that requires strict evidence in things of faith which cannot bear it he that calls for Mathematical demonstration nor will believe on easier terms yet is so credulous and so unwary that he can believe so many things which by the nature and the disposition of mankind I have demonstrated not possible which yet must be true unless these Scriptures be from God 't is plain he does not seek for certainty but for a pretence of not believing would fain have his Infidelity and Atheism look more excusable and is not fit to be disputed with but to be exploded But if these Scriptures be from God then whatsoever they affirm with modesty I may conclude is true And therefore when St Luke Acts 1. 1. declares his former treatise contain'd all that Jesus began both to do and teach until the day in which he was taken up since Christ before he did ascend taught every thing that was requir'd to be believ'd and don in order to salvation and more too therefore if his Gospel did contain all that he taught and did since it did not contain all absolutly it must needs mean it contained all that was necessary or it must mean nothing And since the same St Luke in the beginning of that Gospel does affirm he wrot it that Theophilus might know the certainty of those things wherein he had bin instructed 'T is plain he avers that the certain knowledg of all those things wherein the having bin instructed made Theophilus a Christian might be had out of the Gospel and when St Paul says here that the Holy Scriptures are able to make us wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus and St John in his 20 chap. v. 31. that tho he had not wrot all the things that Jesus did yet those that he had wrot were written that we might believe that Jesus was the Christ the son of God and that believing we might have life through his name 'T is evident the Scriptures say that what was written was sufficient to work that belief which was sufficient to life and salvation as far as the credenda do concur to it And when St Paul in that verse that succeeds my text in most express particular words sets down the usefulness of Scripture in each several duty of a man of God or Preacher of the Gospel both for Doctrine of faith for reproof or correction of manners and instruction unto righteousness and tells you Gods express end in inspiring it and consequently its ability when so inspir'd was that the man of God might be made perfect throughly furnisht unto every good work that belongs to his whole office 't is most certain that what is sufficient for that office to instruct reprove correct and teach in must needs be sufficient to believe and practise in for all men i. e. what my text affirms they are able to make us wise unto salvation I might call in Tradition universal to bear witness to this truth for holy Scriptures if having once demonstrated that they are Gods word when that does affirm it and bears witness to it there were need of any other And this I dare boldly say that if the Scripture did say as expresly that the Pope had a supremacy or soveraignty over the whole Church or that he or the Roman Church were infallible their definition or the living voice of their present Church a most sure rule of faith as it doth say Scripture is able to make us wise unto salvation those Articles would suffer no dispute it would be blasphemy or sacriledg to limit or explain them by distinctions when those sayings of the perfectness of Scriptures are forc'd to bear many Then we should have no complaints of the obscurity of those books if those articles were either in the Greek or Hebrew they would never say the Bible were not fit to be a Rule of Faith because the Language were unknown to the unlearned and they could not be infallibly secure of the Translation were they there they would account them sure enough who think them plain enough already there and that we must believe them because Thou art Peter Feed my sheep and Tell the Church are there And for him that shall affirm all necessaries that must make us wise unto salvation are not in the Scripture 't is impossible to give a rational account how it should come to pass that some are there the rest are not It must be either on design or else by chance Now 1. That God should design when very many things that were not necessary were to be written that the main and fundamental ones should be omitted and when of the necessaries most he did design for Scripture then He should not suffer the Apostles to write the remainder of them and yet what he would not suffer them to write design'd that the Trent Fathers who I hope have perfected the Catalogue should write all of these since 't is not possible to give a reason 't is not therefore rational to affirm it was upon design But 2. If he shall say it only happen'd so by chance he does affront both Scriptures and Gods Holy Spirit who as they affirm inspir'd them for this very end to bring men to the faith and to salvation But there is no place for chance in those things that are don in order to an end by the design impulse and motion of the infinit wisdom of Gods Holy Spirit He certainly does most unworthily reproch his Maker who can think it possible that what he did design expressly and on that account alone to attain such an end by namely that men should believe and be sav'd and inspire it for that purpose should yet fail not be sufficient for that purpose And sure if it be sufficient it contains all necessaries otherwise it were deficient in the main yea so clearly also as that they for whose salvation they are intended may with use of such methods as are obvious and agreed upon by all men understand them for otherwise they could not be sufficient if men could not be instructed by them in things necessary both to faith and life they could not make them wise unto salvation I must confess the Scripture labors under a great prejudice against this doctrine from the different sense and interpretations that are made of it even in the most fundamental points by them that grant it is the word of God when yet all use the same means to find out the meaning and no doubt they seek sincerely after it But yet I think it evident this happens not from the obscurity of Scripture since it is not only in the most express texts but also if you should suppose the doctrins were as plain set down there as words can express them yet there are such principles assum'd into the faith of different sects as must oblige them to interpret diversly the same plain words I am not so vain as to imagin that no places are obscure in
the first voice of nature teacheth us the direct contrary And whosoever he be that is I will not say unjust to others but not kind friendly and apt to do good to them he that hath regard for onely self and mesures all by his own inclinations and interests is such a thing if nature onely judg of him as ought to have bin expos'd when he was born and to have no pity shew'd him when in teares and in his blood he cri'd for it he should be still abstain'd and seperated from as one whom Nature her self excommunicates as one who is no part of human society but the proper native and inhabitant of the desert But he that is unrighteous who by worng whether of violence or fraud or but of debt makes his own satisfactions that to serve his uses and occasions dares take or but detain from others what is due to them and supports his pomp and plenty with that which of right ought to cloth and feed others and so eats the bread and drinks the tears and may be blood of Creditors he that is so unmerciful as to be thus cruel tho Almighty God were silent even Nature would her self prosecute such a person with her out-cries as we do fire when 't is broke out and rages for he is all one fire also spreads and seises all it can come near whether mans or Gods house to make fuel for it self and to encrease its blaze so that the other should be lookt upon with the same dreads and abhorrency for he is the same disorder in the frame of Nature and in this the voice of Nature is the voice of God which is our other medium to discover what is natural Now since we have declar'd that natural vertue is in man the imitation of God is as it were the workings off of those forms of goodness that are in him and the lines and rules of it are but the lineaments of his perfection 〈◊〉 will be easy to evince that the rule for mercy is a most important law of Nature since the practice of it is so natural to God himself Now to prove this passing by all other methods of probation I shall content my self with that one declaration of himself he made when he proclaim'd himself the Lord the Lord God merciful and gracious long suffering and abundant in goodness and truth keeping mercy for thousands forgiving iniquity transgression and sin and that will by no means utterly cut off the guilty so I understand it out of Jer. 46. 28. will not make a full end a clear riddance of them when I visit God seems here to have taken flesh in his expressions e're he was incarnate that he might have words to phrase his goodness in and he had bowels of mercy before he was made man and yet all this he says are but the back parts of his goodnes Exod. 33. v. ult but that of it which we meet with in his dealings with the Sons of men as we see it à posteriori and in its effects here but the face and glory of it was so bright and dazeling that he tells his friend there Moses that 't was not possible for him to see it and live Yet now St Paul saith God hath given us the light of the knowledg of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ 2 Cor. 4. 6. Indeed there was Divinity of mercy and more too humanity was taken in that God Almighty might be able to bestow more then himself and all that he might shew compassion on us men It seems O Lord thou wilt have Mercy yea and Sacrifice too If thou require such an offering as the Sacrifice of thine own blood and of thine own Son that thou mightest have mercy on us and then let men dispute that vindicative justice is essential to God that sin and its punishment are annext by as unchangable necessity as Gods Attributes are to his being and that by the express exigence of his nature he no less necessarily executes it then the fire burns we may well be content it should be so when this strict necessity if such there were did but make way for was subservient to the ends of infinite Mercy and by that demonstrates that benignity compassion and forgiveness are much more the inclinations of his nature and if he intended man in any thing his image sure he did in mercy therefore do's our Savior charge us be yee merciful as your heavenly Father is merciful who as he had no other reason to create the world so 't is most certain that he had no other reason to redeem it That Oeconomy was intended as the means of mercy to poor Sinners in reducing them which is the Mercy my third observation speaks of which was this that of all acts of Mercy those are best and most well-pleasing in Gods sight which are emploi'd in the conversion of Sinners that was such for which our Savior is here pleading when he saith I will have Mercy But here I mean not such conversions as they are emploi'd about who compass sea and land not so much to convert men from the evil of their waies to the true real practice of Christianity as to convert them to their Church to which men would not go so fast but that by the debauch of all good Christian discipline there are such easy absolutions to be had tho men be not converted from their evil waies for it is impossible to find a Church or a Religion in the world which men may sin so hopefully and comfortably in as that of Rome as it now stands But these busy Agitators of conversion besides that they convert not men to Catholic Christianity but to a name and indeed faction have made Catholic a word of party if they should multiply we should soon find they would have Sacrifice not Mercy I do not mean their Host that Sacrificium incruentum bloody Sacrifices we know are a main part of their doctrine and their practice who have us'd to turn whole Nations into shambles for their Church's sake and make bonfires with burnt-offerings of their fellow Christians But waving these Conversions those the proposition speaks of are such as reduce Sinners from their evil doings to the universal faithful practice of all virtue and all piety Now of all acts of Mercy that those which endeavor this are best Nature herself would judg since they do aim at reinstating man the crown of all her workmanship in the integrity and rectitude of Nature which is his own true perfect state and is therefore the most proper and best for him as relating to that state But God who beyond that design'd to make man who had faln from his own nature to partake of the Divine Nature as St Peter saith 2. Pet. 1. 4. and in order to it call'd us to glory and vertue v. 3. cannot but account that kindness which endeavors the recovery of Sinners from corruption and misery to the state of vertue
preys upon that it may keep alive and nourish torment to eternity or how each man 's peculiar dust that is digested into several mens being and so become no one mans peculiar when it shall be also blended with the ashes of the Universe can be singled out and parted to its proper owner when there are so many own it because their reason cannot comprehend all this therefore Scriptures lake of fire must be no more then the Poets Acheron and Resurrection was fram'd as the apparition of a Ghost is wont to do to fright men meerly and however 't is attested Christ did never rise but all is fable Thus from such premises as these our rational disputing men conclude And here I shall not ask how these men dare presume that if there be a God who hath declar'd that he will bring such things to pass yet he must be unable to affect them if they cannot comprehend the manner how he does them or be confident they can look through those beams that come out of his hand in which the hiding of his Power is But this I shall say to our men of reason theirs is the most unreasonable way of arguing in the world to dispute against plain matters of fact the being and the Works of such and such so many ages since and witnessed by a greater testimony then the World can shew for any other thing and ever since appearing in their visible and vast effects as the Conversion Suffering Faith of the whole Earth almost Now to attempt the confutation of such matter of fact by reasonings drawn from difficulties in some things which those men are witnessed to have deliver'd or to conclude that there can never have been any such persons in the World because they cannot understand all that those persons taught or possibly because they can take some occasions to buffoone on what they taught is most ridiculous Thus History must have been false and several known places not to have been because the story hath been turn'd into Burlesque Thus he that with the Ancients cannot comprehend how it is possible that there should be Antipodes or the Earth can be any thing but a plain flat otherwise he thinks the inhabitants must fall down to Heaven may as rationally despise all the discoveries of the Earth assure himself our constant Navigations which perswade us 't is a Globe inhabited on both sides bring home from the Indies nothing else but false relations and that indeed there are no Indies I need not urge how Christianity approves it self even to the reasoning of the sober part of mankind and the morality of it had the suffrage of the World before it self appeared For while the evidence stands good if the matter of fact be true the Doctrine must be true and the commands obey'd and to use such arguings to resell such matter of fact is just like that which Zeno did attempt namely by subtilties to prove it was impossible there could be any motion while another did disturb his Lecture by his motion up and down the Schools it is the same thing as to take a bowl to cut with or the vessels of the Danaid's to carry water in For such reasonings are alike improper for that work And indeed these arguings are not the exceptions of reason but the struglings of mens vices against Religion And it must be impossible so many Thousands would give up their Bodies rather then their Bibles to the fire in Dioclesian's days because it is a book which they can find no other pleasure in but that of railling it or helping them with subjects to be prophane upon It must be false that Christ did feed 5000 with 5 loaves and 2 small fishes 'till 12 baskets full of broken pieces did remain yet not so much because they know not how their eating could nourish the victuals so and make it grow as because they are angry with the worker of the miracle who forbids and upbraids the excesses of their luxury which can easily and does daily consume the price of that that would suffice 5000 without miracle on 5 single persons and all that when 't is drest according to the modern mode of eating well dissolved turned into juyces and exalted into the Elixir of the Epicure shall leave alas no broken pieces for the Alms-basket This is the quarrel this does make the miracle impossible And yet methinks upon the same account they should allow that at a feast he turned so many pots of water into wine because that seems to gratifie the thirsts of their intemperance In fine we do not live as men prepared or willing to be called to an account of all our doings therefore we have no mind to rise again to give it When we are thus minded it is not hard to meet with difficulties that encourage the opinion that we shall not rise Which difficulties when we look into we cannot find how it is possible we can be raised and 't is easie then to think we cannot that it is impossible especially when it is our will and interest to think so and then it must be false whatever is in Scripture that we shall These are the processes of those that reason against Christianity such the grounds that they dispute upon But their reasons are but Sophisms of lust and interest which will guild and paint whatever they are much in love with and it is no wonder they find colours for it and can think them reasons for they always did so against present evident conviction When Moses by his miracles endeavoured to let Pharaoh know who was the Lord and to persuade him to let Israel go while God permitted the Magicians to counterfeit those miracles it lookt like reasonable indeed that Pharaoh should not be convinced but when they could not immitate but did confess the finger of the Lord and themselves suffered those plagues which they could not either conjure up or down then if Pharaoh will not be persuaded 't is plain nothing but his interest not the wonders which were brought by the Magicians were the reasons that prevailed with him for those were not reasons against more and greater miracles yet they were effectual with him to the destruction of himself and his nation Again when they who knew the mighty works Christ did and were forewarned by him of false Christs and false Prophets that would come with signs and lying wonders God allowing Sathan leave to struggle at his last gasp and to make a blaze when he was to fall from heaven as lightning but far beneath the glory of his onely begotten Son when they who knew both these chose yet to follow a Barchocab a false falling Meteor who came indeed with greater shew and not with such strict mortifying Doctrines nor onely with the thin encouragement of after-expectations as Christ did for he gave them hopes of present temporal enjoyments but he did no wonder besides spitting fire S. Jerome says