Reason to perswade us to build our Faith upon the Epistles too For it is very absurd to imagine that the very next Ages to the Apostles should be so far imposed upon and so down to the present Time as to receive several of the Doctrines contain'd in the Epistles for fundamental Articles of Faith if they were never design'd either by the Holy Ghost that Inspired them or by the Apostles themselves to be made such So that to assert the contrary is to affirm that either all Christians hitherto have wander'd in the Dark or that they were guilty of very great Folly and Superstition in making those parts of Scripture necessary to be believed to Salvation which were never intended to be so Some of the Epistles have indeed been rejected but so have some of the Gospels too But as this was done but by a very few so were they Men of Heretical Opinions The †Iraen Advers Heres l. 1. c. 26. Ebionites allowed of no more of the Gospels than St. Matthew and rejected all that was writ by St. Paul calling him an Apostate from the Law The * L. 1. C. 29. Marcionites owned but some part of the Epistles of St. Paul to be Canonical but they also denied the Authority of all the Gospels except that of St. Luke and then would admit no more parts of it than would agree with their own Model of Divinity Sed huic quidem says Iraeneus speaking of Marcion quoniam solus manifeste ausus est circumcidere Scripturas c. Which shews what an unpardonable Crime he thought it to be for any Man without a sufficient Warrant for it which can be nothing less than a Divine Commission to pretend to reject any parts of Holy Scripture and to cut them off from the rest which the whole Church had received for Canonical And thus whoever they were that denied the Divine Authority and the necessity of believing all the parts of Scripture such as were also the Valentinians and Manichees with some few others were always looked upon by the Church to be no better than Hereticks There were indeed some of the Primitive Christians that did not receive all the Books of the New Testament for Canonical but the reason was because they were not certain they were writ by the Apostles yet after a little time they were all admitted and universally believed as necessary parts of Faith But now by asserting the necessity of believing the Epistles as part of the Rule of Faith I don't mean that none could ever be saved but who had believed them for what then as our Author well observes would become of those Christians who were fallen asleep before any of the Epistles were written For no question but those who believed all that was taught them and lived up to that Knowledge which their most diligent Enquiries could carry them to should be admitted into Happiness as well as those who had afterwards attained to larger degrees of Faith and Knowledge Since no one can be obliged to believe that which he could not possibly have any knowledge of For should we suppose the Gospel to be spread in some Heathen Parts of the World that had never heard of Christ no Man certainly would be so uncharitable as to deny them Salvation if they believed whatsoever they found there and liv'd up exactly to the Precepts there delivered though they had never heard of the Acts of the Apostles or any of the Epistles or no more than one of the Gospels Or if the Case should be thus that they had no other parts of the New-Testament than barely some of the Epistles if they lived up to them in Matters of Faith and Practice there can no doubt be made but they would be saved So that in Cases of this nature the Argument holds as much for the Epistles as the Gospels and nothing from hence can be drawn to the Prejudice of either But where we have the Priviledge of both and are assured that both are of equal Authority as being equally of Divine Inspiration we are under a necessity of drawing the Articles of our Faith from them both as being a most exact Body of Christian Religion in all the Branches of it But then some may urge That if this should be the Case of those who could attain to the Knowledge of but one part of the Christian Doctrine contain'd in the New Testament that they should as well be saved as those who have all the parts of it and upon that account are required to believe more then certainly the Condition of the other would be much more desirable To this it may be answered That this Objection is of little Force since those are certainly in the safest Condition who have the most Light to guide them For though a wary Traveller may possibly find his way through a very narrow obscure Passage yet those who take the broadest Road are most certain of finding the surest way to their Journeys end But besides the more Evidence we have for our Faith and the greater the Confirmation of it may be by the abundant Repetition of Inspiration and Miracles for the Establishment of it and lastly the more full clear and express the Articles of our Faith are and the oftner God has been pleased to give us an Explanation of them so much the more likely are we to avoid Mistakes to give our unfeigned Assent to them and to suffer them to make more lasting Impressions upon our Minds And thus I hope I have sufficiently Vindicated the Divine Authority of the Epistles and the necessity of making them part of the Rule of Faith that 's required to Salvation And we ought to be the more concerned for the Defense of them because several Doctrines which have been always maintained by the universal Church such as the Doctrine of the Satisfaction and the true Reason of Christ's coming into the World will not so easily be maintained without a Belief of them But if these sacred Writings are esteemed as they are and were really designed to be the infallible Guides to us in our understanding the Mystery of the great Work of our Redemption and for the more clearly stating and explaining of all that is required for our Belief and Practice we are under an absolute necessity to preserve them inviolably and to vindicate the Belief of them as much as of any other parts of Divine Revelation Of the Reason of CHRIST's Coming into the World AND now I come in the next place to examine the Reason our Author assigns for Christ's coming into the World And this we must allow can be understood no way so well as by considering what the Scripture shews we lost by Adam p. 1. For it is on this that the whole Decision of the Case depends Since which way soever it is that the whole Bent of Scripture inclines there we ought to fix our Faith And here also there is no reason why we should dissent from the
behind them some certain Measures of Belief since their Authority and the certain Evidence of their Inspiration would have very great Influence on those who were not yet Christians that they might be more easily perswaded to embrace Christianity and also might be of vast Importance for the preventing all Differences that might arise about the Meaning of the Gospels and lastly would be of perpetual use for the teaching all sorts of Christians more easily to comprehend the Method Reasons and Grounds of the great Work of our Redemption The two last of which are more fully laid down and explain'd in the Epistles than in any other parts of Holy Writ And if the Knowledge of them is necessary to Salvation then it will be as necessary to believe those places of Scripture where they are most fully stated and most clearly delivered For since there is no part of Scripture where we are told how we were Redeemed why Christ Redeemed us and from what so clearly and expresly as in the Epistles we must have Recourse to them for our right understanding of those Doctrines And therefore there both was an absolute necessity for the writing of the Epistles and also is for our firm Belief of them as necessary to Salvation And thus far I hope we have established the Divine Authority of the Epistles and the absolute necessity of believing several of the Doctrines deliver'd in them But it must yet be confessed that all that has been proved will be little to the Purpose if it can be shewn in the Fourth Place that the Doctrines deliver'd in the Epistles are contradictory to those in the Gospels But this I don 't find in the least pretended for it would be in vain to shew Contradictions in them after they are allowed to be of Divine Inspiration As for there being several things above our Reason in the Epistles the same Objection may be made against the Gospels but this cannot be sufficient to invalidate the Authority of either of them The Gospels and Epistles both teach the same Christianity And tho' some Points of Faith are more fully and clearly laid down in one than the other and some things requir'd to be believed in the Epistles which are not mention'd in the Gospels yet they do not disagree in any one Particular But both tend to one and the same End the advancing the Happiness of Mankind And this leads me to consider the Fifth Argument whereby it may appear whether or no the Epistles are necessary to be believed and that is the Matter they contain For this is the only Plea remaining why they should be rejected because the Matters which they treat of are of no Concern to us that they have no relation to the Salvation of Mankind and therefore cannot be thought necessary to be believed upon that account which is the great End of Revelation For here the great stress of the Controversy lies whether the Doctrines deliver'd in the Epistles are of such Importance as will make them necessary to be believed or to be an indispensible part of the Rule of Faith But I hope I have already made it appear that there are several Doctrines of this Nature in the Epistles from the Apostle's Design in writing them and from those Texts I have before produced from them and therefore I shall not insist any more upon this Head But our Author objects that if there are any fundamental Articles in the Epistles yet they are so promiscuously deliver'd with other Truths that they are not to be distinguished from them And this he now tells us was the reason why he did not go through the Writings in the Epistles Vindic. p. 14. to collect the fundamental Articles of Faith as he had through the Preaching of our Saviour and his Apostles because those fundamental Articles were in those Epistles promiscuously and without distinction mixt with other Truths And therefore we shall find and discern those great and necessary Points best in the Preaching of our Saviour and the Apostles to those who were yet ignorant of the Faith and unconverted But how are these Fundamental Points to be found in the Gospels and Acts better than in the Epistles Are there in them nothing but Fundamentals Or are not these Fundamentals mixt with other Truths of a quite different Nature that have no respect to Man's Salvation And if so as is very apparent what mighty Advantage have the Gospels beyond the Epistles upon this account Matters of Faith and Matters of Practice Fundamentals and Things indifferent are promiscuously mixt together in both But yet there is no great difficulty in discerning one from another in them For the meanest Capacity can easily apprehend a difference between those things which are proposed to our Belief and those to our Practice what are those which have a near respect to the Covenant of Grace and the Means of Salvation and those which are more forreign to that End And this difference is as easily perceived in the Epistles as in the Gospels because the Terms of Salvation are as plainly and clearly set down in one as the other But it is objected that several Things in the Epistles are differently interpreted and consequently cannot be absolutely necessary to be believed to Salvation because Men are not agreed in their Opinions concerning them To this it may be answered first That some Men are of different Opinions in their Interpretations of several places of the Gospels as well as of the Epistles But secondly it may be observed that the great and fundamental Truths in both have been always understood in one and the same Sence by the whole Catholick Church and those who have dissented from the universally received Interpretation have been accounted Enemies to the true Christian Faith For in these Cases Mistakes are generally wilful and it is not easy to interpret any Doctrines in Scripture differently from what the Church has already done if we take the most easy and natural Meaning of it For the Sense of Fundamentals is not so obscure but a willing Mind may easily apprehend it But Lastly We may add to all this the Consent of the Universal Church in all Ages for the necessity of believing the Epistles and several Articles delivered in them as necessary to Salvation For they have been hitherto esteemed by all Orthodox Christians as part of the Canon of Scripture or Rule of Saving Faith and received and believed accordingly And if this Argument will be of no Force to convince us of the necessity of believing them to Salvation we must at the same time part with one very good Reason for our belief of the Holy Gospels For this is alleged for an Argument by our Church in the Sixth Article for our belief of all the received parts of Scripture that there has never been any doubt of their Authority in the Church And if this universal Consent will be an Argument for the Gospels it cannot also be denied to be a very great
Reasoning as indeed it seems to be it must be sufficient to inforce the necessity of believing Christ to be GOD to make a Man a Christian But again as we cannot deny that we are obliged to believe Christ to be the Son of God because it is required in several places of Scripture and St. John tells us that his Gospel was written for this End that we should believe Jesus to be the Christ and the Son of God so we must also confess him to be GOD because as I have already proved his Divinity is understood by that Expression the ancient Jews both applying it to their expected Messiah and also meaning a Divine Person by it All which seem as fully to require us to believe him to be GOD if we would be Christians as we are in other Passages enjoin'd to acknowledge him to be Christ And Lastly it is most evident that the explicite Belief of Christ's being God is requir'd to make a Man a Christian from the Form of Baptism at our Admission into Christianity in the Name of Father Son and Holy Ghost Where an equal Belief in all is required as being equally partakers of the same Divine Nature and we may as well say that the Father's Divinity as the Son 's is not here implied But this I have spoken to already And here we may add for a great Confirmation of this Truth of Christ's being God that the Vniversal Church as may be gather'd from the most Primitive Writings and the first General Councils hath always asserted His Divinity as being most undoubtedly expressed in Scripture How comes it therefore to pass that if the Belief of Christ's Divinity was not thought clearly Revealed and necessary to Salvation all those that opposed it from the first Ages of the Church to this present time have been Condemn'd and Censur'd for Hereticks * Vid. Bishop Stillingfleet's Rational Ac. of the Prot. Relig. Not as though the sence of the Catholick Church is pretended to be any infallible Rule of interpreting Scripture in all things which concern the Rule of Faith But that it is a sufficient Prescription against any thing that can be alledged out of Scripture that if it appear contrary to the sence of the Catholick Church from the beginning it ought not to be looked upon as the true meaning of Scripture So that if the denying Christ to be GOD is contrary to the received Interpretation of Scripture in the Catholick Church and also inconsistent with the plain meaning of the Words we must conclude that either his Divinity must necessarily be believed even to make a Man a Christian or that the Revelation is not to be regarded But Secondly We must also believe the Incarnation of Christ For every Spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God 1 Ep. Joh. 4.3 and therefore we must acknowledge that he was Man as well as God and that he was made like unto his Brethren that he might be a merciful and a faithful High-Priest in things pertaining to God to make reconciliation for the sins of the people Heb. 2.17 And that this is part of the Mystery of Godliness which is necessary to be believed by all Christians that God was manifest in the flesh 1 Tim. 3.16 And that though he was in the form of God and thought it not Robbery to be equal with God yet made he himself of no Reputation and took upon him the form of a Servant and was made in the likeness of Men and being found in fashion as a Man he humbled himself and became obedient unto Death even the death of the Cross Phil. 2.6 7 8. All which plainly denote to us both his Divine and Humane Nature which we must believe to be united in one Person Agreeable to which are those Words of St. Paul Feed the Church of God which he hath purchased with his own Blood which could only be done by taking the Manhood into God I need not multiply Texts to prove that our Saviour was Man this I suppose none of the Vnitarians will dispute But the difficulty lies in this that he was both God and Man But this also is very frequently and fully asserted in Scripture But Thirdly We must also believe That he died for us and in our stead to free us from the Wrath to come That his Death was a propitiatory Sacrifice for us and That his was the blood of the New Testament as himself testifies of it which was shed for many for the remission of sins Mat. 26.28 And that this is part of the Christian Faith according to St. Paul that he died for our Sins as the Scriptures foretold of him And for this End he saith He was ordained a Preacher to testify that Christ gave himself a ransom for all 1 Tim. 2.6 7. But this I have insisted upon so largely already and shewn that this was the true Reason of his Death from so many Instances in Scripture that I need say no more upon it It is sufficient to shew that this is necessary to be believed since our Salvation depends on the Knowledge of the New Covenant and the Conditions of it and how far we are concern'd both in Faith and Practice In short as the Scripture hath assured us that Christ was the Mediator of the better Covenant and that we must believe in him so must our Belief of him be measured by what is revealed concerning him For Christ himself hath told us That is Life Eternal to know the only true God and Jesus Christ whom he hath sent i.e. The Knowledge of Christ is as much a Condition of Salvation as that of God the Father And the most certain Knowledge of both is to be drawn from Revelation And therefore as we are obliged to believe concerning the Nature of God whatsoever the Scripture has revealed so also we must believe of Christ as the Scripture has made him known to us So that the adequate Measure of our Faith in both must be taken from Scripture For if upon a Supposition of no Revelation we must believe all that of God which Right Reason could dictate to us then certainly since we have a Revelation from God and that Revelation has also obliged us to believe in Christ in order to Salvation we must believe upon the hazard of our Salvation every thing concerning him which is asserted by that Revelation And as in the general Confession of Faith when we say We believe in God the Father c. we are to understand all the other Attributes of God which are made known to us either by Reason or Revelation as that he is Just Good Merciful that he governs all things by his Providence or whatever else can be conceived in a Being infinitely Perfect so when we say We believe in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord we must also mean by it whatsoever else we can find in Scripture in reference to our clearer understanding that Article as that