to affirm that which any one but indifferently versed in the Scriptures knows to be false Or it may be and that is very likely he himself is very little acquainted with the Bible but borrows both his citations of Scriptures by halves and also his Answers to them that are commonly alledged by us from his deluding Masters Otherwise how were it possible that a diligent reader of Scripture should say mark his words It was far from the Ordinances of Moses that every private believer had license to peruse the Scriptures When nothing is more inculcated by God and Moses then that parents should learn and teach their children the Law bind it about their arms make Phylacteries of it and by all means possible derive unto posterity the Ordinances of God and the History of his Providence which are the subject of the Holy Scriptures If it be said that all this they might do without Book because once in seven years they heard the Law read we must then allow the Jews quicker apprehensions and more comprehensive and tenacious memories then we have in our generations But see the unpardonable ignorance or impudence of this cross-grained Querist who says the Law was to be read once onely in seven years Deut. 31. 10 11. Doth that precept which enjoyns the Law to be read in the Panegyris at the Feast of Tabernacles in the Sabbatical year include a Prohibition of the Jews to read the Bible by themselves and to meditate in the Law day and night as occasion serves which is a blessed imployment Psaal 1. 1 2. Would Moses deprive them of this happiness Or was that Statute broken by the Jews every Sabbath day as often as Moses was read in the Synagogues in every City as St. James tells us it was the Custome of old so to do Mark then the Sophistry of this illiterate impostor and his companions I say Illiterate because he says that passage of Moses and the story of Esdras Nehem. 8. 12 13. was all We that is Papists read in Scripture of the common Peoples knowing the written word Blessed be God that We Protestants may and do read more that assures us that the word of God did dwell plentifully among the Jews and ought to do so with all Christians without Bushels set over the Light as in the Church of Rome Yet we do not affirm that every Idiota or private servant of God could by his private study attain to the full meaning of every hard sentence None of us thinks this necessary or possible Yea we make a question at least whether any High Priest or Council under the Old or New Testament ever fully understood all the things hard to be understood or hard to be interpreted in the Law and Prophets or in the Evangelical and Apostolical writings It is enough as to my purpose and indeed for the safety of Gods people that the Faith and Duty of every one was written with a suâ—-beam and lay open to be read and understood by the common people with the help of a good Guide though he were below Infallibility And it was a grievous fault in the despisers of the riches of Gods Grace that God had written for them the great things of his Law and they were counted as a strang thing This Querist doth bewray his ignorance by another mistake of some consequence in his design to make the Levites and People dependent on the High Priest for the sense of Scripture He says Esdras the chief Priest interpreted the Law to the Levites and enabled them to expound it to the people Indeed Ezrah was a Priest and a perfect Scribe by whose industry and Gods special assistance the Books of Moses the Psalmes and Prophets were collected into one body of Oracles which was in trust committed to the custody of the Jews But not Ezrah but Jehoshuah was then High Priest who no doubt was diligent in the discharge of his sacred office whiles Ezrah was active in interpreting that is translating the Law written in the Hebrew Language which was well-nigh lost with the vulgar in their long captivity who were accustomed to the common speech of the Chaldeans their Lords and rendring it intelligible in their familiar tongue and also in expounding and applying the Law to their present use and in assisting the Levites that they might be well instructed to perform their office of teaching the people Now this work of Ezrah did much help but not hinder or obstruct the common people in their private study of the Law and the use of their own particular judgment was fairly consistent with the attendance on the publick Ministery which was then sincere and uncorrupted but was not so throughout the whole course of the Jewish Politie And for this reason nothing can be concluded from Ezrah's age and actions to strengthen the pretended Infallibility of the Jewish Priesthood for ever Now the Jews indeed wanted the beneficial Art of Printing and this defect made the Copies of the Law less frequent then the Bible is now adayes Yet such was the zeal and diligence of pious men in that Nation that the Law was not so rare a thing as this man would perswade you There was then no prohibition of the High Priest or Sanhedrim either to transcribe or to translate the Law and Prophets or to read them in their Original or translated no not in our Saviours Age when he sent his Auditors to the Scriptures to search for testimonies of him when indeed it had been in vain for the people to have made their recourse to the Scribes Pharisees Priests and Elders who through ignorance of the Scriptures denied Jesus to be the Christ and out of malice excommunicated all those that understood the Scriptures better then themselves and by their light were led to own Jesus to be the Glory of Israel I hope you will apprehend this to be sufficient to vindicate your title to the Scripture and your power to use it according to that judgement of discretion which every Christian that stands bound to give an account of his faith cannot be denied without usurping a dominion over faith the very suspicion whereof St. Paul although he were truly infallible yet did carefully decline The Querist treads the beaten path of Papists in debasing the holy Scripture and divesting it of the fitness and power to be a compleat Rule and an effectual instrument of faith that he may make room for a new Quack of which impious way to diminish the credit of Gods Word I leave you or any sober Christian that loves and reverences that invaluable pledge of Gods love to make a judgement without my further censure But give me leave to propound briefly some remarks of this Discourse 1. First I observe that he often joyns the Rule and Means of Faith together and confounds them so as if they were one and the same thing But the distinction of these two is of great importance to the preventing
I now make a return to that part as well as to the former and indeed to the whole Question 1. Errors that endanger Salvation do not alwaies destroy it 2. God hath promised to preserve his Church from destruction but not from danger 3. All errors when they are discovered are to be rejected 4. No doctrines offered by any Church to her Children are to be received without examination 5. The Catholick Church as it signifies the whole Body of Christendome is too big to be a teacher that may be consulted and hearkened unto 6. The Church in this mans sense and explication that is an Assembly of chief Pastors in Council may teach errors endangering Salvation Arianism hath been taught in as large Assemblies of chief Pastors as the true Faith hath been 7. But because it is the design of this man that we should take the Roman Church for the Catholick I stick not to say that the Roman Church teaches her children errors that endanger the attaining of Salvation My fift Answer is excepted against for the interposition of these words so long as it continues so which looks like a condition and seem to suppose that the Catholick Church can cease to be so The words are capable of another construction viz. The Holy Catholick Church so long as it continues secured from teaching destructive errors cannot even for that reason abuse the world with forged Scriptures This was then my meaning who had no intention that my last Answer should contradict my first Let us now see what he draws from my Answer if it were Categorical and how rational his inference is For now we are come to the bottom of his project And he thinks he hath catched us so fast in his trap that either we must give him the Cause or be condemned out of our own mouths If mine Answer be says this new fashioned Logician that the Church can never ohtrude false Scripture c. then you must grant that the Catholick visible Church is infallible in the delivery of Scripture If so then is there an infallible Judg upon the earth concerning this point How rash this inference is and how incoherent the conclusion with the premises a few words will serve to discover It is acknowledged on both sides that the primitive Church which received the Scriptures was not and because Gods spirit guided and governed the Church in this important business could not be abused and mistaken in the receiving of Canonical Scripture The Catholick Church being quickly after enlarged and spred through many regions of the earth did together with the Gospel preached receive Copies of the Scriptures which had been communicated by the particular Churches to which they were directed at first unto their neighbour Churches These Scriptures were by all Churches reverenced and preserved as the Grand Charter of their Salvation and the Laws and Records of their Society as the Church was the Kingdome of Christ distinguished from the world The zeal of Christians for their Laws and their knowledg of them which were frequently read in the publick Assemblies according to an * Apostolical order to which we must add above all the Providence of Gods watching over the Church for the preservation of Scriptures being more pretious to God than to Man and as pretious to God as the world it self these being well considered may assure us that it was morally impossible that the whole Church of God should be cousened into the reception of any forged Scriptures And if the Church in following ages could not combine together to coyn counterfeit Scriptures then the Church universal could never obtrude any thing upon the world for Canonical Scripture which was not received from the Primitive Church at first But how doth it follow from hence that the Church is an Infallible Judg in this point A creditable witness is not presently an Infallible Judg. A faithful Depositary that keeps Records is not the same thing with an unerring Judg. The Tradition of the Church Universal which hath derived the Holy Scriptures from age to age is not an Act of Judicature The Nation of the Jews is at this day a credible witness of the divine Original and authority of the Old Testament at least at the first plantation of the Church Christian the Jevvish Church did preserve and deliver the Holy Scriptures intire so much at least as God thought necessary or expedient and if any book vvere lost that by being lost became unnecessary and vvas secured by Gods Providence in the conveyance of his Oracles to Christians Doth it hence follovv that the People of the Jews was a visible Infallible Judg in that point and if so then in all matters of Faith For thus the Papist proceeds If so I require some satisfactory reason says the Querist why the Church should be infallible in this and fallible in other points of Faith c. I have already shewed that the Case is not so as this man imagines therefore I am not bound to give him the satisfaction which he requires Yet for your further information I add this 1. The reception and tradition of Scriptures by the Church is a fact which God orders as expedient for the preservation of Religion 2. The certain number of the Books written by inspiration is not a point of faith necessary for every Christian to know and believe unto Salvation 3. The Catholick Church cannot err in any point of faith necessary to salvation 4. But any particular Church may believe and teach erroneous Doctrine for matter of Faith The Church of Rome which is not the sole keeper of Scripture may and doth err in several points of their Religion and doth impose upon her children uncanonical Books for Scripture and false Doctrines for matters of faith as is evident by the Canons of the Conventicle of Trent And yet it is not in the power of the Church of Rome to abuse the whole Christian world by the imposition of counterfeit Scriptures upon it I shall yet persist in my reflexion upon the Jews that I may shew that the keeping of Scriptures without forgery falsification and corruption is a thing distinct and separable from erring teaching errors The Jews cannot be denied to have been good keepers of the Books even then when they corrupted the Religion enjoyned by the Law written in those Books Never yet was any man so weak as to conclude that the Priests and Rabbies of the Jews were Infallible Judges of the Doctrine concerning the Messias even those who condemned Christ the Son of God to be guilty of blasphemy and worthy of death because they kept the Books of Moses and the Prophets There is now less reason why we should take the present Church of Rome which we evidently see to teach Doctrines and set up a worship as contrary to the Scriptures as darkness is to light to be an infallible Judge of faith upon this account because the Primitive Roman Church in communion with other Churches did
any of them I therefore answer that when any such question arose amongst the Jews they were neither to have their last refuge to the Kings of Israel or Judah nor to the State Magistrates or common people for resolution in what they were to believe but to the lawful High Priest for the time with his High Council or Synod of other chief Priests and Doctors in the Law of Moses And they were to conform their belief to what they defined and taught them so that whatsoever either the Kings or some number of inferior Tribes or some particular Priests taught practised or believed contrary to the Doctrine and definition of this Supreme Spiritual Council was to be held erroneous and those who held forth such erroneous Doctrine pertinaciously or practised publickly contrary to it were to be esteemed in their doctrine Hereticks and in their practise Nonconformists to the True Church or Separatists from it If therefore a Jew in the times mentioned in the Querie should have demanded which was then the True Visible Church wherein Salvation could be acquired the answer must have been That it was the High Priest then being and all these believers who conformed their Faith Practises and Communion to him and his high Council ut supra And all such as stood in oppositions against him and division from him were Aliens so long as they continued in that state from the True Church Now if the Querist had proved efficaciously that the High Priest with his fore named Council taught the people either Idolatry the common sin of the Jews or any other breach of Gods Law to be lawful or any error against Gods Revelations to be true or any of his Revelations to be false he had overthrown the whole fabrick of my Queries But seeing this is not yet done by him his Queries are neither an Answer nor any obstruction to mine and therefore they remain in their full vigour against him For notwithstanding all he says in his second Query which is the main force of his instance I have clearly shewed a Jew of those times which was then the True Visible Church out of which Salvation could not be had Now it is impossible to prove any such matter unless he enervate the words of our Saviour Mat. 23. 2 3. where he says That whatsoever the Scribes and Pharisees taught who had and did sit in Moses his chair that is succeeded in his Spiritual authority was to be observed and done by all the Jewish people which supposes evidently they could not teach them either error in Faith and Manners as part of Gods word for then he should have commanded to do evil and believe errors so that they were infallible in their teaching till Shiloh came And the reason why they were so infallible says our Saviour was because they sate upon Moses his chair and so governed successively the Church of God faithfully in matter of doctrine as he did in his time Upon the chair of Moses have sate the Scribes and Pharisees All therefore that they shall say unto you Observe and do it And this reason proves not only those that sate then when our Saviour spake these words but that all those who sate before them ever since the time of Moses were infallible in all divine doctrines both of Faith and Manners The third Querie is therefore thus answered That the Jewish Church understood ut supra could not teach any error as matter of Divine Faith or Religion To the fourth Querie I answer That though from the precedent Answers it followes that the Jewish Church by divine direction preserved the Holy Scriptures so entirely that it never rejected any true part of Gods written word nor received into their Canon of Gods written word any Book or Sentence which was not his word yet it followes not thence that every private person should find out every particular point of Religion by particular or express proofs out of that written word alone but that the Authority of the Jewish Church ut supra in matters controverted should interpose it self and determine the controversie Nor do the two Texts quoted in the Querie prove thus much For that Esa 8. 20. proves only this that they were neither to have recourse to Soothsayers nor to extraordinary visions but to the Law and Testament when doubts arose Now this is so far from forbidding to have recourse to the present respective Priests and Governors of the Church that the Law and Testament command expresly that recourse is to be had to them in doubtful cases Deut. 17. from the 8th to the 12th verse and Malachi 2. from the 4th to the 8th In which places the interpretation of the Law is reserved to the Priest and the disobedience to the Priests command declared to be so great a sin that it is to be punished with no less than death And for the Scriptures themselves it was so far from the Ordinance of Moses his Law that every particular or private Believer had license or opportunity or ordinary possibility to peruse them and gather from them by his sole perusal what was and what was not to be believed as private Protestants now do that the Law was only to be read to them once in Seven years Deut. 31. 10 11. and was accordingly performed by Esdras Nehem. 8. 1 2 3. And this was all we read in Scripture of the common People knowing the written word And it appears that the people were so far from undertaking by their own private judgements to attain to the full meaning of every hard sentence in the Law that it is said v. 79. that the Levites interpreted to the people and that Esdras taught them And v. 13. not only the people but the inferior Levites and Priests came to Esdras the chief Priest to hear from him the interpretation of the Law Now the respondent if he will make a parallel between the common people of the Jews and his Protestants must produce some clear place of Scripture where the Books of the Law of Moses and not only they but the whole Old Testament was as common and familiar in the houses and hands of every ignorant Jew as the Old and New Testament is now in the houses and hands of every ignorant Protestant which I believe he will find a very hard task seeing Printing being then unknown to the world it would have been very difficult to have found so immense a number of copies as are now since Printing of the Bible amongst Protestants Yet are not we of opinion that the Scriptures are either not profitable as Saint Paul says they are or not sufficient supposing them to be the written word of God by some precedent proof by way of Rule to make us wise unto Salvation For they contain many of the most important points of Religion clearly and expressely to all who are not willfully pertinacious and what they contain not in particular expressions by general rules they refer to the Church
clamour and violence from determining any thing as it was the fate of the Council to which the Apostle Paul appeared then what is become of the Visible Guide Or how shall the Jews conscience be satisfied of this fundamental doctrine Certainly he must remain a Sceptick and that is next degree to Atheist if he do not find a clear Rule and a firm Rock whereon to build his holy faith which is the ground of a holy life And if he do he need not look for an Infallible Guide which if he have yet the vain curiosity to seek for he will never have the good hap to find I leave you now to judge of this mans resolution of my Queries And though he be like the Scribes and Pharisees in his industry to make Proselytes yet I have no fear of you but that you can discern the fraudulent course he takes to perswade and discover the sad end to which he leads his abused followers Since now I have out of Gods word evinced that the Priests of the Jews high and low were not only corrupt in their private manners but also grossely ignorant of Gods Law and seducers of the people from the true service of God and suborners of false prophets for that also may justly be taken into consideration for the support of their eredit and power with the people and imployed their Judicial power to condemn the true Prophets I have done enough mine Adversary himself being Judg to overthrow the frame of his Queries which were set up as a Gate or Bulwark of Hell to maintain the Devils devise The Infallibility of the Church of Rome masked with the specious Title of the Catholick Church And because I have also by our blessed Saviours sermons and sentence shewed the impiety as much as absurdity of honouring the Scribes and Pharisees with a priviledg of Infallibility I have said all that I conceive requisite concerning his answer to my second and third Queries which he resolves thus The Jewish Church understood ut supra that is the Pastors of the Church representing the whole and acting with authority for the government of the people could not teach any error as matter of divine Faith or Religion Only take this Corollary He must have a mind able to swallow and concoct Transubstantiation that can believe these Idolatrous Pastors so often complained of by God could do all this mischeif in the Church if they had been as dumb dogs in the Devils cause as they were in Gods and as silent for teaching any error in matter of Religion as they were in the instructing of men in the true way of God Or that these ignorant and debauched Priests being consulted concerning the Law of God would or should of necessity by a secret and powerful instinct of an Infallible Genius perpetually waiting upon them at least inspiring them upon such occasions teach the people contrary to their own perswasions and practise To the fourth Querie c. The vanity falshood and impiety of the precedent Answers to my 3 counter Queries being sufficiently evidenced it may seem superfluous to disprove what he builds upon the sand because this will sink of it self with the unsound foundation But because from that absurd supposition of Infallibility settled in the Jewish Priesthood he inferrs that the Jewish Church he means the Priests or chief Pastors thereof for he is much in proving that the people had very little to do with the Bible by divine direction preserved the Holy Scriptures intire without mutilation or addition of any thing uncanonical I shall briefly consider this Consequence which imports that the preservation of Scriptures depends upon the Infallibility of the Priests or the Church that keeps it I confess that Gods gratious providence is remarkable in preserving his pretious Word conteined in the Book of the Law But I pray you consider how little the Priests above montioned contributed their care to the conservation of the Scripture For in the reign of Idolatrous Kings who sometimes profaned the Temple with Idols sometimes shut up the doors of it the Priests who basely flattered and officiously served their Kings were so far from considering the Law at all and much more from reading and teaching it publickly that it might be the rule of Gods service that in Josiahs time the Penta teuch or the whole Law of Moses or as some think the Book called Deuteronomie being casually found in the ruines and rubbish of Gods house and then read by the High Priest was looked upon as a strange thing which they were not acquainted withal But though Priests were sometimes careless Depositaries yet God inspired such a Love of the Law into many of his People both Priests Levites and Laicks that that inestimable Juel was never lost which God would have preserved to be the Standard of his publick worship the measure of private devotion and the constant light to their walking with God and with men in the fear of God And notwithstanding the scandalous corruption of the Holy Order it self for a time pious persons could then be and were rationally assured that the Book of the Law as well as the law of the Lord was perfect and uncorrupted And I desire you to take notice that this is the Principal thing which is aimed at by way of instance or retortion to his fift Querie For if a direct true Answer be given to my fourth Querie it will follow by Analogie that Christians may be as perfectly ascertained of the integrity of the Canon of Scriptures though the major or more eminent part of Bishops the Bishop of Rome not exempted should be infected with Arianism as once it happened and although all the Bishops of the Roman Church which the Querist would fain have us to take for the Catholick but can never perswade us that a member of a Body is the whole as we can never believe that The Tyrrhene Sea is the whole Ocean do teach errors as matters of Christian Faith Now this being the design of my Question by getting out of a Papists mouth an Answer for a Jew to furnish a good Christian with an Answer to a Popish Cavil and to ensnare the Querist in his own ginn he craftily slips the Question out of the way and without making any direct answer to the Jews inquirie as he offered to do in handling the former Queries turns aside to make an impertinent Harangue concerning private mens use of the Scriptures Mark I pray my fourth Querie and compare the return and you will see nothing of an Answer in this That the infallibility of the Jewish Church was the means to preserve the Scriptures entire The question was not about the means by which the Book of Moses was preserved but about the manner how a Jew might be assured of the integrity of it Now the truly pious Jew who with Jeremy bemoaned the corruption of the Church by the errors and seducements of the Priests could not make