that they used the method which I now direct you to And if you consider it well you will find that the miracles of Christ himself and all those of his Apostles after him were wrought for the confirmation of Christianity it self immediately and mostly before the particular Epistles or Books were written and therefore were only remotely and consequentially for the confirmation of those Books as such as they proved that the Writers of them were guided by the infallible Spirit in all the proper work of their office of which the writing of the Scriptures was a part 1. Therefore settle your belief of Christianity it self that is of so much as Baptism containeth or importeth This is more easily proved than the truth of every word in the Scriptures because there are controversies about the Canon and the various readings and such like And this is the natural method which Christ and his Spirit have directed us to and the Apostles and the ancient Churches used And when this is first soundly proved to you then you cannot justly take any textual difficulties to be sufficient cause of raising difficulties to your faith in the essentials But you may quietly go on in the strength of faith to clear up all those difficulties by degrees I know you will meet with some who think very highly of their own mistakes and whose unskilfulness in these things is joyned with an equal measure of self conceitedness who will tell you that this method smells of an undervaluing of the Scripture But I would advise you not to depart from the way of Christ and his Apostles and Churches nor to cast your selves upon causeless hinderances in so high a matter as Saving Faith is upon the reverence of the words of any perverted factious wrangler nor to escape the fangs of censorious ignorance We cannot better justifie the holy Scriptures in the true Method than they can in their false one And can better build up when we have laid the right foundation than they can who begin in the middle and omit the foundation and call the superstructure by that name 2. Suspect not all Church-history or Tradition in an extreme opposition to the Papists who cry up a private unproved Tradition of their own They tell us of Apostolical Traditions which their own faction only are the keepâ—rs of and of which no true historical evidence is produced And this they call the Tradition of the Church But we have another sort of Tradition which must not be neglected or rejected unless we will deny humanity and reject Christianity Our Traditio tradens or active Tradition is primarily nothing but the certain history or usage of the universal Christian Church as Baptism the Lords day the Ministry the Church Assemblies and the daily Church exercises which are certain proofs what Religion was then received by them And 2. The Scriptures themselves Our Traditio tradita is nothing else but these two conjunctly 1. The Christian Religion even the Faith then professed and the Worship and Obedience then exercised 2. The Books themselves of the holy Scriptures which contain all this with much more But we are so far from thinking that Apostolical Oral Tradition is a supplement to the Scriptures as being larger than them that we believe the Scriptures to be much larger than such Tradition and that we have no certainty by any other than Scriptural Tradition of any more than the common matters of Christianity which all the Churches are agreed in But he that will not believe the most universal practice and history of the Church or world in a matter of fact must in reason much less believe his eye-sight 13. When you have soundly proved your foundation take not every difficult objection which you cannot answer to be a sufficient cause of doubting For if the fundamentals be proved truths you may trust to that proof and be sure that there are waies of solving the seeming inconsistent points though you are not yet acquainted with them There are few Truths so clear which a sophister may not clog with difficulties And there is scarce any man that hath so comprehensive a knowledge of the most certain Truths as to be able to answer all that can be said against it 14. Come not to this study in a melancholy or distracted frame of mind For in such a case you are ordinarily incapable of so great a work as the tryal of the grounds of Faith And therefore must live upon the ground-work before laid and wait for a fitter time to clear it 15. When new doubts arise mark whether they proceed not from the advantage which the tempter findeth in your minds rather than from the difficulty of the thing it self And whether you have not formerly had good satisfaction against the same doubts which now perplex you If so suffer not every discomposure of your minds to become a means of unbelief And suffer not Satan to command you to dispute your faith at his pleasure For if he may chuse the time he may chuse the success Many a man hath cast up a large account well or written a learned Treatise or Position well who cannot clear up all objected difficulties on a sudden nor without Books tell you all that he before wrote especially if he be half drunk or sleepy or in the midst of other thoughts oâ— business 15. When you are once perswaded of the truth of Christianity and the holy Scriptures think not that you need not study it any more because you do already confidently believe it For if your faith be not built on such cogent evidence as will warrant the conclusion whether it be at the present sound or not you know not what change assaults may make upon you as we have known them do on some ancient eminent Professors of the strictest Godliness who have turned from Christ and the belief of immortality Take heed how you understand the common saying of the Schools that Faith differeth from Knowledge in that it hath not Evidence It hath not evidence of sense indeed nor the immediate evidence of things invisible as in themselves but as they are the conclusions which follow the principles which are in themselves more evident It is evident that God is true and we can prove by good evidence that the Christian Verity is his Revelation And therefore it is evident though not immediately in it self that the matter of that word or revelation is true And as Mr. Rich. Hooker truly saith No man indeed believeth beyond the degree of evidence of truth which appeareth to him how confidently soever they may talk I remember that our excellent Vsher answered me to this case as out of Ariminensis that faith hath evidence of Credibility and science hath evidence of Certainty But undoubtedly an evidence of Divine Revelation is evidence of Certainty And all evidence of Divine Credibility is evidence of Certainty though of humane faith and credibility the case be otherwise 16. Yea think not that you have
attestation by the same threefold impress of his Image before described 1. In the holy Wisdom and Light which was in their doctrine 2. In the holy Love and Piety and Purity which was conspicuous in their doctrine and in their lives 3. And in the evidences of divine Power in the many gifts and wonders and miracles which they wrought and manifested And these things seem a fuller testimony than the miracles of Christ himself For Christs miracles were the deeds of one alone and his resurrection was witnessed but by twelve chosen witnesses and about five hundred other persons and he conversed with them but forty daies and that by times But the miracles of the Disciples were wrought by many and before many thousands at several times and in many Countreys and for many and many years together and in the sight and hearing of many of the Churches So that these first Churches had sight and hearing to assure them of the divine miraculous attestation of the truth of their testimony who told them of the doctrines miracles and resurrection of Christ And all this from Christs solemn promise and gift John 14.12 Verily verily I say unto you He that believeth on me the works that I do shall he do also and greater works than these shall he do because I go to the Father But if it be demanded How did the next Christians of the second age receive all this from the first Churches who received it from the Apostles I answer by the same evidence and with some advantages For 1. They had the credible humane testimony of all their Pastors Neighbours Parents who told them but what they saw and heard 2. They had a greater evidence of natural infallible certainty For 1. The doctrine was now delivered to them in the records of the sacred Scriptures and so less liable to the misreports of the ignorant forgetful or erroneous 2. The reporters were now more numerous and the miracles reported more numerous also 3. They were persons now dispersed over much of the world and could not possibly agree together to deceive 4. The deceit would now have been yet more easily detected and abhorred 3. But besides this they had also the supernatural testimony of God For the Apostles converts received the same spirit as they had themselves And though the miracles of other persons were not so numerous as those of the Apostles yet the persons were many thousands more that wrought them All this is asserted in the Scripture it self as Gal. 3.3 4. 1 Cor. 14. 12. and many places And he that should have told them falsly that they themselves had the spirit of extraordinary gifts and miracles would hardly have been believed by them And all this also the following Ages have themselves asserted unto us The question then which remaineth is How we receive all this infallibly from the subsequent Ages or Churches to this day The answer to which is still by the same way with yet greater advantages in some respects though less in others As 1. We have the humane testimony of all our ancestors and of many of our enemies 2. We have greater evidence of natural certainty that they could not possibly meet or plot together to deceive us 3. We have still the supernatural divine attestation though rarely of miracles yet of those more necessary and noble operations of the Spirit in the sanctification of all true Believers which Spirit accompanieth and worketh by the doctrine which from our ancestors we have received More distinctly observe all these conjunct means of our full reception of our Religion 1. The very Being of the Christians and Churches is a testimony to us that they believed and received this Religion For what maketh them Christians and Churches but the receiving of it 2. The ordinance of Baptism is a notable tradition of it For all that ever were made Christians have been baptized And Baptism is nothing but the solemn initiation of persons into this Religion by a vowed consent to it as summarily there expressed in the Christian Covenant And this was used to be openly done 3. The use of the Creed which at Baptism and other sacred seasons was alwaies wont to be professed together with the Lords Prayer and the Decalogue the summaries of our faith desire and practice is another notable tradition by which this Religion hath been sent down to following Ages For though perhaps all the terms of the Creed were not so early as some think thus constantly used yet all the sense and substance of it was 4. The holy Scriptures or Records of this Religion containing integrally all the doctrine and all the necessary matter of fact is the most compleat way of tradition And it will appear to you in what further shall be said that we have infallible proof that these Scriptures are the same which the first Churches did receive what ever inconsiderable errours may be crept into any Copies by the unavoidable oversight of the Scribes 5. The constant use of the sacred Assemblies hath been another means of sure tradition For we have infallible proof of the successive continuation of such Assemblies and that their use was still the solemn profession of the Christian Faith and worshipping God according to it 6. And the constant use of Reading the Scriptures in those Assemblies is another full historical tradition For that which is constantly and publickly read as the doctrine of their Religion cannot be changed without the notice of all the Church and without an impossible combination of all the Churches in the world 7. And it secureth the tradition that one set day hath been kept for this publick exercise of Religion from the very first even the Lords day besides all occasional times The day it self being appointed to celebrate the memorial of Christs Resurrection is a most currant history of it as the feast of unleavened bread and the Passeover was of the Israelites deliverance from Egypt And the exercises still performed on that day do make the tradition more compleat And because some few Sabbatarians among our selves do keep the old Sabbath only and call still for Scripâ—ure proof for the institution of the Lords day let me briefly tell them that which is enough to evince their errour 1. That the Apostles were Officers immediately commissioned by Christ to disciple the Nations and to teach them all that Christ commanded and so to settle Orders in the Church Mat. 28.19 20 21. Acts 15. c. 2. That Christ promised and gave them his Spirit infallibly to guide them in the performance of this commission though not to make them perfectly impeccable John 16.13 3. That de facto the Apostles appointed the use of the Lords day for the Church Assemblies This being all that is left to be proved and this being matter of fact which requireth no other kind of proof but history part of the history of it is in the Scripture and the rest in the history of all following Ages In
the Scripture it self it is evident that the Churches and the Apostles used this day accordingly And it hath most infallible history impossible to be false that the Churches have used it ever to this day as that which they found practised in their times by their appointment And this is not a bare narrative but an uninterrupted matter of publick fact and practice So universal that I remember not in all my reading that ever one enemy questioned it or ever one Christian or Heretick denyed or once scrupled it So that they who tell us that all this is yet but humane testimony do shew their egregious inconsiderations that know not that such humane testimony or history in a matter of publick constant fact may be most certain and all that the nature of the case will allow a sober person to require And they might as well reject the Canon of the Scriptures because humane testimony is it which in point of fact doth certifie us that these are the very unaltered Canonical Books which were delivered at first to the Churches Yea they may reject all the store of historical tradition of Christianity it self which I am here reciting to the shame of their understandings And consider also that the Lords day was settled and constantly used in solemn worship by the Churches many and many years before any part of the New Testament was written and above threescore years before it was finished And when the Churches had so many years been in publick possession of it who would require that the Scriptures should after all make a Law to institute that which was instituted so long ago If you say that it might have declared the institution I answer so it hath as I have shewed there needing no other declaration but 1. Christs commission to the Apostles to order the Church and declare his commands 2. And his promise of infallible guidance therein 3. And the history of the Churches order and practice to shew de facto what they did And that history need not be written in Scripture for the Churches that then were no more than we need a revelation from Heaven to tell us thas the Lords day is kept in England And sure the next Age needed no supernatural testimony of it and therefore neither do we But yet it is occasionally oft intimated or expressed in the Scripture though on the by as that which was no further necessary So that I may well conclude that we have better historical evidence that the Lords day was actually observed by the Churches for their publick worship and profession of the Christian Faith than we have that ever there was such a man as William the Conquerour in England yea or King James much more than that there was a Caesar or Cicero 8. Moreover the very Office of the Pastors of the Church and their continuance from the beginning to this day is a great part of the certain tradition of this Religion For it is most certain that the Churches were constituted and the Assemblies held and the worship performed with them and by their conduct and not without And it is certain by infallible history that their office hath been still the same even to teach men this Christian Religion and to guide them in the practice of it and to read the same Scriptures as the word of truth and to explain it to the people And therefore as the Judicatures and Offices of the Judges is a certain proof that there have been those Laws by which they judge especially if they had been also the weekly publick Readers and Expounders of them and so much more is it in our case 9. And the constant use of the Sacrament of the body and blood of Christ hath according to his appointment been an infallible tradition of his Covenant and a means to keep him in remembrance in the Churches For when all the Churches in the world have made this Sacramental Commemoration and renewed covenanting with Christ as dead and risen to be their constant publick practice here is a tradition of that faith and Covenant which cannot be counterfeit or false 10. To this we may add the constant use of Discipline in these Churches it having been their constant law and practice to enquire into the faith and lives of the members and to censure or cast out those that impenitently violated their Religion which sheweth that de facto that Faith and Religion was then received and is a means of delivering it down to us Under which we may mention 1. Their Synods and Officers 2. And their Canons by which this Discipline was exercised 11. Another tradition hath been the published confessions of their Faith and Râ—lâ—gâ—on in those Apologies which persecutions and calumnies have caused them to write 12. And another is all those published Confutations of the many heresies which in every age have risen up and all the controversies which the Churches have had with them and among themselves 13. And another is all the Treatises Sermons and other instructing writings of the Pastors of those times 14 And another way of tradition hath been by the testimony and sufferings of Confessors and Martyrs who have endured either torments or death in the defence and owning of this Religion In all which waies of tradition the doctrine and the matter were joyntly attested by them For the Resurrection of Christ which is part of the matter of fact was one of the Articles of their Creed which they suffered for And all of them received the holy Scriptures which declare the Apostles miracles and they received their faith as delivered by those Apostles with the confirmation of those miracles So that when they professed to believe the doctrine they especially professed to believe the history of the life and death of Christ and of his Apostles And the Religion which they suffered for and daily professed contained both And the historical Books called the Gospels were the chief part of the Scripture which they called The Word of God and the Records of the Christian Religion 15. To this I may add that all the ordinary prayers and praises of the Churches did continue the recital of much of this history and of the Apostles names and acts and were composed much in Scripture phrase which preserved the memory and professed the belief of all those things 16. And the festivals or other dayes which were kept in honourable commemoration of those Apostles and Martyrs was another way of keeping these things in memory Whether it were well done or not is not my present enquiry only I may say I cannot accuse it of any sin till it come to over-doing and ascribing too much to them But certainly it was a way of transmitting the memory of those things to posterity 17. Another hath been by the constant commemoration of the great works of Christ by the dayes or seasons of the year which were annually observed How far here also the Church did well or ill I now meddle
they are only the adequate form or record of that which is strictly and primarily called our Religion or Christianity For there are divers particular Books of the New Testament which contain much more than is essential to Christianity And many appurtenances and histories and genealogies and circumstances are there recorded which are indeed subservient helps to our Religion but are not strictly our Religion it self 8. As the use of the Scripture must thus be judged of according to the purpose of the holy Spirit so the Perfection of the Scripture must be judged of in relation to its intended use It was not written to be a systeme of Physicks nor Oratory nor to decide grammatical Controversies about words but to record in apt expressions the things which God would have men to know in order to their faith their duty and their happiness And in this respect it is a perfect word But you must not imagine that it is so far the word of God himself as if God had shewed in it his fullest skill and made it as perfect in every respect both phrase and order as God could do And if you meet in it with several words which you think are less grammatical logical or rhetorical than many other men could speak and which really savour of some humane imperfection remember that this is not at all derogatory to Christianity but rather tendeth to the strengthening of our faith For the Scriptures are perfect to their intended use And God did purposely chuse men of imperfect Oratory to be his Apostles that his Kingdom might not be in word but in power and that our faith might not be built upon the wisdom and oratory of man but on the supernatural operations of the Almighty God As David's sling and stone must kill Goliah So unlearned men that cannot out-wit the world to deceive them shall by the Spirit and Miracles convince them Looking for that in the Scripture which God never intended it for doth tempt the unskilful into unbelief 9. Therefore you must be sure to distinguish the Christian Religion which is the vital part or kernel of the Scriptures from all the rest And to get well planted in your mind the summ of that Religion it self And that is briefly contained in the two Sacraments and more largely in the Creed the Lords Prayer and the Decalogue the summaryes of our Belief Desire and Practice And then wonder no more that the other parts of Scripture have some things of less moment than that a man hath fingers nails and hair as well as a stomach heart and head 10. Distinguish therefore between the Method of the Christian Religion and the Method of the particular Books of Scriptures The Books were written on several occasions and in several Methods and though that method of them all be perfect in order to their proper end yet is it not necessary that there be in the Method no humane imperfection or that one or all of them be written in that method which is usually most logical and best But the frame of Religion contained in those Books is composed in the most perfect method in the world And those systemes of Theology which endeavour to open this method to you do not feign it or make it of themselves but only attempt the explication of what they find in the holy Scriptures Synthetically or Analytically Though indeed all attempts have yet fallen short of any full explication of this divine and perfect harmony 11. Therefore the true Order of settling your faith is not first to require a proof that all the Scriptures is the Word of God but first to prove the marrow of them which is properly called the Christian Religion and then to proceed to strengthen your particular belief of the rest The contrary opinion which hath obtained with many in this Age hath greatly hindered the faith of the unskilful And it came from a preposterous care of the honour of the Scriptures through an excessive opposition to the Papists who undervalue them For hence it comes to pass that every seeming contradiction or inconsistency in any Book of Scripture in Chronology or any other respect is thought to be a sufficient cause to make the whole cause of Christianity as difficult as that particular text is And so all those Readers who meet with great or inseparable difficulties in their daily reading of the Scriptures are thereby exposed to equal temptations to damning infidelity it self So that if the Tempter draw any man to doubt of the standing still of the Sun in the time of Joshua of the life of Jonas in the belly of the Whale or any other such passage in any one Book of the Scriptures he must equally doubt of all his Religion But this was not the ancient method of faith It was many years after Christs resurrection before any one Book of the New Testament was written and almost an Age before it was finished And all that time the Christian Churches had the same Faith and Religion as we have now and the same foundation of it That is the Gospel preached to them by the Apostles But what they delivered to them by word of mouth is now delivered to us in their writings with all the appurtenances and circumstances which every Christian did not then hear of And there were many Articles of the Christian Faith which the Old Testament did not at all make known As that this Jesus is the Christ that he was born of the Virgin Mary and is actually crucified risen and ascended c. And the method of the Apostles was to teach the people the summ of Christianity as Paul doth 1 Cor. 15.3 4 c. and Peter Act. 2. and to bring them to the belief of that and then baptize them before they wrote any thing to them or taught them the rest which is now in the holy Scriptures They were first to Disciple the Nations and baptize them and then to teach them to observe all things whatever Christ commanded And the main bulk of the Scriptures is made up of this last and of the main subservient histories and helps And accordingly it was the custom of all the Primitive Churches and ancient Doctors to teach the people first the Creed and summ of Christianity and to make them Christians before they taught them so much as to know what Books the Canonical Scriptures did contain For they had the summ of Christianity it self delivered down collaterally by the two hands of tradition 1. By the continuation of Baptism and publick Church-professions was delivered the Creed or Covenant by it self And 2. By the holy Scriptures where it was delivered with all the rest and from whence every novice was not put to gather it of himself but had it collected to his hand by the Churches And you may see in the writings of all the ancient defenders of Christianity Justin Athenagoras Talianus Clemens Alexandrinus Arnobius Theoph. Antioch Lactantius Tertullian â—usebius Augustine c.
not But doubtless the observing of anniversary solemnities for their commemoration was a way of preserving the memory of the acts themselves to posterity How long the day of Christs Nativity hath been celebrated I know not Reading what Selden hath said on one side and on the other finding no currant Author mention it that I have read before Nazianzene and finding by Chrysostome that the Churches of the East till his time had differed from the Western Churches as far as the sixth of January is from the 25 of December But that is of less moment because Christs birth is a thing unquestioned in it self But we find that the time of his fasting forty daies the time of his Passion and of his Resurrection and the giving of the Holy Ghost were long before kept in memory by some kind of observation by faâ—ts or festivals And though there was a controversie about the due season of the successive observation of Easter yet that signified no uncertainty of the first day or the season of the year And though at first it was but few daies that were kept in fasting at that season yet they were enough to commemorate both the forty daies fasting and the death of Christ 18. And the histories of the Heathens and enemies of the Church do also declare how long Christianity continued and what they were and what they suffered who were called Christians such as Plinies Celsus Porphyry Plotinus Lucian Suâ—tonius and others 19. And the constant instruction of Children by their Parents which is Family-tradition hath been a very great means also of this commemoration For it cannot be though some be negligent but that multitudes in all times would teach their children what the Christian Religion was as to its doctrine and its history And the practice of catechizing and teaching children the Creed the Lords Prayer and the Decalogue and the Scriptures the more secured this tradition in families 20. Lastly A succession of the same Spirit which was in the Apostles and of much of the same works which were done by them was such a way of assuring us of the truth of their doctrine and history as a succession of posterity teleth us that our progenitors were men The same spirit of Wisdom and Goodness in a great degree continued after them to this day And all wrought by their doctrine and very credible history assureth us that many miracles also were done in many ages after them though not so many as by them Eusebius Cyprian Augustine Victor Vlicensis Sulpitius Severus and many others shew us so much as may make the belief of the Apostles the more easie And indeed the Image of Gods WISDOM GOODNESS and POWER on the souls of all true Christians in the world successively to this day considered in it self and in its agreement with the same Image in the holy Scriptures which do imprint it and in its agreement or sameness as found in all Ages Nations and Persons is such a standing perpetual evidence that the Christian Religion is Divine that being still at hand it should be exceeding satisfactory to a considerate Believer against all doubts and temptations to unbelief And were it not lest I should instead of an Index give you too large a recital of what I have more fully written in my foresaid Treatise I would here stay yet to shew you how impossible it is that this Spirit of Holiness which we feel in us and see by the effects in others even in every true Believer should be caused by a word of falshood which he abhorreth and as the Just Ruler of the world would be obliged to disown I shall only here desire you by the way to note that when I have all this while shewed you that the SPIRIT is the great witness of the truth of Christianity that it is this spirit of Wisdom Goodness and Power in the Prophets in Christ in the Apostles and in all Christians expressed in the doctrine and the practices aforesaid which I mean as being principally the Evidences or objective witness of Jesus Christ and secondarily being in all true Believers their teacher or illuminater and sanctifier efficiently to cause them to perceive the aforesaid objective Evidences in its cogent undeniable power And thus the Holy Ghost is the promised Agent or Advocate of Christ to do his work in his bodily absence in the world And that in this sense it is that we Believe in the HOLY GHOST and are baptized into his Name and not only as he is the third person in the Eternal Trinity And therefore it is to be lamented exceedingly 1. That any Orthodox Teachers should recite over many of these parts of the witness of the SPIRIT and when they have done tell us that yet all these are not sufficient to convince us without the testimony of the Spirit As if all this were none of the testimony of the Spirit and as if they would perswade us and our enemies that the testimony which must satisfie us is only some inward impress of this Proposition on the mind by way of inspiration The Scriptures are the Word of God and true Overlooking the great witness of the Spirit which is his special work and which our Baptism relateth to and feigning some extraordinary new thing as the only testimony And it is to be lamented that Papists and quarrelling Sectaries should take this occasion to reproach us as Infidels that have no true grounded faith in Christ as telling us that we resolve it all into a private inward pretended witness of the Spirit And then they ask us who can know that witness but our selves and how can we preach the Gospel to others if the only cogent argument of faith be incommunicable or such as we cannot prove Though both the Believing soul and the Church be the Kingdom of the Prince of Light yet O what wrong hath the Prince of Darkness done by the mixtures of darkness in them both So much for the first Direction for the strengthening of Faith which is by discerning the Evidences of Truth in our Religion CHAP. VIII The rest of the Directions for strengthening our Faith I Shall be more brief in the rest of the Directions for the increase of Faith and they are these Direct 2. Compare the Christian Religion with all other in the world And seeing it is certain that some way or other God hath revealed to guide man in his duty unto his end and it is no other you will see that it must needs be this 1. The way of the Heathenish Idolaters cannot be it The principles and the effects of their Religion may easily satisfie you of this The only true God would not command Idolatry nor befriend such ignorance errour and wickedness as doth constitute their Religion and are produced by it as its genuine fruits 2. The way of Judaism cannot be it For it doth but lead us up to Christianity and bear witness to Christ and of it self is evidently insufficient its