were written by any of them it is not much material so it were written by some of them and that it was so is very evident from Clemens his Epistle who has borrowed divers passages out of it word for word And to the same purpose is the Controversie concerning the Revelations all allowing it to have been of Apostolical Antiquity onely some will have it to have been written by Saint John the Apostle others by Saint Mark sirnamed John others by Saint John call'd the Elder but whosoever it was that wrote it it was written in the Apostolical Age and that is enough Though it is moreover sufficiently attested that Saint John the Apostle was the Authour of it both by the Testimony of Justin Martyr and Irenaeus who lived very near the time of its writing Lastly Those that were at first doubted of were not afterwards rashly admitted into the Canon but were admitted upon carefull enquiry mature deliberation and unexceptionable Testimony For as they were at first own'd by some and disputed by others this became a matter of debate in the Church and that obliged them to make farther enquiry after the evidence of their Authority and by that means the whole Church was at last satisfied of that which at first onely a part of it was able to prove And this might come to pass after this manner the Apostles directed many of their Epistles to particular Churches so that it is possible that some of them might be known to some Churches and not to others who therefore doubting of them put those who asserted them to have been true Apostolical Writings to prove their Assertion and they it seems brought such evident proof of their Tradition as gain'd the consent of the whole Church to their Authority And this probably they did by producing the Originals written under the Apostles own hands and reserved in the Archives of the several Churches For that many such there were Tertullian informs us even in his time and to them refers the Men of his own Age for their full satisfaction § X. And therefore it is but a very slender Witticism of Mr. Hobbs in derogation of the Authority of the holy Scripture when he has acknowledg'd that the Writers of the New Testament lived all in less than an Age after Christ's Ascension and had all of them seen our Saviour or been his Disciples except Saint Paul and Saint Luke and consequently that whatsoever was written by them is as ancient as the time of the Apostles yet were they made canonical Scripture onely by the Authority of the Church that is the Council of Laodicea which first collected the Canon of the Scriptures and recommended them to us as the Writings of those Apostles and Disciples under whose Names they go hereby wittily intimating or rather broadly asserting that these Writings were not canonical Scripture till that Council that is till the year 364. But first Supposing that it is not the Authour but the Authority of the Church that makes a Book Canonical then were the Books of the New Testament made so long before the Council of Laodicea in that we find them enumerated in the Apostolical Canons which though they were not compil'd by Clement as was vulgarly supposed yet were they the Decrees of Councils in the first and second Ages succeeding the Apostles So that upon this account they were stamp't Canonical almost as soon as they were written Secondly The Testimony of the Church neither is nor can be any more than a proof or an argument of the Original and Divine Authority of the canonical Books as any other Testimony is or may be Thus when we cite Clement of Rome Ignatius Policarp Justin Martyr Irenaeus Clemens Alexandrinus yes and Celsus himself that lived either in or near the Apostles times as giving in Testimony to their Writings no Man can without very wilfull impertinence thence infer that it is they that give the Books their Divine Authority when it is so evident that they are onely made use of as competent Witnesses to attest that they were no forged Writings but were pen'd by those very Persons under whose Names they go and if they are then they themselves make good their own Authority For Authority is nothing else but the right or power of binding our Assent which unless it be done by the Authour himself it is impossible to be done by any other and all the Councils in the World can never give Divine Authority to any Book if it had it not before All their Office is to bear testimony to their Authenticalness and it is no inconsiderable Evidence of it when so many grave and learned Men of the first Ages of Christianity upon mature deliberation of the whole matter in Council declare that upon the strictest enquiry they are fully satisfied that those Books were written by those very Authours whose Names they bear But from hence to infer as the Leviathan does that their canonical Authority that is their being the Law of God depends entirely upon the Decree of the Church as if it could give or take it away at pleasure onely becomes Mr. Hobbs's Logick and Modesty and them it becomes equally for it is very hard to determine whether the Conclusion be more impudent or more impertinent § XI And now beside this direct demonstrative proof of the Apostolical Antiquity and Authority of the holy Scriptures which alone is a full demonstration of the Divinity of the Christian Institution there is another more remote way of proving the truth of the History insisted upon by learned Men that is by the concurrent Testimony of foreign Writers Jews or Heathens who lived in or about the same time but this Evidence is so weak in comparison of that which I have already produced that I shall not prosecute it as an Argument in my Cause but rather consider it as an Objection against it viz. That if the History of our Saviour were so known and notorious as is pretended how comes it to pass that so little notice is taken of it by any Authours but onely such as were his own Disciples There were many other excellent Writers especially Historians about that time so that if his Actions had been so great and remarkable as his Disciples tell us they were it is scarce credible that they should pass him over with so slender a regard and scarce any mention of him In answer to this I shall in the sequel of this Discourse give a satisfactory and rational account of the Infidelity both of Jews and Heathens notwithstanding Christianity brought along with it all that Evidence that we pretend it did But beside this I shall here shew that the best Writers of that time concur with and so confirm the main strokes of our Saviour's History and by consequence all the rest that is interwoven with them especially when what they write is purely to deliver matter of Fact without any design to serve the cause of Christianity For when all things
the Tables of the Consuls yet they were very carefully preserved in those times and as easily consulted by any inquisitive Person as any other publick Record and were so by all learned Men who made it their business to enquire into them or to convey the account of them to after-ages and particularly Eusebius who as he made use of many other helps and had all the other advantages of information would not want this that was so easie and so satisfactory as himself particularly informs us concerning the succession of Jerusalem that he transcribed it out of their own Archives Though setting aside the information that he received thence the History of the succession is sufficiently preserved by other Writers That of Rome is already cleared that of Antioch is as clear onely some Men are willing to raise a dispute about the immediate Successour to the Apostles whether it were Euodius or Ignatius probably it might be both as it was at Rome but if Euodius were the first it is enough that his Successour Ignatius was an Apostolical Man and familiarly acquainted with the Apostles and that from him the succession runs clear and undisputed down to the Council of Nice to which Eustathius its then present Bishop was summon'd and as he was a Man of eminent learning so he bore a considerable sway in it As for Alexandria the succession runs so clear there that I do not find that the most sceptical Adversaries in this point dare so much as question it and indeed the succession of learned Men in that Church was so early and so uninterrupted that it was no more possible for them to be ignorant of the succession of their Bishops than it is for any learned Man now not to know the succession in the See of Canterbury from the Reign of Queen Elizabeth To these it were easie to add many more if it were not too tedious but though I do not meet with any reasonable suspicion of an interrupted succession in any eminent Church yet I shall instance onely in two that next to those already mention'd most deserve our notice that is the Churches of Corinth and Athens an account of whose succession we have from Dionysius a learned Man and Bishop of Corinth in the time of M. Antoninus as indeed we have of many other Churches in his Epistles to them as for his own Church it were a vain thing to demand a particular account of its succession when himself was so near the fountain head and has withall accidentally let us understand his knowledge of what was transacted there before his own time and particularly by his account of Saint Clement's Epistle As for the Church of Athens he expresly affirms that Dionysius the Areopagite was their first Bishop and after him mentions Publius and Quadratus so that it was not possible there should be any unknown interruption in so short an interval This may suffice for a brief specimen of the certain succession in the most eminent Churches from the Apostles and by consequence of their undoubted Tradition § XXIX The next part of the Argument is to prove its more particular conveyance down from the very time of the Apostles through the hands of a great many wise and learned Men And for this reason it was that Clemens Alexandrinus after he had passed through the Discipline of several Masters and several Sects acquiesced at last without any farther search in the Christian Institution because they that preserved the Tradition of this heavenly Doctrine received it immediately from Peter James and John and Paul the holy Apostles as a Son succeeds a Father and by the Providence of God have brought it down to us planting those seeds of Doctrine which they derived from their Ancestours and the Apostles And it is a very good reason and becoming the wisedom of that learned Man supposing the matter of Fact to be true and that it is is evident from the succession it self in that the first Witnesses of Christianity next to the Apostles familiarly conversed with the Apostles themselves or with Apostolical Men. As Saint Clemens Bishop of Rome who wrote an excellent Epistle to the Church of Corinth received with great veneration in the Christian Church valued next to the holy Scriptures and therefore read with them in several Churches but especially the Church of Corinth And as it was the most ancient next to the Apostolical Books so was it the most undoubted Writing of the Christian Church it was says Eusebius 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 received without controversie And it is cited by Dionysius Bishop of Corinth a short time after who affirms that it was then read in that Church every Lord's Day It is magnified by Irenaeus not onely for its own strength and piety but for the primitive Antiquity of its Authour who he says was conversant with the Apostles received his Christianity from them had their preaching still fresh in his memory and their customs and traditions in his eye as divers others there were then living that were taught by the Apostles themselves And Clemens Alexandrinus quoting this Epistle as he often does gives him the Title of Apostle for his primitive Antiquity But beside that it was unanimously attested by the Ancients it was never call'd in question by any of our modern Criticks who though they have taken infinite pains to destroy or impair as much as in them lay the credit of all the ancient monuments of the Church yet have passed this Epistle as undoubtedly genuine with an unanimous approbation Now this supposes the owning and the settlement of the Christian Religion in the World it asserts particularly the truth and certainty of our Saviour's Resurrection and beside several other Books of the New Testament quotes the first Epistle of Saint Paul to the Corinthians in which the Apostle proves its undoubted certainty by the Testimony not onely of himself and the Apostles but of above five hundred Witnesses beside most whereof were then alive Beside this he tells us of the great labours and martyrdoms of Saint Peter and Saint Paul in asserting the Christian Faith and the great patience and constancy of vast numbers more for the same cause and this he speaks of as a thing present Let us says he consider the generous and worthy Examples of our own Age through emulation and envy the faithfull Pillars of the Church were persecuted even unto a most grievous Death Let us place before our Eyes our holy Apostles and so he proceeds to the acts and sufferings of Saint Peter and Saint Paul Now how could this have been done at that time if Christianity had been a meer Fable or what more unquestionable Tradition can we have of its truth especially of the Resurrection when he quotes the Gospels in which it is recorded the Epistle of Saint Paul in which it is proved by such a number of Eye-witnesses the Testimony of the Apostles and innumerable others that lived at the
same time and laid down their Lives out of that undoubted assurance they had of its truth and certainty We may now with much more reason doubt of what was done to his late Majesty in January 1648. than they could at that time of the Testimony of the Apostles concerning the Passion and Resurrection of Jesus Neither did the current of this Tradition stop here in the Corinthian Church but as it came down from the first Witnesses so it descended in the same chanel to after-times for as the Apostolical Writings are own'd by this Epistle so is this Epistle by those who could not but be certain of its Authority especially Dionysius Bishop of that Church to whom it was written for as Saint Clement's Epistle was written not long after the time of the Apostles probably in the Reign of Domitian so was that of Dionysius written not at a greater distance from Saint Clemens for he flourished in the time of M. Aurelius and had full assurance of its being authentick from its having been constantly read in the Corinthian Church So that the Tradition of the Apostles Testimony was as certain in that Church in the time of that Emperour who began his Reign about the year 161. as it was in their own time so that if the Corinthians who lived in the time of Dionisius had been contemporary to the Apostles themselves they could not have had a more satisfactory and unquestionable information of the truth of those things that they preached than was given them from so clear and uninterrupted a Tradition for that being so entirely free from all manner of doubt and suspicion the distance of time made no alteration as to the certainty of the thing § XXX To the Testimony of this Apostolical Man we may joyn that of Ignatius Policarp Papias and Quadratus as having all conversed with the followers and familiars of our Saviour And first as for Ignatius he was educated under the Apostles themselves and by them constituted Bishop of the great City of Antioch where he sate many years and govern'd his charge with extraordinary zeal and prudence and at last with infinite courage and alacrity suffer'd Martyrdom for the Testimony of his Faith There have been great Controversies of late in the Christian World concerning his Epistles though with how little reason on their side that oppose them I have accounted elsewhere and though I shall by and by make use of their Authority and make it good too yet our present Argument is not concern'd in that dispute for whether these Epistles that at this time pass under his name be genuine or counterfeit it is certain that there was such a Man and that he wrote such Epistles and if so then he is another competent Witness of the truth of the Apostolical Testimony and his great sense of Immortality and earnest desire of Martyrdom shew his great assurance of our Saviour's Resurrection upon which they were founded so that he is another undoubted Witness of the Apostolical Tradition viz. That the Christian Faith descended from the Apostles and that they gave that proof of their Testimony that is recorded of them in the holy Scriptures And by his Testimony of the truth of all that Christianity pretends to is the Tradition of the Apostles connected with the certain History of after-times so as to leave no dark and unknown Interval wherein the Story pretended to have been formerly acted by the Apostles might have been first obtruded upon the World but on the contrary to make it undeniably evident that there could never have been any such Story had it not first descended from the Apostles But though this be enough to my purpose for attesting the truth of the Apostolical History by such a near and immediate Witness to make the Tradition of the Church certain and uninterrupted yet I will not wave that advantage that I have from this glorious Martyr's Epistles because they breathe so much the genuine spirit of the ancient Christianity especially as to the undoubted assurance of a future Immortality which shews what mighty satisfaction they had of the reality of the thing that they so firmly believed and so vehemently desired And as for the Epistles themselves they are so strongly and unanimously attested by the Records of the ancient Church that they had never been so much as question'd but for their resolute Opposition to some Mens Prejudices for they being resolved in their own Innovation of Church-government contrary to that of the Apostolical and primitive Constitution which these Epistles so zealously assert and that as establisht by the command of God and thereby made necessary to the peace of the Christian Church they had no way left but stubbornly I ought to have said impudently to reject their Authority But alas that is so admirably vouched as if the Providence of God had purposely design'd to secure their credit for ever And particularly in the first place by his Friend Policarp who sent a Copy of them to the Church of Philippi with a Letter of his own now Policarp's Epistle was never question'd nay it was for some hundred years after publickly read in the Churches of Asia how then is it possible to avoid so clear and certain a Testimony as this they have no other way but onely by saying that this particular passage was foisted in without any shadow of ground for the surmise nay contrary to the common sense of Mankind that an Epistle so universally known to the learned and the unlearned should be so easily corrupted and the corruption never taken notice of and when this counterfeit passage was thrust into it contrary to the faith of all the publick Books it should pass down uncontroul'd and unquestion'd to all after-ages Nay farther if it were forged it must have been before the time of Eusebius who gives an account of it and believes it genuine and yet himself affirms that it was at his time publickly read in Churches as Saint Jerome afterwards that it was in his now it is a very probable thing that Eusebius would be imposed upon by one private Copy contrary to the faith of all the publick Books or that he should impose the mistake upon all that followed him when the same Books were preserved in the same publick manner till the time of Saint Jerome But beside this they have another shift altogether as groundless and not less bold viz. That it is true that there had been such Epistles of Ignatius that Policarp speaks of but that a little before Eusebius his time the true ones were lost and a counterfeit Copy put upon the World which as it is nothing but meer conjecture for the sake of a desperate cause and void of all pretence of probability so it is incredible in it self and not possible in the course of humane Affairs that such a famous Writing of such an ancient and apostolical Bishop of such an eminent and glorious Martyr written at such a time at the
so near and yet so prodigious And when they had as it was an easie matter assured themselves of its truth and reality this could not but provoke them to an eager enquiry after the meaning of so strange a thing And when they were assured that the Miracle was wrought by the Followers of that Jesus who was lately crucified and that they declared themselves Eye witnesses of his Resurrection from the dead and withall professed that they were endued with this power of Miracles from Heaven onely for an undoubted evidence and confirmation of the truth of their Testimony they had not power to withstand the force of such a mighty and astonishing demonstration And it was this demonstration of the Spirit and of Power as Saint Paul styles it rather than the strength of their Arguments as cogent as they were that first baffled the unbelieving World into Christianity and forced in the assents of Men to the truth and Divine Authority of its Doctrine They did not put their Auditours to the trouble of examining the validity of their Testimony but prevented all enquiries by this infallible confirmation The evidence of their Miracles was such an irrefragable Argument of the truth of their Testimony as surmounted the power of all other demonstration And what rational Man would stay to expect any other proof of a Divine Testimony that has seen it unquestionably attested by a Divine Power Or who could doubt and dispute after he had seen Devils dispossest the Sick healed and the dead raised This was such an almighty attestation to their preaching that it upbraided away their Scruples and bore away their Understandings And by this means it was that the Gospel prevail'd so easily and so speedily over all the World Its first preachers converted whole Cities and Nations in a moment and founded new Churches upon one undeniable Miracle and nothing less considering all circumstances of things and all the disadvantages under which it laboured could so soon have propagated the Gospel over all the World And thus if we trace the Apostolical History we scarce find any thing transacted without a Miracle insomuch that the People at length familiarly resorted to them for the cure of all kind of Diseases Acts 5. 12. And this power was so vulgarly known at that time that Saint Paul insists upon it as the proof of his true Apostleship Rom. 15. 18 18. 2 Cor. 12. 12. which had been too absurd a thing to alledge to his Followers in confutation of his Enemies if it had been a meer Fiction for if it were they knew it to be so when he appeals to the Signs and Wonders he had already wrought among them and if he had wrought none they could not but convict him of falshood But though I have already proved the certainty of the Records of the New Testament and so might from thence rationally enough make out the truth of these Apostolical Miracles and though I have in part proved the sufficiency of the Tradition of the Church to attest both them and all things contained in them and shall anon more distinctly shew the undoubted and uninterrupted conveyance of it from the very Apostles themselves so that if they had not been true they could never have gain'd belief yet in this present Argument I will not build upon these or any other suppositions and indeed if I suppose them this Argument would be needless for once granting the Scriptures to be true and authentick Records of the Apostles actions to what purpose is it to go about to prove that they were endued with a power of Miracles when the Record alone is an undoubted proof of it And therefore I onely argue from the nature of the thing it self viz. That it is impossible the Christian Faith lying under all those disadvantages above represented could ever have been propagated with that speed and facility that it was all the World over any other way than by this power of working Miracles and on the contrary that supposing this evidence that they gave the World by their Miracles that then it was natural and almost necessary that they should meet with the success they did Here then lies the force of my present Argument that when it was impossible they should compass their design any other way and when it was natural if they took this course to succeed in it and when it is certain that they had such wonderfull success that is a manifest Argument that they were endued with such a power of Miracles as is reported of them And therefore I did not produce those Testimonies of Scripture but now alledged as proofs to justifie the truth of the Argument but onely as instances to exemplifie the practice of it v. g. how incredible it is that 3000 People when they heard the Apostles affirm at Whitsontide that the same Jesus whom they had seen so shamefully executed at Easter was risen from the Grave and ascended into Heaven should so immediately believe them upon their bare Report but when they beheld that miraculous effect of the Holy Ghost in them whereby such illiterate Persons were enabled to speak all manner of Languages that alone could not but satisfie them of the truth of their Testimony So that I argue not from the truth of the Record but from the nature of the thing it self which could not have been done any other way than as it is recorded to have been done I might here also confirm the truth of their Miracles by the confession of their greatest Enemies in that I do not find that ever any of them denied them to have been done but instead of that ascribe them to the power of Magick though how foolish that evasion is I shall shew when I come to consider their evasions to this Argument at present this very surmise is a plain confession of the reality of the thing it self and that goes a great way as to evidence when coming out of the mouth of an Adversary but this having suggested I shall not farther insist upon it § XXIV Onely there is one thing remaining that adds great force to the strength of this Argument viz. That this power was not meerly confined to the Apostolical Age but was continued down to the next Ages of the Church which if true it is an undeniable Evidence of the truth of the Apostolical Miracles in particular and of the Divinity of the Christian Religion in general And yet of the truth of these we have no one thing for which we have better Records It is unanimously attested by all Writers of those times and that in such a publick and extraordinary way as raises their Testimony up to certain demonstration for they do not barely report it but they upbraid it to all their Adversaries as a thing undeniable they challenge Emperours Proconsuls the whole Senate in their Apologies and publick Writings to convince them by experiment they urge it in their Disputes with learned Men and dare them to contradict it