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to be, from all requisites that may possibly be sought after, for the strengthening of such evidence, is of great force and efficacy. It is, I say, of great force and efficacy as to the end for which it is insisted on; that is, to satisfy men's rational inquiries; but as to a ground of faith, it hath the same insufficiency with all other arguments of the like kind. Though I should grant that the apostles and penmen of the Scripture were persons of the greatest honesty, integrity, faithfulness, holiness, that ever lived in the world as they really were; and that they wrote nothing, but what themselves had as good assurance of, as men, by their senses of seeing and hearing, are able to attain; yet such a knowledge and assurance is not a sufficient foundation for the faith of the church of God;-if they received not every word by inspiration, and that evidencing itself to us, otherwise than by the authority of their integrity, it can be no foundation for us to build our faith upon.

Before the committing of the Scriptures to writing, God had given the world an experiment, what keepers men were of this revelation by tradition; within some hundreds of years after the flood, all knowledge of him, through the craft of Satan, and the vanity of the minds of men, was so lost, that nothing, but as it were the creation of a new world, or the erection of a new church-state, by new revelations, could restore it. After that great trial, what can be farther pretended, on the behalf of tradition, I know not.

The sum of all is; the merciful good providence of God having, by various means-using therein, amongst other things, the ministry of men and

churches-preserved the writings of the Old and New Testament in the world; and by the same gracious disposal preserved them to us, they are received and submitted to by us, upon the grounds and evidences of their own divine original.

Upon the whole matter, then, I would know, whether, if the Scriptures should be brought to any man, where he could not possibly have it attested to be the word of God, by any authority of man or church, tradition or otherwise, he were bound to believe it or not? whether he should obey God in believing, or sin in rejecting it? Suppose he do but take it into consideration, do but give it the reading or hearing, seeing in every place it avers itself to be the word of God, he must of necessity either give credit to it, or disbelieve it ; to hang in suspense, which ariseth from the imperfect acting of the faculties of the soul, is in itself a weakness, and in this case being reckoned on the worst side, is interpretatively a rejection. If you say, it were the duty of such a one to believe it, you acknowledge in the Scripture itself a sufficient evidence of its own original authority; without which it can be no man's duty to believe it. If you say, it would not be his sin to reject it, to disbelieve all that it speaks in the name of God; then you say, God may truly and really speak to a man, (as he doth by the Scripture,) and yet that man not be bound to believe him. We deal not thus with one another.

To wind up then the plea insisted on, in the foregoing chapter, concerning the self-evidencing light and power of the Scripture, and to make way for some other considerations, that tend to the confirma

tion of their divine original, I shall close this discourse with two general considerations.

1. Then, laying aside these defective pleas, there seems to be a moral impossibility that the word of God should not manifest its own original and authority. There is no work of God but reveals its author. A curious artificer imparts that of form, shape, proportion, and comeliness, to the fruit of his invention, and work of his hands, that every one that looks upon it, must conclude, that it comes from skill and ability. A man in the delivery of his mind, in the writing of a book, will give it such an impression of reason, that though you cannot conclude that this or that man wrote it, yet you must conclude, that it was the product of a man, or rational creature; yea, some individual men of excellency in some skill, are instantly known by the effects of their skill. How easy is it for those who are conversant about ancient authors, to discover an author by the spirit and style of his writings. Now, certainly this is strange beyond all belief, that almost every agent should give an impress to its work, by which it may be appropriated to him, and the word of God only, wherein it was the design of the great and holy God, to give us a portraiture of his wisdom, holiness, and goodness, so far as we are capable of an acquaintance with him in this life, is not able to declare and evince its original. That God, who is the first and sovereign truth, infinitely separated and distinguished, on all accounts, from all creatures, should write a book, or, at least, immediately indite it, commanding us to receive it as his, under the penalty of his eternal displeasure, and

yet that book not make a sufficient discovery of itself to be his, and from him, is past all belief. Let men that live on things received by tradition from their fathers, who, perhaps, never had the sense of any real transaction between God and their souls, who scarcely ever perused the word seriously in their lives, nor brought their consciences to it, please themselves in their own imaginations; the sure anchor of a soul that would draw nigh to God, in and by his word, lies in its self-evidencing authority.

I suppose it will not be denied, but that it was the will of God, that those to whom his word should come, should own it and receive it as his; if not, it were no sin in those to reject it, to whom it doth so come; if it were, then, either he hath given those characters to it, and left upon it that impression of his majesty, by which it might be known to be his, or he hath not done so; and that either because he would not, or because he could not. To say the latter, is to make him more infirm than a man, or other worms of the earth. He that saith the former, must know, that it is incumbent on him to yield a satisfactory account, why God would not do so, or else he will be thought blasphemously to impute a want of that goodness and love of mankind to God, which he hath, in infinite grace, manifested to be in himself. That no man is able to assign any such reason, I shall firmly believe, until I find some attempting so to do; which, as yet, none have arrived at that height of impudence and wickedness

as to own.

2. How horrible is it to the thoughts of any

saint of God, that the Scripture should not have its authority from itself. Were it otherwise, the Scripture must stand to the mercy of man for the reputation of its divinity; nay, of its verity; for whence it hath its authority, thence it also hath its verity.

CHAPTER VI.

Consequential considerations for the confirmation of the divine authority of the Scripture.

As some may happily be kept to some kind of adherence to the Scriptures, by lower grounds, until they get footing in those that are more firm, I shall insist on two of that kind, which, to me, seem not only to persuade, and, in a great measure, to convince, but also to prevail irresistibly, on the understanding of unprejudiced men, to close with the divine truth of it.

The first of these is taken from the nature of the doctrine itself, contained in the Scripture, the second from the management of the whole design therein; the first is innate, the other of a more external and rational consideration.

For the first of them, there are two things to be considered in the doctrine of the Scripture, that are powerful, and, if I may so say, uncontrollably prevalent as to this purpose.

First, Its universal suitableness, upon its first clear discovery, to all the entanglements and perplexities of the souls of men, in reference to their relation to, and dependence upon God. If all m

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