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 therfore 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 senses 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 Scripture and I know that learned men have arts by obscure places to confound the plainest just as the Philosopher did motion Neither am I so perverse and singular not to think that universal practise and profession of the Church does much assure and confirm explications of Scriptures whether obscure or plain But this I say that the diversities of explication come as I now said from the diversity of principles or rather prejudices and that this only is the cause of it I thus demonstrate First in the Socinian who interprets all those Scriptures which the Catholic world hath still apply'd to the Divinity and satisfaction of Christ that I name no more points otherwise then the Church did alway and I affirm he does it not because he thinks the words do favor his interpretation but because his principle requires it namely this To admit nothing into his faith but what agrees with that which he counts reason which in a Socinians faith is judg of all points in the last resort And I mean reason upon natural principles and thus I prove it Socinus speaking of Christ's satisfaction says the word is not in Scripture yet if it were there very often I would not believe it because it does not consist with right reason that is with the arguments that he had brought against it drawn from human principles And therefore he there adds those things which 't is apparent cannot be i. e. that appear such to him who judges by the principles of natural reason which yet cannot judg of supernatural and infinite beings tho the Holy Scripture does expresly say they are yet must not be admitted idcirco sacra verba in alium sensum quam ipsa sonant per inusitatos etiam tropos quandoque explicantur aud for this reason we make use of even unusual tropes strain'd figures to explain the words of Holy writ to other senses then the words themselves import And so he therfore serves that great variety of words by which the Scripture does express Christs suffering for our sins in our stead as our sacrifice against the universal notions of those words not only which the Church of Christ but which the Jew's and which the heathen world had of them And when his reason told him that Christ could not be God one with his Father that he was so far from having any being from eternity as that he was not at all till he had a being from the Blessed Virgin Therfore when the Scripture saies directly I and the Father are one he must strain it to this meaning are of one mind we agree in one altho St Iohn avert that by distinguishing those two expressly Yea worse when to prove that Christ had a being e're the world was made we urge from the first Chap. to the Hebr. what St Paul produces from the Psalms and does apply to him most particularly Thou Lord in the beginning hast lai'd the foundation of the earth and the Heavens are the works of thine hands they shall perish but thou remainest and they all shall wax old as does a garment and as a vesture shalt thou fold them up and they shall be changed but thou art the same and thy years shall not fail They explain it thus that God by Christ will at last destroy these Heavens and this Earth and change them according to that saying in the Psalms which altho the Apostle produce at length as it stood there both concerning the Creation and destruction of the world yet he intended only to apply this last to Christ. And tho he say as well of the same Lord Thou Lord in the beginning didst lay the foundation of the earth and the heavens are the works of thine hands as thou shalt change them yet he meant no more but that this change God would effect by Christ. It is not possible that the text can give any the least countenance to this interpretation The different explication of this Scripture does not come from the obscurity of any words in it for in the Psalm they and we understand the same words in the same sense exactly therefore that we differ here is not from any thing in the words quoted but is wholly from the Principle And we may not wonder for the plain sense will not sute with their Hypothesis There are no other that are instanc'd in as differing from us in points of faith but the Romanists I know not whether they account those differences to be in things necessary to salvation If that be true that they allow for what cause they know best some that are reconcil'd to their Church to communicate with ours that is join in our worship and by doing so own the
when he calls it body he is instituting his Sacrament there 's all reason in the world he should mean Sacramentally since 't is the most proper meaning and by consequence 't is bread substantially as all waies of judging in the world assure us Here 's no stress on Scripture as there is no Principle to serve when as the other makes us differ not in Scripture only even where 't is plainest but tradition too For the most express and evident sayings of the primitive Fathers are on every head of difference as much the matter of contention as the texts of Scripture are as it were easy to demonstrate if that were my business So that it is meer deceit to lay our quarrels to defects in Gods word and particularly to its obscurity which a man would think were evident enough from this that Children knew it The last thing I am to speak to And that from a child thou hast known the holy Scriptures which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Iesus I cannot pass this that it is St Chrysostomes observation that Timothy was nurst up in the Scriptures from his childhood Yea and since his Father was an Heathen he must have bin taught them by his Grandmother Loïs and his Mother Eunice whose faith St Paul speaks of 2 Tim. 1. 5. Children therfore then and Women and they sure are Laics read the Bible Yea and since they knew it they must read it in a language which they understood and we know where that is unlawful now If we consider the first prohibition that appear'd in that Church with Synodical autority against such mens having any Bibles in their own tongue we shall find it was immediately upon the preaching of the Waldenses one of whose doctrines it was that the Scripture was the rule to judg of faith by so that whatsoever was not consonant to that must be refus'd This they preach't in France and over Europe in the latter end of the 12 Century and that Council which forbad their having of the Bible we find lately put forth by the frier D. Achery as held at Tholouse in the beginning of the 13th Century It seems they apprehended then their doctrines hardly would abide that touchstone And they therfore had no surer more compendious way for its security then to prevent such trial taking care men should not know what was or what was not in Scripture And it is not possible for me to give account why in their catechising they leave out all that part of the commandments Thou shalt not make to thy self any graven image c. but this only that they dare not let the laity compare their doctrine and their practice with that Scripture But tho it is possible they might conceive some danger if the whole Scripture should be expos'd yet in those portions which the Church it self chose out for her own offices the little lessons and Epistles and Gospels those sure one would think were safe no not their Psalter Breviary nor their Hours of the Blessed Virgin must they have translated in their own tongue as that Council did determin And truly when the Roman Missal was turn'd lately into French and had bin allow'd to be so by the general Assembly of the Clergy in the year 1650. and when it was don it had the usual approbation of the Doctors and some Bishops and then was printed at Paris with the license of the Vicars general of their Archbishop Yet another general assembly of the Clergy the year 1660 whereat there were 36 Bishops upon pain of excommunication forbid any one to read it and condemn not only that present traduction but the thing in general as poysonous in an Encyclical Epistle to all the Prelates of the Kingdom and in another they say of him that did translate it and the vicars general that did defend him in it that by doing so they did take armes against the Church attaquing their own Mother namely by that version at the Altar in that sanctuary that closet of her spouses mysteries to prostitute them and in another Epistle they beseech his Holiness Pope Alexander 7th to damn it not in France alone but the whole Church which he then did by his Bull for ever inter dicting that or any other version of that book forbidding all to read or keep it on severest paines commanding any one that had it to deliver it immediately to the Inquisitor or Ordinary that it might be burnt forthwith Now thus whatever it be otherwise the mass is certainly a sacrifice when 't is made a burnt offering to appease his holiness's indignation when that very Memorial of Christs passion again suffers and their sacred offices are martyr'd To see the difference of times 't was heretofore a Pagan Dioclesian a strange prodigy of cruelty who by his edict did command all Christians to deliver up their Bibles or their bodies to be burnt 'T was here his Holiness Christs Vicar who by his Bull orders all to give up theirs that is all of it that they will allow them and their praiers also that they may be forthwith burnt or themselves to be excommunicated that is their souls to be devoted to eternal flames And whereas then those only that did give theirs up were excommunicate all Christians shun'd them as they would the plague and multitudes whole regions rather gave themselves up to the fire to preserve their Bibles now those only that have none or that deliver up theirs are the true obedient sons of that Church and the thorough Catholics I know men plead great danger in that book it is represented as the source of monstrous doctrines and rebellions I will not say these men are bold that take upon them to be wiser then Allmighty God and to see dangers he foresaw not and to prevent them by such methods as thwart his appointments but I will say that those who talk thus certainly despise their hearers as if we knew not Heresies were hatcht by those that understood the Bible untranslated and as if we never heard there were rebellions among them that were forbid to read the Bible For if there were a Covenant among them that had it in their own tongue so there was an Holy League amongst those men that were deni'd it While those that had the guidance of the subjects conscience were themselves subject to a forreign power as all Priests of that communion are How many Kings and Emperors have there bin that did keep the Scriptures from their people but yet could not keep their people from sedition nor themselves from ruine by it In fine when God himself for his own people caus'd his Scripture to be written in their own tongue to be weekly read in public to and day and night in private by the people and when the Apostles by the inspiration of the Holy Ghost indited Scripture for the world they
did it in the language that was then most vulgar to the world what God and the Holy Spirit thus appointed as the fittest means for the Salvation of the world to define not expedient as the Holy Fathers of Trent did looks like blasphemy against God and the Holy Spirit But blasphemies of this kind are not to be wonder'd at from that kind of men that call the Scripture a dumb judg a black Gospel incken Divinity written not that they should be the rule of our faith and Religion but that they should be regulated by submitted to our faith that the autority of the Church hath given canonical autority to Scriptures and those the chief which otherwise they had not neither from themselves nor from their authors And that if the Scriptures were not sustain'd by the autority of the Church they would be of no more value then Aesops fables And lastly that the people are permitted to read the bible was the invention of the Devil But to leave the controversy and speak to the advantages which may be had from early institution in the Scripture 't is so evident that I need not observe how 't is for want of principles imprest and wrought into the mind in Childhood that our youth is so licencious And 't is not possible it can be otherwise when they have nothing to oppose to constitution when t is growing and to all the temtations both of objects and example no strict sense of duty planted in them no such notions as would make resistance to the risings of their inclination and seducements of ill company and they therefore follow and indulge to all of them And in Gods name why do parents give their Children up to God in their first infancy deliver him so early a possession of them as if they would have Religion to take seizure on them strait as if by their baptizing them so soon they meant to consecrate their whole lives to Gods service make them his as soon as they were theirs as if they had bin given them meerly for Gods uses And they therfore enter them into a vow of Religion almost as soon as they have them why all this if accordingly they do not season and prepare them as they shall grow capable Why when they are but newly born their children do they take care they shall be regenerate and born again Gods children if they do not furnish them with necessaries educate them into all the qualities and hopes that appertain to the condition of Gods children as well as they do to that of their own That parent which not only like some delicate ones refuses her own breasts to her own infant but provides no other to sustain it that does only wash her babe from i'ts first blood and uncleanness to expose it the more handsom prey to wolves and tigers in the desert is more savage then those tigers even the sea monsters draw out the breasts they give suck to their young ones saith lamenting Ieremy but he adds the daughter of my people is cruel like the Ostrich in the wilderness which leaveth her eggs in the earth and forgetteth that the foot may crush them or that the wild beast may break them shee is hardned against her young ones such are they who when their children are so born again to God yet as they shall wax capable provide not that which St Peter calls the sincere milk of the word that they may grow thereby but from their being washt so in the laver of regeneration take no more care but expose them forthwith to such lusts and conversations as are much more wild and savage then those beasts in the comparison to which they cannot choose but be a prey They strive indeed they say to educate them into men betimes that is make them conversible and bold and since for that they must engage them into frequent company where they see and hear mens follies that I say no worse by that means they come to have their understandings stor'd with nothing but the Modes and sins of conversation fill'd with froth and puddle men betimes only thus as they have forwarded their inclinations to and got an early understanding and experience of those vices which one would think men only could be equal for But by this means the mind that only part that makes us be men is not only not improv'd but dwarft They do not only still continue children in their understanding as to any thing that 's real and solid but the hopes of reason are destroy'd in them and its growth kill'd by turniug all its nurishment to feed the beast part and the Christian is quite starv'd There needs no other cause be given for the most part why so many men have no Religion own being Libertines and profess vice for want of education they have nothing in them that does check this for they had no principles of a Religion instil'd into them And if at any time it comes to pass that they think it is their interest to take upon them the profession of some Religion they therfore since they have no Principles nor rules to judg by are most apt to choose to profess that Religion which is like to be most gentle to the courses they have steer'd and are engag'd in Now that men hope to find such an one whether by its constitution I shall not enquire but by i'ts practice is but too appaernt Accordingly when they go over to it they carry with them and preserve in it the vices of their no Religion and by consequence they went not over seriously for Religion and are therfore so much worse now then when they own'd no Religion that they do their wickednesses with certainty of easy absolution and so hopes of salvation and by this are likely to be made twofold more children of Hell then before and let them triumph in such conquests Ther 's nothing in the world that contributes so much to this as mens being not acquainted early with instructed in those divine rules and obligations to piety and virtue which this book the Bible does afford If men had bin season'd first with the knowledg and the sense of duty with the comforts that are in it with the apprehensions of great blessings that attend it and the mischiefs that are consequent indeed essential to impiety and vice here and their minds were furnisht with examples of both which this book abounds with and their hearts too rais'd with expectations of far greater blessedness in a life hereafter and with the belief that both that blessedness and life shall have no end and were made sensible also of strange dreadful torments that await the breach of duty which shall also last for ever If these impressions I say did prevent all other and take up the mind and had in them the stamp and character of God and so there were a reverence and awe of him wrought in them and they
THE Divine Autority AND USEFULNESS OF THE Holy Scripture ASSERTED IN A SERMON On the 2 Timothy 3. 15. By R. ALLESTREE D. D. and Chaplain in Ordinary to his Majesty OXFORD At the THEATER 1673. 2. Tim. 3. 15. And that from a child thou hast known the holy Scriptures which are able to make thee wise unto salvation throughx faith which is in Christ Iesus THE words are part of St. Pauls reasoning by which he presseth Timothy to hold fast the truth he had receiv'd and not let evil men seducers work him out of what he had bin taught urging to this end both the authority of the Teacher himself who had secur'd the truth of his doctrine by infallible evidence and beyond that as if that were a more effectual enforcement pressing him with his own education in the Scriptures how he had bin nurst up in that faith suckt the Religion with his milk that it was grown the very habit of his mind that which would strengthen him into a perfect man in Christ and make him wise unto salvation if he did continue in the faith and practise of it which he proves in the remaining verses of the Chapter In the words read there are three things observable 1. Here is a state suppos'd Salvation and put too as of such concernment that attaining it is lookt upon as wisdom wise unto salvation Now since true wisdom must express it self both in the end that it proposeth and the means it chooseth for that end to be pursued with and attain'd by and take care both these have all conditions that can justify the undertaking and secure the prudence of it and this wisdom to salvation therefore must suppose both these in order to them both we have here 2. That which with all divine advantage does propose this end and alsox does prescribe most perfect means for the attaining it and that is Holy Scripture through faith which is in Christ Iesus Thou hast known the holy Scriptures which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Iesus Holy Scripture probably of the Old Testament for there was hardly any other Timothy could know from a child scarce any other being written then The faith of that then through the faith which is in Christ Iesus that is together with the faith of all things necessary to be known concerning Christ is meant Now since St. Iohn after the view of all that the other three Evangelists had wrote concerning Christ adding his story also says that Christ did and spoke more then what is written yet affirms most positively that those things were written that we might believe that Iesus is the Christ the Son of God and believing might have life through his name and so enough is written for that faith which is in Jesus that is necessary to eternal life therefore the Holy Scripture of the Old Testament together with the faith of what is written in the New is that which St. Paul affirms is able to make us wise unto salvation 3. Here is the advantage Timothy had above others as to Faith in these and consequently the far greater obligation to continue in it He had known them from a child And that from a child thou hast known the holy Scripture c. The first thing that does offer it self to our consideration is the state suppos'd Salvation But because my Text supposes it I shall do so too nor shall think it needful to prove here that there is such a state nor consequently that all those are stupid who propose not to themselves this everlasting safety for their main end and by strict care in the duties of Religion and Gods service aime at it for if that state be granted nay if it be but possible it must be granted that there can be no security but in doing so nor consequently any wisdom without being wise thus unto salvation But then if this were granted that the wisest thing man could propose to himself were by strict care in all the duties of Religion to design Gods honor and his own salvation still as to the other part of prudence which consists in the choice of means we are to seek for that Religion we are to pursue this end by and attain it since there are so many and so opposite Religions in the word that 't is not easier to reconcile them then to make peace betwixt enemies and contradictions And it alwaies was so for excepting that mankind agree'd still in the notion of the necessity of Religion that all had apprehensions of invisible powers above us and differ'd not much in the rules of Justice and Morality in other things there was no nearness Almost from the beginning there was more variety of Gods then Nations I had almost said then Worshippers Beasts were their Sacrifices and their Deities and therefore the votaries were certainly no better Vices also were their worships things which their Cities and their Camps would not endure found Sanctuary in their Temples and the actions which were whipt in the Judgment-hall were their piety in the holy places And tho some wise men among them found good reason to decry this yet they knew not what to take up in the stead I need not add the present differences of the world even that call'd Christian too great part of which as heretofore they seal'd their faith with their own blood now seal it in the blood of all that differ from them and by their persecutions hope to merit Heaven more then those did hope to gain it by their Martyrdoms But these I need not add to make up this into a demonstration that it is impossible for lapsed men so far as they are left to themselves and have no other guide to follow but their reason to find out what they are to believe of God and how to serve him and save themselves The Fathers and Philosophers too conclude that we can learn from none but God what we must understandx of God who must be known only as he himself is pleas'd to revele himself His worship also how he will be serv'd and what observances he does require or will admit since it depends on his own good plesure therefore without his directions 't is in vain to hope to please him with our Religious service whatever it be and by consequence impossible without his guidance and assistance to acquire the end of all our Service and Religion the salvation of our souls So that how wise soever he be who does propose this blessed end to himself if yet withall he be not some way from the Lord instructed by what means he must pursue that end and do not make choice of and use those means it is impossible he can be wise unto salvation Now for this St. Paul assures us most expresly here we may be furnished For he saies The Holy Scriptures are able to make us wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Iesus And he