinit. Believe, says he, those which are written; seek not those which are not written. And in his Eth. reg. 26. Every word and action ought to be confirmed by the testimony of the divinely inspired Scriptures to the establishment of the Faith of the good, and reproof of the wicked.  
14. SAINT Ambrose in the first Book of his Offic. says: How can we make use of any thing which is not to be found in Scripture? And in his Instit. of Virgins. I read he is the first, but read not he is the second; let them who say he is second, show it from the reading.  
15. GREG. Nyssen in his Dial. of the soul and resurrect. says, 'Tis undeniable, that truth is there only to be placed, where there is the seal of Scripture Testimony.  
16. SAINT Jerom against Helvidius declares. As we deny not that which is written, so we refuse those which are not written. And in his Comment on the 98. Ps. Every thing that we assert, we must show from the holy Scripture. The word of him that speaks has not that authority as God's precept. And on the 87. Ps. Whatever is said after the Apostles, let it be cut off, nor have afterwards authority. Tho one be holy after the Apostles, though one be eloquent; yet has he not authority.  
17. SAINT Austin in his Tract of the unity of the Church, c. 12. acknowledges that he could not be convinced but by the Scriptures of what he was to believe; and adds they are read with such manifestation, that he who believes them must confess the doctrine to be most true. In the second Book of Christian doctrine, c. 9 he says, that in the plain places of Scripture are found all those things that concern Faith and Manners. And in Epist. 42. All things which have been exhibited heretofore as don to mankind, and what we now see and deliver to our posterity, the Scripture has not passed them in silence, so far forth as they concern the search or defence of our Religion. In his Tract of the good of Widowhood, he says to Julian, the person to whom he addresses. What shall I teach you more than that we read in the Apostle: for the holy Scripture settles the rule of our doctrine; that we think not any thing more than we ought to think; but to think soberly, as God has dealt to every man the measure of Faith. Therefore my teaching is only to expound the words of this Doctor, Ep. 157. Where any subject is obscure, and passes our comprehension, and the Scripture does not plainly afford its help, there human conjecture is presumptuous in defining.  
18. THEOPHILUS of Alex. in his second Paschal homily, tells us, that 'tis the suggestion of a diabolical spirit to think that any thing besides the Scripture has divine authority. And in his third he adds, that the Doctors of the Church having the Testimony of the Scripture, lay firm foundation of their doctrine.  
19 CHRYSOSTOM in his third Homily on the first of the Thessaly. asserts, that from the alone reading or hearing of the Scripture one may learn all things necessary. So Hom. 34. on Act. 15. he declares. A heathen comes and says: I would willingly be a Christian, but I know not who to join myself to; for there are many contentions among you, many seditions and tumults; so that I am in doubt what opinion I should abuse, Each man says, what I say is true, and I know not whom to believe; each pretends to Scripture which I am ignorant of, 'Tis very well the issue is put here: for if the appeal were to reason, in this case there would be just occasion of being troubled: but when we appeal to Scripture, and they are simple and certain, you may easily yourself judge. He that agrees with the Scripture is a Christian, he that resists them, is far out of the way. And on Ps. 95. If any thing be said without the Scripture, the mind halts between different opinions; sometimes inclining as to what is probable, anon rejecting as what is frivolous: but when the testimony of holy Scripture is produced, the mind both of speaker and hearer is confirmed. And Hom. 4. on Lazar. Tho one should rise from the dead, or an Angel come down from heaven, we must believe the Scripture; they being framed by the Lord of Angels, and the quick and dead. And Hom. 13. 2 Cor. 7. Is it not an absurd thing that when we deal with men about money, we will trust no body, but cast up the sum, and make use of our counters; but in religious affairs, suffer ourselves to be led aside by other men's opinions, even then when we have by an exact scale and touchstone, the dictat of the divine Law. Therefore I pray and exhort you, that giving no heed to what this or that man says, you would consult the holy Scripture, and thence learn the divine riches, and pursue what you have learned. And Hom. 58. on Jo. 10.1. 'Tis the mark of a thief, that he comes not in by the door, but another way: now by the door the testimony of the Scripture is signified. And Hom. on Gal. 1.8. The Apostle says not, if any man teach a contrary doctrine let him be accursed, or if he subvert the whole Gospel; but if he teach any thing beside the Gospel which you have received, or vary any little thing, let him be accursed.  
20. CYRIL of Alex. against Jul. l. 7. says, The holy Scripture is sufficient to make them who are instructed in it, wise unto salvation, and endued with most ample knowledge.  
21. THEODORET Dial. 1. I am persuaded only by the holy Scripture. And Dial. 2. I am not so bold to affirm any thing, not spoken of in the Scripture. And again, qu. 45. upon Genes. We ought not to inquire after what is passed over in silence, but acquiesce in what is written.  
22. IT were easy to enlarge this discourse into a Volume; but having taken, as they offered themselves, the suffrages of the writers of the four first Centuries, I shall not proceed to those that follow. If the holy Scripture were a perfect rule of Faith and Manners to all Christians heretofore, we may reasonably assure ourselves it is so still; and will now guide us into all necessary truth, and consequently make us wise unto salvation, without the aid of oral Tradition, or the new mintage of a living infallible Judge of controversy. And the impartial Reader will be enabled to judge whether our appeal to the holy Scripture, in all occasions of controversy, and recommendation of it to the study of every Christian, be that heresy and innovation which it is said to be.  
23. IT is, we know, severely imputed to the Scribes and Pharisees by our Saviour, that they took from the people the key of knowledge, Luk. 11.52. and had made the word of God of none effect by their Traditions, Mat. 15.6. but they never attemted what has been since practised by their Successors in the Western Church, to take away the Ark of the Testament itself, and cut off not only the efficacy, but very possession of the word of God by their Traditions. Surely this had been exceeding criminal from any hand: but that the Bishops and Governors of the Church, and the universal and infallible Pastor of it, who claim the office to interpret the Scriptures, exhort unto, and assist in the knowledge of them, should be the men who thus rob the people of them; carries with it the highest aggravations both of cruelty and breach of trust. If any man shall take away from the words of the Book of this prophecy, says Saint John, Revel. 22.19. God shall take away his part out of the Book of Life, and out of the holy City, and from the things which are written in this Book. What vengeance therefore awaits those, who have taken away not only from one Book, but at once the Books themselves, even all the Scriptures, the whole word of God?   

SECT. VII. Historical reflections upon the events which have happened in the Church since the withdrawing of the holy Scripture.  
'tWILL in this place be no useless contemplation to observe, after the Scriptures had been ravished from the people in the Church of Rome; what pitiful pretenders were admitted to succeed. And first because Laymen were presumed to be illiterate, and easily seducible by those writings which were in themselves difficult, and would be wrested by the unlearned to their own destruction; pictures were recommended in their steed, and complemented as the Books of the Laity, which soon emprov'd into a necessity of their worship, and that gross superstition which renders Christianity abominated by Turks, and Jews, and Heathens unto this day.  
2. I would not be hasty in charging Idolatry upon the Church of Rome, or all in her communion; but that their Image-worship is a most fatal snare, in which vast numbers of unhappy souls are taken, no man can doubt who hath with any regard travailed in Popish Countries. I myself, and thousands of others, whom the late troubles, or other occasions sent abroad, are and have been witnesses thereof. Charity, 'tis true, believes all things, but it does not oblige men to disbelieve their eyes. 'Twas the outcry of Micah against the Danites, Jud. 18.24. ye have taken away my Gods which I have made, and the Priest, and are gone away, and what have I more? but the Laity of the Roman communion may enlarge the complaint, and say; you have taken away the oracles of our God, and set up every where among us graven and molten Images, and Teraphims, and what have we more? and 'twas lately the loud, and I doubt me is still, the unanswerable complaint of the poor Americans, that they were denied to worship their Pagod once in the year, when they who forbade them, worshipped theirs every day.  
3. THE Jews before the captivity, notwithstanding the recent memory of the Miracles in Egypt and the Wilderness, and the first conquest of the Land of Canaan with those that succeeded under the Judges and kings of Israel and juda; as also the express command of God, and the menaces of Prophets, ever and anon fell to downright Idolatry: but after their return unto this day, have kept themselves from falling into that sin; though they had no Prophets to instruct them, no miracles or government to encourage or constrain them. The reason of which a very learned man in his discourse of religious Assemblies takes to be, the reading and teaching of the Law in their Synagogues; which was performed with great exactness after the return from the captivity, but was not so performed before. And may we not invert the observation, and impute the Image-worship now set up in the Christian Church, to the forbidding the reading of the Scriptures in the Churches, and interdicting the private use, and institution in them?  
4. FOR a farther supplement in place of the Scriptures, whose History was thought not edifying enough, the Legends of the Saints were introduced; stories so stupid, that one would imagine them designed as an experiment how far credulity could be imposed upon; or else framed to a worse intent, that Christianity by them might be made ridiculous. Yet these are recommended to use and veneration, while in the mean time the word of God is utterly forbidden, whereby the parties to this unhappy practice (that I may speak in the words of the Prophet Jerem. 2.13.) have committed two evils, they have forsaken the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns that can hold no water.  
5. FARTHER yet, the same unreasonable tyranny which permitted not the Laity to understand Almighty God speaking to them in the Scripture; hindered them from being suffered to understand the Church or themselves speaking to him in their prayers; whilst the whole Roman office is so disposed, that in defiance of the Apostles discourse, 1 Cor. 14. he that occupies the room of the unlearned must say amen, to those prayers and praises which he has no comprehension of: and by his endless repetitions of Pater's, Aves and Credo's, falls into that battology reproved by our Saviour, Mat, 6.7. and as 'twas said to the woman of Samaria, Jo. 4.22. knows not what he worships. Yet this unaccountable practice is so much the darling of that Church, that when in France about eighteen years since, the Roman Missal was translated into the vulgar Tongue, and published by the direction of several of their Bishops; the Clergy of France rose up in great fury against the attemt, anathematising in their circular Epistles, all that sold, read, or used the said Book: and upon complaint unto Pope Alex. the 7. he resented the matter so deeply, as to issue out his Bull against it in the following words.  
6. WHEREAS sons of perdition, endevoring the destruction of souls, have translated the Roman Missal into the French Tongue, and so attempted to throw down and trample upon the majesty of the holy Rites comprehended in Latin words: As we abominate and detest the novelty, which will deform the beauty of the Church, and produce disobedience, temerity, boldness, sedition and schism; so we condemn, reprobate and forbid, the said and all other such Translations, and interdict the reading, and keeping, to all and singular the faithful, of whatever sex, degree, order, condition, dignity, honour, or preeminence, etc. under pain of excommunication. And we command the copies to be immediately burnt, etc. So mortal a sin it seems 'twas thought for the Laity to understand the prayers in which they must communicate.  
7. NOR is this all; agreeable to the other attemts upon the holy Scripture, was the bold insolence of making a new authentic Text, in that unknown Tongue in which the offices of prayer had been, and were to be kept disguised; which was done by the decree of the Council of Trent in the fourth Session. But when the Council had given this Prerogative to the Version which it called vulgar, the succeeding Popes began to consider what that Version was; and this work Pius the fourth and fifth set upon; but prevented by death failed to complete it, so that the honour of the performance fell to Sixtus the fifth, who in the plenitude of his Apostolic power, the Translation being reformed to his mind, Commanded it to be that genuine ancient Edition, which the Trent Fathers had before made authentic, and under the pain of excommunication required it to be so received: which he does in this form. Of our certain knowledge, and the plenitude of Apostolic power, we order and declare that vulgar Edition which has been received for authentic by the Council of Trent, is without doubt or controversy to be esteemed this very one, which being amended as well as it is possible, and printed at the Vatican Press, we publish to be read in the whole Christian Republic, and in all Churches of the Christian world. Decreeing that it having been approved by the consent of the holy universal Church, and the holy Fathers, and then by the Decree of the general Council of Trent, and now by the Apostolic authority delivered to us by the Lord; is the true, legitimate, authentic, and undoubted, which is to be received and held in all public and private Disputations, Lectures, Preachings, and Expositions, etc. But notwithstanding this certain knowledge, and plenitude of Apostolic power, soon after came Clement the eighth, and again resumes the work of his Predecessor Sixtus, discovers great and many errors in it, and puts out one more reformed, yet confessed by himself to be imperfect; which now stands for the authentic Text, and carries the title of the Bible put forth by Sixtus, notwithstanding all its alterations. So well does the Roman Church deserve the honour which she pretends to, of being the mistress of all Churches; and so infallible is the holy Chair in its determinations: and lastly, so authentic a Transcript of the word of God (concerning which 'tis said, Mat. 5.18. one jot or one title shall not fail) is that which she established, and that has received so many, and yet according to the confession of the infallible Corrector, wants still more alterations.  
8. DEPENDENT upon this, and as great a mischief as any of the former, consequent to the withdrawing of the Scripture, I take to be the step it made to the overthrow of the ancient and most useful discipline of the Church in point of Penance, whose rigours always heretofore preceded the possibility of having absolution. Now of this we know a solemn part was the state of Audience, when the lapsed person was received after long attendance without doors, prostrations, and lamentations there, within the entrance of the Church; and was permitted with the Catechumen or Candidats of Baptism, to hear the readings of the Scripture, and stay till prayer began, but then depart. He was obliged to hear the terrors of the Lord, the threats of the divine Law against sin and sinners, to stand among the unbaptiz'd and heathen multitude, and learn again the elements of that holy Faith from which he had prevaricated; and so in time be rendered capable of the devotions of the faithful▪ and afterward the reception of the Eucharist. But when the Scriptures were thought useless or dangerous to be understood and heard, it was consequent that the state of Audience should be cut off from Penance, and that the next to it, upon the selfsame principle should be dismissed: and so the long probation formerly required should be supplanted; and the compendious way of pardoning first, and repenting afterwards, the endless circle of sinning and being absolved, and then sinning and being absolved again, should prevail upon the Church. Which still obtains, notwithstanding the complaints, and irrefragable demonstrations of learned men even of the Romish Communion, who plainly show this now received method, to be an innovation groundless and unreasonable, and most pernicious in its consequents.  
9 AND, by the way, we may take notice that there cannot be a plainer evidence of the judgement of the Church, concerning the necessity of the Scriptures being known, not only by the learned but mean Christian, and the interest they have therein; then is the ancient course of Penance, established by the the practice of all the first Ages, and almost as many Councils, whether general or local, as have decreed any thing concerning discipline; with the penitentiary Books and Canons which were written for the first eleven hundred years in the whole Christian world. For if even the unbaptiz'd Catechumen, and the lapsed sinner, notwithstanding their slender knowledge in the mysteries of Faith, or frail pretence to the privilege thereof, had a right to the state of Audience, and was obliged to hear the Scripture read; surely the meanest unobnoxious Laic, was in as advantageous circumstances, and might not only be trusted with the reading of those sacred Books, but might claim them as his birthright.  
10. I may justly, over and above what has been hitherto alleged, impute to the Governors of the same Church, and their withholding from the Laity the holy Scripture; the many dangerous errors, gross ignorances', and scandalous immoralities which have prevailed among them both. It is no new method of divine vengeance, that there should be like people like Priest, Hos. 4.9. and that the Idol shepherd who led his flock into the ditch, should fall therein himself, Mat. 15.14. And as the Prophet Zachary describes it, c. 11.17. The sword shall be upon his arm, and upon his right eye: his arm shall be clean dried up, and his right eye shall be utterly darkened.  
11. BUT no consequence can be more obviously deducible from that practice, than that men should justify the withholding of the Scripture, by lessening its credit, and depreciating its worth: which has occasioned those reproaches which by the writers of the Church of Rome, of best note, have been cast upon it. As that it was a Nose of wax, a leaden rule, a deaf and useless deputy to God in the office of a Judge; of less authority than the Roman Church, and of no more credit than Esop's Fables, but for the testimony of the said Church, that they contain things apt to raise laughter or indignation, that the Latin Translation in the Complutensian Bible is placed between the Hebrew Text, and the Septuagint Version, as our Saviour was at his Crucifixion between two thiefs, and that the vulgar Edition is of such authority that the Originals ought to be mended by it, rather than it should be mended from them: which are the compliments of Cardinal Bellarmin, Hosius, Eckius, Perron, Ximenes, Coqueus, and others of that Communion: words to be answered by a Thunderbolt, and fitter for the mouth of a Celsus or a Porphyry, then of the pious sons, and zealous Champions of the Church of Christ.  
12. 'tIS to be expected that the Romanists should now wipe their mouths, and plead not guilty; telling us that they permit the Scripture to the Laity in their mother Tongue: And to that purpose the Fathers of Rheims and Douai have published an English Bible for those of their communion. I shall therefore give a short and plain account of the whole affair as really it stands, and then on God's name let the Romanists make the best of their Apology.  
13. THE fourth rule of the Index of prohibited Books composed upon the command and auspice of the Council of Trent, and published by the authority of Pius the fourth, Sixtus the fifth, and Clement the eighth, runs thus; Since 'tis manifest by experience, that if the holy Bible be suffered promiscuously in the vulgar Tongue, such is the temerity of men, that greater detriment than advantage will thence arise; in this matter let the judgement of the Bishop or Inquisitor be stood to: that with the advice of the Curate or Confessor, they may give leave for the reading of the Bible in the vulgar Tongue, translated by Catholics, to such as they know will not receive damage, but increase of Faith and Piety thereby. Which faculty they shall have in writing; and whosoever without such faculty shall presume to have or to read the Bible, he shall not till he have delivered it up, receive absolution of his sins. Now (to pass over the iniquity of obliging men to ask leave to do that which God Almighty commands) when 'tis considered how few of the Laity can make means to the Bishop or Inquisitor, or convince them, or the Curate or Confessor, that they are such who will not receive damage, but increase of Faith and Piety by the reading of the Scripture; and also have interest to prevail with them for their favour herein: and after all can and will be at the charge of taking out the faculty, which is so penally required: 'tis easy to guests what thin numbers of the Laity are likely, or indeed capable of reaping benefit by this Indulgence pretended to be allowed them.  
14. BUT, besides all this, what shall we say, if the power itself of giving Licences be a mere show, and really signifies just nothing? In the observation subjoined to this fourth rule it is declared, that the Impression and Edition thereof gives no new faculty to Bishops, or Inquisitors, or Superïors of regulars to grant Licences of buying, reading, or retaining Bibles published in a vulgar Tongue; since hitherto by the command and practice of the holy Roman and universal Inquisition, the power of giving such faculties, to read or retain vulgar Bibles, or any parts of Scripture of the Old or New Testament, in any vulgar Tongue; or also summaries, or historical compendiums of the said Bibles or Books of Scripture, in whatsoever Tongue they are written, has been taken away. And sure if a Layman cannot read the Bible without a faculty, and it is not in any one's power to grant it; 'twill evidently follow that he cannot read it: And so the pretence of giving liberty, owns the shame of openly refusing it, but has no other effect or consequence. And if any Romanist among us, or in any other Protestant Country enjoies any liberty herein, 'tis merely by connivance, and owed to a fear least the Votary would be lost, and take the Bible where it was without difficulty to be had, if strictness should be used. And should Popery, which God forbid, become paramount; the Translations of the Scripture into our Mother Tongues, would be no more endured here, than they are in Spain: and they who have formerly been wary in communicating the Scriptures; remembering how thereby their errors have been detected, would upon a revolution effectually provide for the future, and be sure to keep their people in an Egyptian darkness, that might itself be felt, but that allowed the notices of no other object. They would not be content with that composition of the Ammonite, to thrust out all the right eyes of those that submitted to them, 1 Sam. 11.2. but would put out both; as the Philistines did to Samson, that they might make their miserable captives for ever grind in their Mill, Jud. 16.21.  
15. BUT this heaviest of judgements will never fall upon the reformed Churches, till by their vicious practice and contemt of the divine Law, they have deserted their profession; and made themselves utterly unworthy of the blessings they enjoy, and the light of that Gospel which with noonday brightness has shined among them. Upon which account, I suppose it may not be impertinent in the next place to subjoin some plain directions, and cautionary advices, concerning the use of these sacred Books.   

SECT. VIII. Necessary cautions to be used in the reading of the holy Scriptures.  
IT is a common observation, that the most generous and sprightly Medicines; are the most unsafe, if not applied with due care and regimen: And the remark holds as well in spiritual as corporal remedies. The Apostle asserts it upon his own experience, that the doctrine of the Gospel, which was to some the savour of life unto life, was to others the savour of death, 2 Cor. 2.15. And the same effect that the oral Word had then, the written Word may have now; not that either the one or the other have any thing in them that is of itself mortiferous, but becomes so by the ill disposition of the persons who so pervert it. It is therefore well worth our inquiry, what qualifications on our part are necessary to make the Word be to us what it is in itself, the power of God unto salvation, Rom. 1.16. Of these some are previous before our reading, some are concomitant with it, and some are subsequent and follow after it.  
2. OF those that go before, sincerity is a most essential requisite: by sincerity, I mean an upright intention, by which we direct our reading to that proper end for which the holy Scriptures were designed; viz. the knowing Gods will in order to the practising it. This honest simplicity of heart is that which Christ represents by the good ground, where alone it was that the seed could fructify, Mat. 13.8. And he that brings not this with him, brings only the shadow of a Disciple. The word of God, is indeed, sharper than a two-edged sword, Heb. 4.12. but what impression can a sword make on a body of air; which still slips from, and eludes its thrusts? And as little can all the practical discourses of holy Writ make on him, who brings only his speculative faculties with him, and leaves his will and affections behind him; which are the only proper subjects for it to work on.  
3. TO this we may probably impute that strange inefficaciousness we see of the Word. Alas, men rarely apply it to the right place: our most inveterat diseases lie in our morals; and we suffer the Medicine to reach no farther than our intellects. As if he that had an ulcer in his bowels should apply all his balsams and sanatives only to his head. 'Tis true, the holy Scriptures are the tresuries of divine Wisdom; the Oracles to which we should resort for saving knowledge: but they are also the rule and guide of holy Life: and he that covets to know Gods will for any purpose but to practise it, is only studious to entitle himself to the greater number of stripes, Luk. 12.47.  
4. NAY farther, he that affects only the bare knowledge, is oft disappointed even of that. The Scripture, like the Pillar of fire and cloud, enlightens the Israelites, those who sincerely resign themselves to its guidance; but it darkens and confounds the Egyptians, Ex. 14.20. And 'tis frequently seen, that those who read only to become knowing, are tolled on by their curiosity into the more abstruse and mysterious parts of Scripture, where they entangle themselves in inextricable mazes and confusions; and instead of acquiring a more superlative knowledge, lose those easy and common notions which lie obvious to every plain well meaning Reader. I fear this Age affords too many, and too frequent instances of this; in men who have lost God in the midst of his Word, and studied Scripture till they have renounced its Author.  
5. AND sure this infatuation is very just, and no more than God himself has warned us of, who takes the wise in their own craftiness, Job. 5.12. but appropriates his secrets only to them that fear him, and has promised to teach the meek his way, Psal. 25.9.14. And this was the method Christ observed in his preaching; unveiling those truths to his Disciples, which to the Scribes and Pharisees, his inquisitive, yet refractory hearers, he wrapped up in parables: not that he disliked their desire of knowledge, but their want of sincerity: which is so fatal a defect as blasts our pursuits, though of things in themselves never so excellent. This we find exemplified in Simon Magus, Acts 8. who though he coveted a thing in itself very desirable, the power of conferring the holy Ghost, yet desiring it not only upon undue conditions, but for sinister ends, he not only missed of that, but was (after all his convincement by the Apostles miracles, and the engagement of his Baptism) immersed in the gall of bitterness; and at last advanced to that height of blasphemy, as to set up himself for a God; so becoming a lasting memento, how unsafe it is to prevaricate in holy things.  
6. BUT as there is a sincerity of the Will in order to practice, so there is also a sincerity of the understanding in order to belief; and this is also no less requisite to the profitable reading of Scripture. I mean by this, that we come with a preparation of mind, to embrace indifferently, whatever God there reveles as the object of our Faith: that we bring our own opinions, not as the clue by which to unfold Scripture, but to be tried and regulated by it. The want of this has been of very pernicious consequence in matters both of Faith and speculation. Men are commonly prepossessed strongly with their own notions, and their errand to Scripture is not to lend them light to judge of them, but aids to back and defend them.  
7. OF this there is no Book of controversy that does not give notorious proof. The Socinian can easily overlook the beginning of Saint John, that says, The Word was God, Jo. 1.1. and all those other places which plainly assert the Deity of our Saviour; if he can but divert to that other more agreeable Text, that the Father is greater than I Among the Romanists, Peter being said to be first among the Apostles, Mat. 10.2, and that on that Rock Christ would build his Church, Mat. 16.18. carries away all attention from those other places where Saint Paul says he was not behind the very chiefest of the Apostles, 2 Cor. 11.5. that upon him lay the care of all the Churches, 2 Cor. 11.28. and that the Church was not built upon the foundation of some one, but all the twelve Apostles, Revel. 21.14. So it fares in the business of the Eucharist: This is my body, Mat. 26.26. carries it away clear for Transubstantiation, when our Saviors calling that which he drunk the fruit of the vine, Mat. 26.29. and then Saint Paul's naming the Elements in the Lord's Supper several times over Bread and Wine; The Bread that we break, is it not the Communion of the Body of Christ: the Cup that we bless, is it not the Communion, etc. 1 Cor. 10.16. And again, He that eats this Bread, and drinks this Cup unworthily, etc. 1 Cor. 11.29. can make no appearance of an Argument.  
8. THUS men once engaged ransac for Texts that carry some correspondency to the opinions they have imbibed; and those how do they rack and screw to bring to a perfect conformity; and improve every little probability into a demonstration? On the other side, the contrary Texts they look on as enemies, and consider them no farther than to provide fences and guards against them: So they bring Texts not into the scales to weigh, but into the field to skirmish, as Partisans and Auxiliaries of such or such opinions.  
9 BY this force of prepossession it is, that that sacred Rule, which is the measure and standard of all rectitude, is itself bowed and distorted to countenance and abet the most contrary tenets: and like a variable picture, represents differing shapes according to the light in which you view it. And sure we cannot do it a worse office then to represent it thus dissonant to itself. Yet thus it must still be till men come unbiast to the reading of it. And certainly there is all the reason in the world they should do so: the ultimate end of our faith is but the salvation of our souls, 1 Pet. 1.9. and we may be sure the Scripture can best direct us what Faith it is which will lead us to that end.  
10. WHY should we not then have the same indifference which a traveller hath, whether his way lie on this hand or that; so as it be the direct road to his journey's end? For although it be infinitely material that I embrace right principles, yet 'tis not so that this should be right rather than the other: and our wishes that it should be so, proceed only from our prepossessions and fondness of our own conceptions, than which nothing is more apt to intercept the clear view of truth. It therefore nearly concerns us to deposit them, and to give up ourselves without reserve to the guidance of God's Word, and give it equal credit when it thwarts, as when it complies with our own notions.  
11. WITHOUT this, though we may call Scripture the rule of Faith, and judge of controversies; yet 'tis manifest we make it not so, but reserve still the last appeal to our own prejudicated fancies: and then no wonder, though we fall under the same occoecation which our Saviour upbraids to the Jews, that seeing we see not, neither do we understand, Mat. 13.14. For he that will not be saved God's way, will hardly be so by his own. He that resolves not impartially to embrace all the Scriptures dictates, comes to them as unsincerely, as the remnant of the Jews did to Jeremiah to inquire of the Lord for them, which he no sooner had done, but they protest against his message, Jer. 42.20. and may expect as fatal an event.  
12. BUT there are a set of men who deal yet more insincerely with the Word; that read it insiduously, on purpose to collect matter of objection and cavil: that with a malicious diligence compare Texts in hope to find contradictions; and read attentively, but to no other end then to remark incoherences and defects in the stile: which when they think they have started, they have their design; and never will use a quarter of the same diligence in considering how they may be solved, or consulting with those who may assist them in it. For I think I may appeal to the generality of those who have raised the loudest clamours against the Scripture, whether they have endeavoured to render themselves competent judges of it by enquiring into the Originals; or informing themselves of those local Customs, peculiar Idioms, and many other circumstances, by which obscure Texts are to be cleared. And though I do not affirm it necessary to salvation that every man should do this; yet I may affirm it necessary to him that will pretend to judge of the Bible: and he that without this condems it, does it as manifest injury, as a Judge that should pass sentence only upon the Indictment, without hearing the defence.  
13. AND certainly there cannot be any thing more unmanly and disingenovos, then for men to inveigh and condemn before they inquire and examine. Yet this is the thing upon which so many value themselves, assuming to be men of reason, for that for which the Scripture pronounces them brute beasts, viz. the speaking evil of those things they understand not, 2 Pet. 2.12. Would men use due diligence, no doubt many of those seeming contradictions would be reconciled, and the obscurities cleared: and if any should after all remain, he might find twenty things fitter to charge it on, then want of verity or discourse in the inspired writers.  
14. ALAS what human writing is there of near that Antiquity, wherein there are not many passages unintelligible? And indeed, unless modern times knew all those national customs, obsolete Laws, particular Rites and Ceremonies, Phrases and proverbial Sayings, to which such ancient Books refer, 'tis impossible but some passages must still remain obscure. Yet in these we ordinarily have so much candour, as to impute their unintelligibleness to our own ignorance of those things which should clear them, the improprieties of stile, to the variation that times make in dialects, or to the errors of Scribes, and do not presently exclaim against the Authors as false or impertinent, or discard the whole Book for some such passages.  
15. AND sure what allowances we make to other Books, may with more reason be made to the Bible; which having been writ so many Ages since, passed thro' infinite variety of hands, and (which is above all) having been the object of the Devils, and wicked men's malice, lies under greater disadvantages than any human composure: And doubtless men would be as equitable to that as they are to others, were it not that they more wish to have that false or irrational than any other Book. The plain parts of it, the precepts and threatenings speak clearer than they desire, gall and fret them; and therefore they will revenge themselves upon the obscurer: and seem angry that there are some things they understand not, when indeed their real displeasure is at those they do.  
16. A second qualification preparatory to reading the Scripture is reverence. When we take the Bible in our hands, we should do it with other sentiments and apprehensions then when we take a common Book; considering that it is the word of God, the instrument of our salvation; or upon our abuse of it, a promoter of our ruin.  
17. AND sure this if duly apprehended, cannot but strike us with a reverential awe, make us to say with Jacob, Gen. 28.17. surely God is in this place; control all trifling fancies, and make us read, not for custom or divertisement, but with those solemn and holy intentions which become the dignity of its Author. Accordingly we find holy men have in all Ages been affected with it; and some to the inward reverence of the mind, have joined the outward of the body also, and never read it but upon their knees: an example that may both instruct and reproach our profaneness; who commonly read by chance, and at a venture: If a Bible happen in our way, we take it up as we would do a Romance, or Playbook; only herein we differ, that we dismiss it much sooner, and retain less of its impressions.  
18. IT was a Law of Numa, that no man should meddle with divine things, or worship the Gods, in passing, or by accident, but make it a set and solemn business. And every one knows with how great ceremony and solemnity the heathen Oracles were consulted. How great a shame is it then for Christians to defalk that reverence from the true God, which heathens allowed their false ones?  
19 NOW this proceeds sometimes from the want of that habitual reverence we should always have to it as God's word, and sometimes from want of actual exciting it, when we go to read: for if the habit lie only dormant in us, and be not awaked by actual consideration, it avails us as little in our reading, as the habitual strength of a man does towards labour, when he will not exert it for that end.  
20. WE ought therefore, as to make it our deliberate choice to read God's word; so when we do it, to stir up ourselves to those solemn apprehensions of its dignity and authority, as may render us malleable, and apt to receive its impressions: for where there is no reverence, 'tis not to be expected there should be any genuine or lasting obedience.  
21. SAINT Austin in his Tract to Honoratus, of the advantage of believing, makes the first requisite to the knowledge of the Scriptures to be the love of them. Believe me, says he, every thing in the Scripture is sublime and divine, its truth and doctrine are most accommodate to the refreshment, and building up of our minds: and in all respects so ordered, that every one may draw thence what is sufficient for him; provided he approach it with devotion, piety, and religion. The proof of this may require much reasoning and discourse. But this I am first to persuade, that you do not hate the Authors, and then that you love them. Had we an ill opinion of Virgil, nay, if upon the account of the reputation he has gained with our Predecessors, we did not greatly love before we understood him; we should never patiently go thro' all the difficult questions Grammarians raise about him. Many employ themselves in commenting upon him; we esteem him most, whose exposition most commends the Book, and shows that the Author, not only was free from error, but did excellently well where he is not understood. And if such an account happen not to be given, we impute it rather to the Interpreter then the Poet.  
22. THUS the good Father; whose words I have transcribed at large, as being remarkable to the present purpose; he also shows that the mind of no Author is to be learned from one averse to his doctrine: as that 'tis vain to inquire of Aristotle's Books from one of a different Sect: Or of Archimedes from Epicurus: the discourse will be as displeasing as the speaker; and that shall be esteemed absurd, which comes from one that is envied or despised.  
23. A third preparative to our reading should be prayer. The Scripture as it was dictated at first by the holy Spirit, so must still owe its effects and influence to its cooperation. The things of God, the Apostle tells us, are spiritually discerned, 1 Cor. 2.14. And though the natural man may well enough apprehend the letter, and grammatical sense of the Word; yet its power and energy, that insinuative persuasive force whereby it works on hearts, is peculiar to the spirit; and therefore without his aids, the Scripture whilst it lies open before our eyes, may still be as a Book that is sealed, Esai. 29.11. be as ineffective as if the characters were illegible.  
24. BESIDES our Saviour tells us the devil is still busy to steal away the seed as soon as it is sown, Mat. 13.17. And unless we have some better guard than our own vigilance, he is sure enough to prosper in his attemt. Let it therefore be our care to invoke the divine Aid; and when ever we take the Bible into our hands, to dart up at least a hearty ejaculation, that we may find its effects in our hearts. Let us say with holy David, open thou mine eyes O Lord, that I may see the wondrous things of thy Law. Blessed art thou O Lord, O teach me thy statutes, Ps. 119. Nay indeed 'twil be fit matter of a daily solemn devotion, as our Church has made it an annual in the Collect on the second Sunday in Advent: a prayer so apt and fully expressive of what we should desire in this particular, that if we transcribe not only the example, but the very words, I know not how we can form that part of our devotion more advantageously.  
25. IN the second place we are to consider what is required of us at the time of reading the Scripture; which consists principally in two things. The first of these is attention, which is so indispensably requisite, that without it all Books are alike, and all equally insignificant: for he that adverts not to the sense of what he reads, the wisest discourses signify no more to him, than the most exquisite music does to a man perfectly deaf. The letters and syllables of the Bible are no more sacred than those of another Book; 'tis the sense and meaning only that is divinely inspired: and he that considers only the former, may as well entertain himself with a spellingbook.  
26. WE must therefore keep our minds fixed and attended to what we read: 'tis a folly and lightness not to do so in human Authors; but 'tis a sin and danger not to do so in this divine Book. We know there can scarce be a greater instance of contemt and disvalue, then to hear a man speak, and not at all mind what he says: yet this vilest affront do all those put upon God, who hear or read his Word, and give it no attention. Yet I fear the practice is not more impious than it is frequent: for there are many that read the Bible, who if at the end of each Chapter they should be called to account, I doubt they could produce very slender collections: and truly 'tis a sad consideration, that that sacred Book is read most attentively by those, who read it as some preach the Gospel, Phil. 1.15. out of envy and strife. How curiously do men inspect, nay ransac and embowel a Text to find a pretence for cavil and objection, whilst men who profess to look there for life and salvation, read with such a retchless heedlessness, as if it could tell them nothing they were concerned in: and to such 'tis no wonder if their reading bring no advantage, God is not in this sense found of those that seek him not, Esai. 65.1. 'tis Satan's part to serve himself of the bare words and characters of holy Writ, for charms and amulets: the virtue God has put there consists in the sense and meaning, and can never be drawn out by drowsy inadverting Readers.  
27. THIS unattentiveness forestalls all possibility of good. How shall that convince the understanding, or persuade the affections, which does not so much as enter the imagination. So that in this case the seed seems more cast away then in any of those instances the parable gives, Mat. 13. In those it still fell upon the soil, but in this it never reaches that; but is scattered and dissipated, as with a mighty wind, by those thoughts which have prepossessed the mind. Let no man therefore take this sacred Book into his hand, till he have turned out all distracting fancies, and have his faculties free and vacant for those better objects which will there present themselves. And when he has so disposed himself for attention, then let him contrive to improve that attention to the best advantage.  
28. TO which purpose it may be very conducive to put it into some order and method. As for instance, when he reads the doctrinal part of Scripture, let him first and principally advert to those plain Texts which contain the necessary points of Faith: that he may not owe his Creed only to his education, the institution of his Parents or Tutors; but may know the true foundation on which it is bottomed, viz. the word of God, and may thence be able to justify his Faith: and as Saint Peter exhorts, be ready to give an answer to every man that asks him a reason of the hope that is in him, 1 Pet. 3.15. For want of this it is, that Religion sits so loose upon men, that every wind of doctrine blows them into distinct and various forms; till at last their Christianity itself vapours away and disappears.  
29. BUT let men be careful thus to secure the foundation, and then 'twill be commendable in them (who are capable of it) to aspire to higher degrees of speculation: yet even in these it will be their safest course chiefly to pursue such as have the most immediate influence on practice, and be more industrious to make observations of that sort, then curious and critical remarks, or bold conjectures upon those mysteries on which God has spread a veil.  
30. BUT besides a man's own particular collections, it will be prudence in him to advantage himself of those of others, and to consult the learned'st and best expositors; and that not only upon a present emergency, when he is to dispute a point, (as most do) but in the constant course of his reading, wherein he will most sedatly, and dispassionatly judge of the notions they offer.  
31. AS to the choice of the portions of Scripture to be read in course, though I shall not condemn that of reading the whole Bible in order, yet 'tis apparent that some parts of it (as that of the Levitical Law) are not so aptly accommodated to our present state, as others are; and consequently not so edificatory to us: and therefore I cannot see why any man should oblige himself to an equal frequency in reading them. And to this our Church seems to give her suffrage; by excluding such out of her public Lessons. And if we govern our private reading by her mesures, it will well express our deference to her judgement; who has selected some parts of Scripture, not that she would keep her children in ignorance of any, but because they tend most immediately to practice.  
32. NEITHER will the daily reading the Scripture in the rubrics order, hinder any man from acquainting himself with the rest. For he may take in the other parts as supernumeraries to his constant task, and read them as his leisure and inclination shall promt. So that all the hurt that can accrue to him by this method, is the being invited to read sometimes extraordinary proportions.  
33. IF it be objected, that to those who daily hear the Church Service, 'twill be a kind of tautology, first to read those Lessons in private, which soon after they shall hear read publicly, I answer that whatever men may please to call it, 'twill really be an advantage: For he that shall read a chapter by himself with due consideration, and consulting of good Paraphrasts, will have dived so far into the sense of it, that he will much better comprehend it when he hears it read: as on the other side, the hearing it read so immediately after will serve to confirm and rivet the sense in his mind. The one is as the cunning, the other the repeating the Lesson; which every Schole-boy can tell us is best done at the nearest distance to each other. But I shall not contend for this, or any particular method; let the Scriptures be read in proportion to every man's leisure and capacity, and read with attention; and we need not be scrupulous about circumstances, when the main duty is secured.  
34. BUT as in the doctrinal, so in the preceptive part, there is a caution to be used in our attention. For we are to distinguish between those temporary precepts that were adapted to particular times and occasions, and such as are of perpetual obligation. He that does not this may bring himself under the Jewish Law, or believe a necessity of selling all and giving it to the poor because 'twas Christ's command to the rich man; Mat. 19 or incur other considerable mischiefs.  
35. THUS frequently commands are put in comprehensive indefinite words, but concern only the Generality to whom the Law is written; and not those who are entrusted with the vindication of their contemt. Accordingly 'tis said, thou shalt not kill, Mark. 10.19. which concerns the private person; but extends not to the Magistrate in the execution of his office, who is a revenger appointed by God, and bears not the sword in vain, Rom. 13.4. So the injunction not to swear at all, Mat. 5.34 refers to the common transactions of life; but not those solemn occasions where an oath is to give glory to God, and is the end of all strife, Heb. 6.16. Yet these mistakes at this day prevail with Anabaptists and Quakers, and bottom their denial of the Magistrates power to protect his Subjects by war; and to determine differences in Peace, by the oath of witnesses in judicial proceedings.  
36. THERE is another distinction we are to attend to; and that is between absolute and primary commands, and secundary ones: the former we are to set a special remark upon, as those upon whose observance or violation our eternal life or death inseparably depends. And therefore our first and most solicitous care must be concerning them. I mention this, not to divert any from aspiring to the highest degrees of perfection: but to reprove that preposterous course many take, who lay the greatest weight upon those things on which God lays the least; and have more zeal for oblique intimations, then for express downright commands; nay think by the one to commute for the contemt of the other. For example, fasting is recommended to us in Scripture, but in a far lower key then moral duties: rather as an expedient and help to virtue, then as properly a virtue itself. And yet we may see men scrupulous in that, who startle not at injustice, and oppression (that clamorous sin that cries to heaven) who pretend to mortify their appetites by denying it its proper food, or being luxurious in one sort of it; and yet glut their avarice, eat up the poor, and devour widows houses, Mat. 23.  
37. TO such as these 'twould be good advice to fix their attention on the absolute commands, to study moral honesty, and the essentials of Christianity; to make a good progress there, and do what God indispensably requires: and then it may be seasonable to think of voluntary oblations: but till then they are so far from homage, that they are the most reproachful flattery; an attemt to bribe God against himself; and a sacrilege, like that of Dionysius; who took away Apollo's golden robe, and gave him a stuff one.  
38. THE second thing requisite in our reading is application: this is the proper end of our attention: and without this we may be very busy to very little purpose. The most laborious attention without it, puts us but in the condition of those poor slaves that labour in the mines: who with infinite toil dig that ore of which they shall never partake. If therefore we will appropriate that rich treasure, we must apply, and so make it our own.  
39 LET us then at every period of holy Writ, reflect and look on ourselves as the persons spoke to. When we find Philip giving baptism to the Eunuch upon this condition that he believe with all his heart, Act. 8. let us consider that unless we do so; our baptism (like a thing surreptitiously obtained) conveis no title to us; will avail us nothing.  
40. WHEN we read our Saviour's denunciation to the Jews, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish; Lu. 13.5. we are to look on it as if addressed immediately to ourselves; and conclude as great a necessity of our repentance. In those black catalogues of crimes which the Apostle mentions, 1 Cor. 6.10. and Gal. 5.19, 20, 21. as excluding from the Kingdom of heaven, we are to behold our own guilts arraigned, and to resolve that the same crimes will as certainly shut heaven gates against us, as those to whom those Epistles were immediately directed. In all the precepts of good life, and Christian virtue, we are to think ourselves as nearly and particularly concerned, as if we had been Christ's Auditors on the Mount. So proportionably in all the threats and promises we are either to tremble or hope, according as we find ourselves adhere to those sins or virtues to which they are affixed.  
41. THIS close application would render what we read operative and effective, which without it will be useless and insignificant. We may see an instance of it in David; who was not at all convinced of his own guilt by nathan's parable (though the most apposite that was imaginable) till he roundly applied it, saying, thou art the man: 2 Sam. 12. And unless we treat ourselves at the same rate, the Scripture may fill our heads with high notions, nay with many speculative truths, which yet amounts to no more than the Devil's theology, Ja. 2.19. and will as little advantage us.  
42. IT now remains that we speak of what we are to do after our reading; which may be summed up in two words: Recollect and practice. Our memories are very frail as to things of this nature. And therefore we ought to impress them as deep as we can, by reflecting on what we have read. It is an observation out of the Levitical Law, that those beasts only were clean, and fit for sacrifice, that chewed the cud, Leu. 11.4. And though the ceremony were Jewish, the moral is Christian, and admonishes us how we should revolve and ruminate on spiritual instructions. Without this what we hear or read slips insensibly from us, and like letters writ in chalk, is wiped out by the next succeeding thought: but recollection engraves and indents the characters in the mind. And he that would duly use it, would find other manner of impressions; more affective and more lasting, then bare reading will leave.  
43. WE find it thus in all Sciences: he that only reads over the rules, and lays aside the thoughts of them together with his Book, will make but a slow advance; whilst he that plods and studies upon them, repetes and reinforces them upon his mind, soon arrives to an eminency. By this it was that David attained to that perfection in God's Law as to outstrip his teachers, and understand more than the Ancients, Psal. 119.99, 100 because it was his meditation as himself tell us, ver. 97.99.  
44. LET us therefore pursue the same method; and when we have read a portion of Scripture, let us recollect what observable things we have there met with: what exhortations to virtue, or determents from vice; what promises to obedience, or menaces for the contrary: what examples of God's vengeance against such or such sins, or what instances of his blessing upon duties. If we do this daily, we cannot but amass together a great stock of Scripture documents, which will be ready for us to produce upon every occasion. Satan can assault us no where, but we shall be provided of a guard, a Scriptum est; which we see was the sole armour the captain of our salvation used in his encounter with him, Mat. 4. ver. 4.7. and 10. and will be as successful to us, if we will duly manage it.  
45. THE last thing required as consequent to our reading, is practice. This is the ultimate end, to which all the foregoing qualifications are directed. And if we fail here, the most assiduous diligence in all the former will be but lost labour. Let us mean never so well, attend never so close, recollect never so exactly; if after all we do not practice, all the rest will serve but to enhance our guilt. Christianity is an active Science, and the Bible was given us not merely for a theme of speculation, but for a rule of life.  
46. And alas, what will it avail us that our opinions are right, if our manners be crooked? When the Scripture has showed us what God requires of us, nay, has evinced to us the reasonableness of the injunctions, the great agreeableness which they have to the excellency of our nature: and has backed this with the assurance that in keeping of them there shall be a great reward, Ps. 19.11. if in the midst of such importunate invitations to life we will choose death; we are indeed worthy, as the wise man speaks, to take part with it, Wis. 1.16. our crimes are hereby increased to a monstrous bulk, and also deprived of that veil and shelter which darkness and ignorance would have given them. And a vicious Christian may have cause at the last day to wish that he had studied the Alcoran rather than the Bible. His sensualities might then have pleaded, that they were but the anticipating his Paradise, taking up that before hand, which his Religion proposed to him as his summum bonum, his final and highest aim. But with what confusion must a Christian then appear, whose institution obliges him to mortify the flesh: and yet has made it the business of his life, not only to satisfy, but even to enrage, and inflame its appetites? that has set up a counter-discipline to that of the Gospel he professes; and when that requires austerities and self-denials, to reduce corrupt nature to a tameness and subjection; has not only pulled off the bridle, but used the spur; contrived Arts to debauch even corruption itself; and has forced his relucting nature upon studied and artificial lewdness? Such men may be thought to have read the Scripture with no other design but to be sure to run counter to it; that by informing themselves of Gods will, they may know the more exactly how to affront and contradict it.  
47. NAY, so it is, too many unto malice add contemt; are not content only sullenly to resist its Precepts, but despise and revile them also; arraign the wisdom of God, and pronounce the divine Laws to be weak and impertinent; lay their Scenes of ridiculous mirth in the Bible; rally in the sacred Dialect, and play the Buffoons with the most serious thing in the world. An impious licentiousness which is now grown to that height, that it is one of the wonders of Gods long-suffering, that there are not as many eminent instances of the vengeance, as there are of the guilt. I have formerly complained of it, and must still crave leave to do so. It is indeed so spreading an infection, that we can never be sufficiently armed against it. Some degrees of it have tainted many who have not utterly renounced their reverence for the Bible: there being those who in their solemn moods own it as God's word, and profess they must finally stand or fall by its verdict; who yet in their jocular humours make light and irreverent applications of its phrases and sentences, furnish out their little jests in its attire, and use it as if they thought it good for nothing else.  
48. AND certainly this abuse in men that own the Bible, is infinitely more monstrous then in those who defy it: the later look on it as a common thing, and use it as such: but for those who confess it sacred, thus to prostitute it, is a flat contradiction as much against the rules of Discourse as Religion: 'tis to offer the same abuse to Christ in his Word, which the rude soldiers did to his person; to bow the knee before it, and yet expose it as an object of scorn and laughter. But sure there cannot be two things more inconsistent, than the avowing it to be dictated by God in order to the most important concern of man, and yet debase it to the vilest purposes; make it the drudge and hackney to our sportful humours, and bring it out as the Philistims did Samson, only to make us merry, Jud. 16.25.  
49. INDEED one would wonder how that should become a proper instrument for that purpose, that those doctrines of righteousness, temperance and judgement to come (every where scattered thro' that Book) which set heathen Felix a trembling, should set christian's a laughing: and yet should men cite the same things and phrases out of another Author, there would be no jest in it. It seems therefore that the spirit and essence of this sort of wit lies in the profaneness. How absurd is it then for men that do not utterly abjure Religion, to affect this impious sort of raillery, which has nothing but daring wickedness to recommend it? For certainly, of all the ways of discourse that ever pretended to wit, this has the least claim to it.  
50. WHAT strength of reason, or height of fancy is there, in repeating of phrases and fragments of Books, when what they would say, they might much more properly express in their own words? In any other instance but this of the Bible, it would pass rather for a defect then an excess of wit. But that which I suppose renders it so taking, is, that it is the cheapest expedient for men to arrive to that reputation. Men that cannot go to the cost of any thing that is truly ingenious, can by this means immediately commence wits; if they can but charge their memories with half a dozen Texts, they need no other furniture for the trade: these mangled and transposed, will be ready at all turns, and render them applauded by those who have no other measure of wit, but its opposition to Piety. But would God, men would look a little before them, and consider what the final reckoning will be for such divertisements; and if the whole world be an unequal exchange for a soul, what a miserable Merchant is he that barters his for a bald insipid jest? such as a sober man would avoid were there no sin in it.  
51. I know men are apt to flatter themselves, that these lighter frolics will pass for nothing, so long as they do not seriously and maliciously oppose God's word: but I fear they will find God in earnest, though they be in jest. He that has magnified his Word above all things, Psal. 138.2. cannot brook that we should make it vile and cheap, play and dally with it. And if it were a capital crime to convert any of the perfume of the Sanctuary to common use, Ex. 30.32. can we think God can be pleased to see his more sacred Word, the theme of our giddy mirth, and have his own words echoed to him in profane drollery?  
52. BUT besides 'tis to be considered that this wanton liberty is a step to the more solemn and deliberate contemt of God's word: custom does strangely prescribe to us; and he that a while has used any thing irreverently, will at last bring his practice into argument, and conclude that there is no reverence due to it. God knows we are naturally too apt to slight and easy apprehensions of sacred things; and had need to use all Arts and Instruments to impress an awe upon our minds.  
53. IT will sure then be very unsafe for us to trifle with them, and by so undue a familiarity draw on that contemt which we should make it our care to avoid. The wise man says, he that contemns small things, shall fall by little and little, Eccl. 19.1. And though no degree of irreverence towards God or his Word, can be called a small thing absolutely considered, yet comparatively with the more exorbitant degrees it may: and yet that smaller is the seed and parent of the greatest. It is so in all sins; the kingdom of Satan, like that of God, may be compared to a grain of mustard seed, Mat. 13.31. which though little in itself, is mighty in its increase.  
54. NO man ever yet began at the top of villainy, but the advance is still gradual from one degree to another; each commission smoothing and glibbing the way to the next. He that accustoms in his ordinary discourse, to use the sacred Name of God with as little sentiment and reverence, as he does that of his neighbour or servant; that makes it his common byword, and cries Lord and God upon every the lightest occasion of exclamation or wonder, this man has a very short step to the using it in oaths, and upon all frivolous occasions; and he that swears vainly, is at no great distance from swearing falsely. It is the same in this instance of the Scriptures: He that indulges his wit to rally with them, will soon come to think them such tame things that he may downright scorn them: And when he is arrived to that, than he must pick quarrels to justify it, till at last he arrive even to the height of enmity.  
55. LET every man therefore take heed of setting so much as one step in this fatal circle; guard himself against the first insinuation of this guilt: and when a jest offers itself as a temptation, let him balance that with a sober thought, and consider whether the jest can quit the cost of the profanation. Let him possess his mind with an habitual awe, take up the Bible with solemner thoughts, and other kind of apprehensions than any human Author: and if he habituate himself to this reverence, every clause and phrase of it that occurs to his mind, will be apt to excite him to devout ejaculations then vain laughter.  
56. IT is reported of our excellent Prince, King Edward the sixth; that when in his Council Chamber, a Paper that was called for happened to lie out of reach, and the Person concerned to produce it, took a Bible that lay by, and standing upon it reached down the Paper: the King observing what was done, ran himself to the place, and taking the Bible in his hands, kissed it, and laid it up again. Of this it were a very desirable moral, that Princes, and all persons in authority, would take care not to permit any to raise themselves by either a hypocritical or profane trampling upon holy things. But besides that, a more general application offers its self; that all men of what condition soever, should both themselves abstain from every action that has the appearance of a contemt of the holy Scripture; and also when they observe it in others, discountenance the insolence: and by their words and actions give Testimony of the veneration which they have for that holy Book, they see others so wretchedly despise.  
57 BUT above all let him who reads the Scripture seriously, set himself to the practice of it, and daily examine how he proceds in it: he that diligently does this, will not be much at leisure to sport with it: he will scarce meet with a Text which will not give him cause of reflection, and provide him work within his own breast: every duty enjoined will promt him to examine how he has performed; every sin forbid, will call him to recollect how guilty he has been, every pathetic strain of devotion will kindle his zeal, or at least upbraid his coldness: every heroic example will excite his emulation. In a word, every part of Scripture will, if duly applied, contribute to some good and excellent end. And when a thing is proper for such noble purposes, can it be the part of a wise man to apply it only to mean and trivial? Would any but an Idiot wast that Sovereign Liquor in the washing of his feet, which was given him to expel poison from his heart? And are not we guilty of the like folly when we apply God's word to serve only a ludicrous humour: and make ourselves merry with that which was designed for the most serious and most important purpose; the salvation of our souls. And indeed who ever takes any lower aim than that, and the virtues preparatory to it in his study of Scripture, extremely debases it.  
58. LET us therefore keep a steady eye upon that mark, and press towards it as the Apostle did; Phil. 3.14. walk by that rule the holy Scripture proposes; faithfully and diligently observe its precepts, that we may finally partake its promises. To this end continually pray we in the words of our holy mother the Church unto Almighty God, who has caused all holy Scripture to be written for our learning; that we may in such wise hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that by patience and comfort of his holy Word, we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting Life, which he has given in our Saviour Jesus Christ.    

THE CONTENTS.  
SECTION.  

Sect. 1. The several methods of Gods communicating the knowledge of himself. Pag. 1.  
Sect. 2. The divine Original, Endearments, and Authority of the Holy Scripture. p. 9  
Sect. 3. The Subject Matter treated of in the holy Scripture is excellent, as is also its end and design. p. 63.  
Sect. 4. The Custody of the holy Scripture is a privilege and right of the Christian Church, and every member of it, which cannot without impiety to God, and injustice unto it and them, be taken away or impeached. p. 123.  
Sect. 5. The Scripture has great propriety and fitness toward the attainment of its excellent end. p. 145.  
Sect. 6. The suffrage of the primitive Christian Church, concerning the propriety and fitness which the Scripture has, toward the attainment of its excellent end. p. 165.  
Sect. 7. Historical reflections upon the events which have happened in the Church, since the withdrawing of the holy Scripture. p. 180.  
Sect. 8. Necessary Cautions to be used in the reading of the holy Scripture. p. 193.   
FINIS.