of the Bible The ancient Heathens reproaching the Primitive Christians that they grounded all their Doâ—â—rine upon meer Belief that their Religion consisted In sola ratione credendi and that their simple Faith was all they had to trust to The Christians complained of the Charge as a gross and impudent Calumny appealed to Reason for Proof of their Belief and offered to joyn Issue with them upon that Title And as they that owe their Belief of the Bibles being the Word of God to Report Principles of Education or the Felicity of their Birth and the Clime where they were born receive the Scripture upon no better Motives than the Turks do the Alcoran So if pretended Inspiration may pass for a Demonstration of the Truth of what every bold Pretender will obtrude upon us We expose our selves not only to the Belief of every Groundless Imagination but of innumerable Contradictions For not only the grossest Follies but Doctrines palpably repugnant both to Reason and one another have been delivered by Enthusiasts and pretended Inspirato's I readily grant that the Testimony of the Holy Ghost in the Souls and Consciences of men to the Truth of the Scripture is the most convincing Evidence that such Persons can have of it's Divinity But 1 st The Holy Ghost convinceth no man as to the Belief of the Scripture without Enlightning his mind in the Grounds and Reasons upon which it's proceeding from God is evidenced and established There is no Conviction begot by the Holy Ghost in the Hearts of men otherwise than by rational Evidence satisfying our Understandings through a discovery of the Motives and Inducements that ascertain the Truth of what he would convince us of 2. No mans particular Assurance obtained thus in way of Illumination by the Holy Ghost is to be otherwise urged as an Argument of Conviction to another than by proposing the Reasons which our Faith is erected on The way of such Mens Evidence is communicable to none unless they could kindle the same Rayes in the Breasts of others that have Irradiated their own and therefore they must deal with others by producing the grounds of their Conviction not pleading the manner of it And that an other is convinced or persuaded by them depends wholly upon the weight and Momentousness of the Reasons themselves not on the manner that such a person came to discover them For should he have arrived at the discerning them by any other Mean they had been of the same Significancy to the Conviction of an Adversary 3. The Holy Ghost as a distinct Person in the Deity is not a Principle demonstrable by Reason Seeing then it is by the Scripture alone that we are assured of the Existence of the Divine Spirit as a distinct Person in the Godhead therefore his Testimony in the Hearts and Consciences of men to the Scripture cannot be allowed as a previous Evidence of it's Divinity To prove the Divine Authority of the Scripture by the Testimony of the Holy Ghost when we cannot otherwise prove that there is a Holy Ghost but by the Testimony of the Scripture is to argue Circularly and absurdly I know the Papists to be even with the Protestants for the Circle we charge on them in their proving the Church by the Scriptures and the Scripture by the Church do pretend to fasten the same way of Circular Argumentation upon us in that we prove the Spirit by the Scripture and the Scripture by the Spirit Whereas even those Protestants who contend that the Spirit and Scripture do mutually prove one another may easily acquit themselves from a Circle Seeing whatever Proof the Scripture and Spirit mutually Minister to one another it is in Diverso genere The Scripture proves the Spirit either in way of Witness by plainly testifying that there is such a Being as the Divine Spirit or Objectively and by way of Argument bringing into Light such Truths as can be conceived to proceed from none other save 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 From the Holy Ghost But then the Spirit proves the Scripture not in way of a naked Witness nor in way of Argument but under the notion of an Efficient Cause Elevating and preparing our Understandings to discern the Lineaments Characters and Signatures of Divinity which God hath impressed upon the Scriptures which through that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is upon our Minds we many times do not at all discern much less do we at any time discern 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 without it Or else by giving Efficacy to Scripture Truths in and upon our Hearts and Consciences so that the Word arriving with us 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the Demonstration of the Spirit and Power we have 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by the effectual Working of his Power 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a spiritual Sense and Taste of the things themselves And this Spiritual Gust that I may use Origen's Phrase is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a Diviner thing and more Convincing than any Demonstration For the Word of God as well as God himself is best known 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by an Intellectual Touch as the Philosopher sayes But as I have said already this is no convincing Proof to an Adversary nor doth the evidence of it reach further than the party immediately concerned And therefore our Recourse must be to Arguments of another Nature In brief when we have to do with such as either Question or Deny the Divine Authority of the Scripture we are to prove it by Ratiocination from common Principles received amongst Mankind and by Topicks that lye even and proportionated to Intellectual Nature And here Reason is justly magnified as hugely Subservient to Religion in that it demonstrates the Divine Authority of the Scripture upon which our Faith as to all particular Articles and Duties of Religion is grounded Not do I doubt but that Reason can acquit it self in this Undertaking to the Conviction of all that are not wilfully obstinate and for such I know no means either sufficient or intended by God to satisfie them Many great Men both Ancient and Modern as well at Home as Abroad have already laboured and to good purpose in this Theme Nor can there be much added by any to what is already said much less am I likely to do it Neither is it my Intention to treat this Subject at large but rather to touch at the Heads of Arguments than handle them And I suppose this will sufficiently answer my Designe which is to vindicate the Non-Conformists from the Aspersions lately cast upon them as if they were Defamers of Reason disclayming it from all Concern in Religion and deserving to be charged with the Reproach which Julian slanderously fastned upon the Primitive Christians that they had no Ground for their Faith but that their Wisdom was only to Believe 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Method I shall here confine my self to shall be First To justifie the Necessity of some Supernatural Revelation in order to
is the same pleasure to me to have my Notions confuted when unsound as it is to be restored to health when I have been sick § 8. Having briefly viewed the serviceableness of Reason as to the demonstrating the Divinity of the Scripture we may ere we make any further proceed infer and conclude from hence its Authority For upon its Divine Original doth its Authority bear The formal reason of our submitting our Hearts and Consciences to the Bible is Gods speaking in it The Authority of God is his right to command and require Obedience and it is founded not only in the supereminence of his Nature but his Relation to us as our maker Having made us Rational Creatures capable of moral Government he may accordingly Rule us by Laws backt with promises and threatnings I acknowledg that de facto men may withdraw themselves from under the Authority of God and may deny him Obedience but that militates nothing against the Right that is vested in Him of ruling them nor the obligation that they are under of obeying him Now the Authority of the Scripture ariseth from its being Gods Word and his speaking in it Nor are the most momentous Reasons of that significancy to determine our Assent as the Testimony of a person of infinite Power Wisdom Goodness and Truth What greater Assurance can we have to ascertain our belief than that the affirmer is infinitely Wise and cannot be deceived himself and infinitely Good and cannot deceive others To say as the Papists do that the Scripture hath its Authority in se in its self from its self but that it hath its Authority quoad nos with respect to us from the Testimony of the Church is to talk without either Reason or sense For 1 Authority being a Relative Term nothing can have Authority in it self which hath it not in respect of others Nothing is a Law properly but what is a Law to some It is impossible to suppose an actual Right in any to Command without supposing an obligation in some to obey If the Scripture therefore have no Authority from it self in respect of us it neither hath nor can have any Authority in its self at all 2 If the Scripture have no Authority with respect to us but what it hath from the Church how comes the Church it self to be under an Obligation to receive and obey it There can be no obligation but in Relation to some Antecedent Authority and if there be no such Authority obliging the Church to receive the Scripture there should be no Sin in her rejecting it 3 If the Scripture have no Authority from its self and Gods speaking in it with respect to us then the Church should be the first Credible which is altogether false it being by the Scripture that we both know that there is a Church and how far her Testimony is to be trusted to 4. every Testimony is posterior to the thing testified and is accordingly true or false as it is agreeable or disagreeable to the nature of the Thing it beareth witness to If therefore the Scripture have any Authority with respect to us upon the Testimonial of the Church it behoved to have it antecedently In a word if God have not a Right of commanding us independently on the Testimonials of the Church then no private Revelation that ever God made or could make of himself to any is of the least force or significancy Nor could they to whom God by Visions Dreams Inspirations or otherwise made himself his Mind and Will known take upon them to give forth and publish to others what was thus revealed to them till they had the Testimony of the Church that it was Authentick Having established the Authority of the Scripture upon its true basis namely on its being Gods Word and speaking in it Now forasmuch as no man either is or can be obliged to believe a lie We may hence learn what to judg of that Notion of Des-Cartes and some others viz. Deum posse fallere si velit that God can deceive if he please No one denies but there both may be and are those things in the Word of God which men may turn into occasions of being Deceived all that is contended for is this that there can be nothing in a Revelation from God which may be a proper Cause of Error To say that God may Deceive if he would is no less than to affirm that he may cease to be God if he would God can do nothing but what in sensu diviso abstracting from his Decree to the contrary he may Will to do If we prove therefore that it is repugnant to the Nature of God to be Willing to deceive his Creatures we at the same time demonstrate that it is contradictory to his Power to do so First then If God may Deceive if He please what assurance have we but that he hath and may chuse to do it Nor is it enough to say that he hath told us that he will not for if he may deceive at all I know nothing hinders but that he may even then deceive us when he informs us he will not Secondly no one can deceive an other but it must proceed either from Ignorance Errour or Malice but all these interfere with the Nature of God and by consequence this posse fallere lyes cross to his Nature also To deceive argues either want of Wisdom Goodness or Veracity and therefore in no sense can God Deceive seeing he can neither cease to be Wise nor give over to be Good nor fail to be True Thirdly though a finite ignorant and mistaken Creature may impose upon us without saying one thing when he thinks another Yet it is impossible that an Infinite Wise and Omniscient Being should deceive any but that at the same time he must lie But that God cannot lie we have both the Testimony of Scrpture Tit. 1.2 and the highest assurance that Reason can give us Hence no one ever acknowledged a Deity but he withall included in his Nature 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to speak nothing but truth § 9. Having unfolded the Nature and Quality of the Motives that our assent to the Divinity of Scripture is raised on we may hence infer that our Belief of the Bibles being the Word of God is Divine and Infallible For as Doctor Hammond sayes in another case if the Person affirming be Infallible then is the Belief of such a Person Infallible also So if the Grounds of our Assent to the Scriptures being a Revelation from God be Infallible our Assent which is built upon these Grounds is Infallible likewise Assents are not specificated and Denominated from their Objects nor yet from the Faculties that elicite them but from the Foundations and Grounds on which they are raised Whilst then the Motives upon which we believe the Scripture are more than Moral our assurance of it's Divinity is more than Moral also For as we distinguish between the Consequent and the
sense and the Mystical that they do both together make up one entire compleat sense of the place Yea it may be said that in all propositions which admit a Literal and a Mystical sense though there be but one Explicite Enunciation yet there are two implicitely And if any have a mind upon this account to distinguish betwixt the Literal sense and the Mystical they may for me nor will I quarrel with them But to assign a plurality of coordinate or Ambiguous senses to one and the same text is the height of Madness invented only to reproach the Scripture and to make way for the Authority of the Church in the expounding of it and is indeed repugnant not only to the perspicuity of the Scripture but to the unity of Truth and the end of Gods revealing the Word which is to instruct us in Faith and Obedience for wheresoever there is a Multiplicity of Disparate Senses we can never be sure that we have attained to the true meaning of any one proposition Now when we enquire into the Sense of Scripture and asseâ—t its being Intelligible we always distinguish betwixt the perspicuity of the Object and the capacity of the Subject actually to understand it The easiness of the Scripture to be understood in respect of it self and our disposedness to understand it right are things vastly distant The Sense of the Word may be in it self facile and plain though in the mean time it remain dark and obscure to those who have shut their eyes or that have their understanding defiled tinctur'd and darkned by fuliginous vapours The Bible is only plain to such who apply themselves to the study of it without prepossessions prejudice and forestalled judgments are withall humble and diligent in the use of means to find out the meaning of it Though the Ethereal Regions be replenished with rayes of light emitted from the great Luminary yet it is both necessary that men have eyes and that they open them in order to their discovering and receiving the benefit of it If our understandings either from that darkness and ignorance which they are enveloped and muffled with through the Fall or from malignant Habits occasioned either by unhappy education or sensual lusts do not discern the sense and meaning of Scripture it is no impeachment of its perspicuity but a manifestation of our weakness corruption and folly Besides when we speak of the plainness of the Scripture its easiness to be understood we always put a difference betwixt Scripture Texts relating to Doctrines of Faith manners which are absolutely necessary to be known and such of whose Sense we may be safely ignorant the Doctrines they refer to having no indispensable connexion with Salvation The whole Will and Mind of God as to all that is needfull to be known in order to our duty and Happiness is revealed in the Scripture without any such ambiguity or obscurity as should hinder it from being understood though God in his Soveraign Wisdome hath in many things whose simple Ignorance doth not interpose with Salvation left many hard and difficult Texts partly to make us sensible of the weakness of our Understandings partly to imploy our minds unto diligence partly to induce us to implore Divine instruction and to make us depend upon God for illumination and partly to exercise our Souls unto reverence But in Fundamental Truths the Case is otherwise for the end giving measure and fixing bounds unto means it is not consistent with the Wisdom and Goodness yea nor Justice of God to leave that hard to be understood which upon no less peril than the hazard of Salvation he hath required the indispensable knowledg of As first principles of Reason need no proof of their Truth being self-evident to every one that understands the Import of Terms So Fundamental Doctrines of Religion carry an Evidence in the plainness and perspicuity of their Revelation that every one who reads the Bible without prejudice and a perverse mind may be satisfied that such Doctrines are there proposed Nor is it any Argument that those Texts of Scripture where such Articles are revealed are not easy to be understood because some out of prejudice or perversness have wrested them to a Corrupt sence seeing God did not endite the Bible for the froward and Captious but for such who will read it with a free and unprejudiced mind and are willing to come to the knowledge of the Truth For as Aristotle says in the Case of the first principles of Reason 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 A self Evident Principle is not Evident to all men but only to such who have found and undepraved Understandings Topic. 6. Cap. 4. So it is no impeachment of the perspicuity of the Revelation of Fundamental Truths of Religion that men who have their minds defiled and darkned by Lusts infected with evil Opinions and filled with prejudices do not believe and acknowledg them And by the way while all Truths absolutely necessary to be known are easy and plain and while we are indispensably obliged to believe and receive whatsoever is so an Enumeration of Fundamental Truths is neither necessary nor useful and possibly not safe Now as all Doctrines necessary to be Understood are so revealed in the scripture that they are easy enough to be so so being understood they are as well the Standard and Measure by which dark and obscure Texts are to be interpreted as the Key to the opening of them As Curve lines are best discerned when applied to straight so are Heterodox senses imposed on Obscure Texts of Scripture best perceived when examined by their Habitudes to necessary and plain Truths Whatsoever bears not a Symmetry with the Foundation can be no Superstruction of God And whatsoever Notion either Formally or Virtually directly or consequentially interfere's with a fundamental Truth though never so many Texts be pressed in the proof of it we maybe sure both of its falsity and that they are all wrested and mistaken But though the Scripture be most plain in points necessary to Salvation yet no one Text of the Bible is in it self unintelligible for as Dr. More say's to affirm that the Holy Writ is in it elf unintelligible is aequivalent to the pronouncing it nonsense or to averr that such and such Books or Passages of it were never to be understood by men is to insinuate as if the Wisedome of God did not only play with the Children of men but even fool with them Mons. Wolzogen therefore in his late Book de Interprete Scripturarum hath not only in this matter shamefully betrayed the Protestant cause but reflected reproach upon the Spirit of God There are somthings says he in the Scripture which we cannot understand not through any defect or fault of our Minds or through the Sublimity Majesty of the Doctrines themselves but through the Frame of the Scripture it self and the manner in which they are revealed If there be but one
supposing this be true the inference of his being only a Metaphorick Priest is not to be avoided and consequently all the Texts where he is any wayes stiled a Priest are to be understood only Metaphorically For if his Priestly and Kingly Offices be not distinct either his Regal Office must be reduced to and included in his Sacerdotal which our Author will not affirm and if he should he would only gain by it the making Christ a Metaphorick King instead of a Metaphorick Priest or else his Sacerdotal Office must belong to and be included in his Regal being only a readiness to exercise that Authority and Power for his Church which as a King appertains to Him And if so then those innumerable places of Scripture which report Christ to be a Priest to have given himself a Sacrifice to God for us to have expiated Sin to have made atonement and to have rendred God propitious are every one of them Metaphorical I have insisted the longer on this Opinion of Mr. Sherlock concerning Christs Priestly Office being only a different part and administration of his Mediatory Kingdome 1 st to make it appear that by Charging Socinianism upon some of our late pretended Rational Divines we do not transform them into any thing but what they are The truth of the imputation rather than the foulness seems to be that which makes them angry As the Historian tels us of Tiberius that he was both the readier to believe the more offended at something which was said of Him because it was the true report of his guilt so I wish it were not as much the Justness as the Odiousness of the Character of Socinian which renders some men stingy But 2 ly the main reason of my insisting upon these passages was to demonstrate that whereas they arraign the Non-Conformists for turning the plainest Scriptures into Metaphors the crime lodgeth especially with themselves and that the principles which they have Espoused are not otherwise defensible but by turning the plainest Scriptures into Metaphors So that here Clodius accusat maechos And providing Mr. Sherlock will abide by his Notion That the Offices of Prophet Priest and King are not properly distinct Offices in Christ I do here undertake to prove by easy trains of deduction that for one Text capable of a proper sense which the Phanaticks pervert by imposing a Metaphorick one upon it he lyes under a necessity if he will preach or write consequentially to his Tenets of wresting twenty in the same manner § 10. But this is not the only opinion imbib'd by our Author which I impeach as pregnant with this mischief His Notion of Justification being attended with the same inconvenience nor is it any ways maintainable but by perverting innumerable Texts from their plain and natural sense to a Metaphorick In the prosecution of this Charge I shall first give a true representation of his thoughts about Justification and then endeavour to demonstrate that besides what else lyes against him it is accompanied with this fatal unhappiness of turning a great part of the Bible into meer insignificant and empty Metaphors His sentiments then in reference to Justification are these That we are only Justified by our believing and obeying the Gospel of Christ. That the Sacrifice of Christs Death and the Righteousness of his life have no other Influence upon our acceptance with God but that to them we owe the Covenant of Grace That is God being well pleased with the Obedience of Christs life and the sacrifice of his Death for his sake entred into a New Covenant with Mankind wherein he promiseth pardon of Sin and eternal life to those who believe and obey the Gospel so that the Righteousness of Christ is not the formal Cause of our Justification but the Righteousness of his life death is the meritorious Cause of that Covenant whereby we are declared Righteous rewarded as Righteous persons The Covenant of Grace which God for Christs sake hath made pardoning our past sins follies and rewarding a sincere though imperfect Obedience The Gospel by its great arguments motives and powerfull assistances forms our minds to the Love and practice of Holiness and so makes us inherently Righteous and the grace of the Gospel accepts and rewards that sincere Obedience which according to the Rigor and severity of the Law could deserve no reward This I take to be a true account of Mr. Sherlocks Judgement about Justification and I have quoted it in his own words that he may neither complain of his being imposed upon nor the Reader question the Truth and sincerity of this representation And as whosoever consults the pages I referr to will find that I treat my adversary with faithfulness so if they compare them with some other places where he hath declared himself with less Modesty they will have reason to say that I have exposed his Opinion in the favourablest manner I could Now I design not any accurate ventilation of this great Theme nor any severe research into Mr. Sherlocks faileurs in the manage of it nor a Critical survey of his neglect of Truth as well as Modesty in treating his Adversaries about it nor yet his partiality in arraigning only the Non-conformists when he could not but know that the most Eminent Persons that ever the Church of England bred as well as the Generality of Protestant Divines are equally involved having appeared in the Defence of that very Notion of Justification which he so invidiously represents and tragically declaime's against those for The full handling of Justification stands reserved for other hands who in due time will retrive the spoyles wherewith our Author hath enriched his Wardrobe and strip him of the Lawrels wherewith he hath adorned his Temples I shall only bestow one stricture upon him and then apply to the proof of the inconvenience I have already charged his Opinion with and for which in this place I cited it In brief then I see not how the Covenant of Grace is any ways owing to the Sacrifice of Christs Death and the Righteousness of his life providing that Mr. Sherlock will be constant to and write consonantly to some of his other principles For if the Natural Notions which men have of God assure them that he is very Good and that it is not possible to understand what Goodness is without pardoning Grace as our Author elsewhere tells us I say supposing this to be true I see not how the Righteousness of Christs life and Death can be the meritorious cause of Gods forgiving our sins and Follies for as much as his Essential Goodness obliged him to it I take it for a principle of Reason that nothing can be merited which is due upon an Antecedent Title Merit in its essential Notion importing an acquisition of a Right which we had not before there can be no room for it in reference to that which we stood entitled to by the natural goodness of
words which the Holy Ghost teacheth comparing spiritual things with spiritual And as I have endeavoured to regulate all my Conceptions by Scripture and Reason so whatever Proposition shall be made appear to lye in a Repugnancy to these I am ready openly to retract it If any shall attaque these Discourses with Reviling Reproachful Language I do declare before-hand that I reckon my self superseded from Replying I will combat no man at these weapons nor do I think it a reputation 〈◊〉 any to Rail how much in Fashion soever it is though he should be able to do it in fine Language How often Mr. Sherlock hath contradicted himself and by what falsifications he hath imposed Principles on the Non-conformists which they never held how he treats the Sacred Writers with as much contempt as he doth T. W. and Burlesques the Scripture no less than others have done Virgils Poems how he hath renounced the Doctrine of the Church of England and borrowed his Glosses on the Bible as well as his Dogmatical Notions from the Socinians how Illogical he is in all his deductions and slandereth his Adversaries by undue Inferences should have been the Theme and Argument of this Preface and accordingly I had digested Materials for it but the Book being swell'd to too great a bulk already and there being others engaged against the same Author within whose Province these things must needs lye as having undertaken the arraignment of his whole Discourse I do wave the prosecution of them all at this time And shall detain the Reader no longer than to tell him that since the Printing off the first Chapter which treats of the Interest of Reason in Religion there is come to my hands a Treatise of Humane Reason in which there are many iâ—l things though as it often happens they be well said I know not an Opinion more pernicious in its Consequences than that Men may be as safe in the Event by embracing Turcism as Christianity and as secure of happiness in their Errours as others are in the Truths which they do espouse Should Persons conspire to overthrow all Revelation they could not fall upon a Method more likely to effect it than by endeavouring to persuade the World that there are things equally as strange in the Bible as in the Alcoran 'T is enough that our Reason may serve us if duely attended to and pursued to discern that this or that Religion is false nor are we therefore to be judged Innocent because we neglect the Exercise of it in making the Discovery No man can embrace a false Religion but by a Criminal Deviation from Reason and who will admit one Transgression to take Sanctuary in another That whole Treatise proceeds upon a false Hypothesis namely that as mens belief of the Scripture is owing to the conduct of Reason so they may disbelieve it by the same Guidance Corrupt Ratiocinations are recommended by the Name of Humane Reason and being once cloathed with this Livery every Foolery as well as Abomination appeals to them if not for its justification at least for its being but a Venial offence No man ceaseth to be an Offender in Morals nor doth he therefore deserve pardon because he hath the concurrence of his judgment in what he does Though no man can chuse or prosecute what his understanding continues to represent to him as Evil yet its failâ—ur in point of duty neither alters the Essential Nature of things nor makes his condition more safe for acting under the conduct of it Some men would have no restraint laid upon their Vnderstandings because they will submit to none in their lives and they would have their corrupt Ratiocinations in Doctrinals as Venial as they seem in reference to Manners to presume the gratifying of their Lusts to be 'T is to be hop'd that for the undeceiving such as are already imbu'd with the principles of it and for the preventing others from being â—ainâ—ed and inveigled some one or other will bring the whole under an Examen In the interim I shall adventure to say that 't is as weak in regard of the Reasonings which occur in it as it is pernicious in its tendency Farewell THE CONTENTS CHAP. I. Of the Interest and Use of Reason in Religion INtroduction 1. Motives influencing to the handling of this subject 2. The Import of Reason 3. What 's meant by Religion 4. The serviceableness of Reason in demonstrating the Existence of a Deity with an account of the Topicks on which it proceeds 5. It s usefulness in proving the Divinity of the Scripture with the several Media which it makes use of to this purpose 6.7 Of the Authority of the Scripture as emerging from its Divine Original 8. Our Belief of the Bibles being the Word of God Divine and Infallible seeing built upon Media that are so 9. The serviceableness of Reason in our attaining the sense and meaning of the Word with an account of the Measures which we are herein to be guided by 10. Of Scripture-Consequences and the usefulness of Reason in making the Deductions 11. What appertains to Reason in reference to Doctrines which besides the Foundation they have in Revelation have also evidence in the Light of Nature this exemplified with respect to the Immortality of the Soul and the certainty of Providence 12. The concernment of Reason in defending the whole of Religion from the Clamors and Objections of Gainsayers 13. Nothing contradictious to Right Reason to be admitted as a Mystery of Faith Many things obtruded for Principles of Reason which are not so The prejudice done Religion by mistaken Philosophy pursued and declared in various instances 14. CHAP. II. Of the Import and Use of Scripture Metaphors THe Inducements upon which some men endeavour to discharge all Disputes in and about Religion The Grounds of their Quarrelling at Metaphors with an account of the reasons of my discoursing this Theme 1. No Forms of speech used by the Holy Ghost but what are proportioned to the end for which they are made use of The Bible adorned with all sorts of Figurative Expressions Some fancy more Tropes in the Bible than there are Mr. Sherlock among others guilty of this 2. The Nature of a Metaphor what Tropes it hath affinity with the Rules and Lines by which it is distinguished from them 3. The Reason why God who doth all things according to infinite sapience hath so often adopted Metaphorical Terms to declare himself and the Things of his Kingdom in and by 4. When an Expression is to be accounted Metaphorical 5. How to attain the true conceptions that are lock't up under Metaphors 6. An Enquiry into the use of other common Metaphors with an account of their usefulness and the Measures that are to be attended to in the Vsurpation of them 7. The Non-conformists injuriously charged for their Vsage of Metaphors the Contempt thrown upon them falls often with the same weight upon the Holy Ghost None so Guilty of turning Religion into
sensual Appetites clogg'd and hindred by the distemperature of indisposed Organs not to mention the prepossessions and anticipations of Infancy the prejudices of Education with the deceits and impositions we are liable to by the delusion of external Objects for such the World is filled with since disorder and confusion arrested it However Reason considered thus namely as denoting the rational Faculty though even corrupted by the Fall is First That which disposeth and adapteth us for converse with objects of Revelation As the Light of the Sun had been useless to us had we not enjoy'd an Organ suited to receive the impression of its Beams so all supernatural Revelation had been both impertinent and superfluous were we not endow'd with Faculties fitted to converse with it God in all his Transactions with us supposeth us Rational and he is a degree worse than an Enthusiast who affirm's that the way to be a Christian is first to be a Brute Revelation doth not cassate the use of our Intellectual Powers but supposeth them and by enriching them with discoveries which they could not by their own search have arrived at it perfects them and they plainly acquiesce that these are the things they sought for but could not find There neither is nor can be any thing in Divine Revelation that overthrow's the rational Faculty or crosseth it in its Regular and Due Exercise There is a Spirit in Man And the inspiration of the Almighty giveth them understanding Job 32.8 For as Austin saith Possâ— recipere fidem est Naturae licet actu credere sit Gratiae De praedest Sanct. cap. 5. Both external Revelation and internal Illumination presuppose us to be Rational and through the want of a Faculty that is so Brutes are incapable both of the one and the other Secondly Reason taken for the intellectual Faculty or the Principle of Apprehension Judgment and Ratiocination is both the instrument whereby we certainly discern the grounds and motives of Faith and the vital Principle of the Act it self Faith is not only an Elicit act of our minds but besides there can be no act of Faith without a previous exercise of our Intellects about the things to be believed Faith being nothing but an unwavering assent to some Doctrine upon the account of a divine Testimony our Reason must be antecedently perswaded that the Testimony is Divine before it can assent to the Doctrine upon the Authority and Veracity of the Revealer Though in many things we can give no Reason for what is believed distinct from Divine Testimony yet we ought to be always able to give a Reason for the Authentickness and the Divinity of the Testimony For as Austin saith Quod intelligimus aliquid rationi debemus quod autem credimus auctoritati Lib. de utilit Credendi cap. XI The Authority of God in the Scripture is the formal reason of Assent to such and such Doctrines but it is by the means and exercise of our intellectual Faculties that we come to understand such a Declaration to proceed from God and that these things are the sense of such and such Propositions Thus the Understanding of Man is the Candle of the Lord resolving us in the Authentickness and Sense of Revelation though Faith be built upon the Credit only of the Revealer To this purpose is that of Maximus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Should I neglect the Scripture Whence should I have Knowledge Should I relinquish Reason How should I have Faith Secondly Reason is taken Metonymically for common Maxims or principles whose Truth is inviolable And these are 1. Such as be so connate to Sense and Reason that upon their bare Representation they are universally assented to These Principles are not borrowed from Reason as their first Spring and Original but having their Root in the nature of God and Essences of Things are only discerned by the Rational mind and Intellect I do not say that we are brought forth with a List and Scroll of Axioms 〈◊〉 Imprinted upon our Faculties 〈◊〉 that we are furnished with such Powers upon the first Exercise of which about such things without any Harangues of Discourse or previous Ratiocinations we cannot without doing Violence to our Rational Nature but pay them an Assent Those Truths whether Logical Moral Physical or Mathematical Whether General because of their Universal Influence upon all Disciplines or Particular from their being confined in their Use to some one Science are justly stiled Natural being Founded in the Nature of God the Essences of things and the intrinsecal Rectitude of the Rational Faculty These are the Foundations and Measures of all Science Knowledge and Discourse being in themselves certain and incontestable Nor is there any other proof to be Assigned of them besides their Consonancy to the Rational Faculty to which they are centrally co-united And forasmuch as all men paâ—take of the same Reasonable Nature the certainty of these Principles is Universal What is disconvenient to the Essential Nature of one Man being so to the Nature of another nor is it possible to dissent from them without doing Contempt to our Faculties Of this sort are these That a Thing cannot at the same time be and not be That every Effect supposeth it's cause and many such like Nor doth Theology borrow these from Philosophy but they are pre-supposed to both and Science as well as Faith builds upon them 2 dly There are others whose Truth and Certainty are not understood nor do they win our Assent upon their first and naked Representation but they are discovered by a Chain of Ratiocinations and their Verity established by a Harangue of Inductions These are stiled Acquired Principles being by an Industrious Exercise of the Discursive Faculty raised and superstructed upon the former Nor are they less True than the other though more Remote from the first View of our Understandings Whatsoever is rightly deduced from Unquestionable Premisses hath the same stamp of Truth upon it that the Principles have from which it is inferred Where there is a just Connexion between Conclusions and Principles the latter cannot be denied without questioning the former from which they are fetch 't The Deduction of these by regular Trayns of Argumentation is the work of a Philosopher and these being Systematically digested constitute Philosophy So far then as Philosophy includes only Conclusions duly inferred from Unquestionable Principles so far there is not only a Friendly Alliance between it and Divinity but a wonderful Subserviency in it to Faith Nor is any thing true in Philosophy that is not so in Theology For as Aristotle sayes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Whatsoever is true must be Consentaneous to all that is so lib. 1. Prior. Analyt cap. 32. And as he adds elsewhere 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 All Truth is consentient to Truth lib. 1. Ethic. cap. 8. What our Souls in the Regular Exercise of Reason instruct us in is as much the Voyce of God to us as any Revelation he vouchsafeth us
them upon Divine Testimony But it ought further to enquire what Inducements and Media there are in the Light of Nature by which they may be also Known and Demonstrated And as this is to be allowed to Reason in all Matters of Religion which have Foundation in Natural Light so especially in and about such Principles of it as are necessarily pre-supposed to Faith of which kind are the Being of God and the Divinity of the Scripture Though all our Religion be in an eminent Manner built upon the Divinity of the Scriptures and some parts of it know no other Foundation but the Bible and accordingly among such as own that Book for the Word of God We need no other Bottome to Erect our Faith upon nor any other Measure to regulate our Debates and to determine our Controversies by yet when the Divinity of the Scripture it self is contended about it is neither a just nor a rational Way of Procedure barely to affirm that 't is Divine but we are to prove that it is so If we will not believe the Alchoran to proceed by Inspiration from God upon the Testimony of a Mahometan no more is it to be expected that a Mussulman should believe what we call the Bible to be God's Word upon the naked Testimony of a Christian. As upon the one hand we should betray Religion to every Infidel by pretending to build our Faith upon a Book whose sacred Authority we cannot justifie so upon the other hand we oblige our selves to the worst of Drudgeries in being resolved to believe what we can give no Reason for Besides we should not only by such a Method unavoidably expose our selves to the Dictates of every Enthusiast but with all Minister a just Plea to such as dislike Religion because of it's Unfriendliness to their Lusts for the renouncing of it Now our Belief of the Scripture supposeth the Existence of God and therefore our knowledge of his Being must precede our Faith of the Divine Authority of the Bible I readily grant that the Scriptures may be brought not only to such as own their Truth but even to Infidels as a proof of a Deity But then it must not be upon the Score of their naked Testimony but upon the account of their being of such a Frame Nature and Quality that they can proceed from no other Author And thus we Arrive by the Scripture at an Assurance of God's Existence as we do at the Knowledge of a Cause by it's Effect But so far as we assent to any thing upon the Credit of the Scriptures meer Testification we are necessitated to presuppose the Existence of God it being only upon the account of his Veracity in himself and that the Bible is a Divine Revelation that we do without the least guilt of vain Credulity because upon the highest Reason implicitely believe it In discoursing the Serviceableness of Reason in demonstrating the fore-mentioned Articles together with those other Doctrines that have their Foundation not only in Revelation but also in Natural Light and such common Principles which all men assent to I shall confine my self to wonderful Brevity and rather point at Arguments than pursue them And to begin with the Existence of God Were there no Supernatural Revelation in the World there is enough both within us and without us to Convince us of the Being of a Deity Hence though God hath wrought many Miracles to Convince Infidels and Mis-Believers yet he never wrought any to Convince Atheists Nor do the Pen-Men of Scripture attempt to prove it but take it for granted as being evidently manifest both by Sensible and Rational Demonstration I shall not here insist on the Cartesian Argument drawn from an Innate and Ingraft Idea of God For upon a most serious perusal of what is alledged by Cartes himself Claubergius De Bruin Doctor More and others in Vindication of it together with what is produced by Gassendus Ezekius Vogelsangius Derkennis Doctor Parker and others against it I look upon it as little better than a Sophism and to maintain an Article of such Import by a Medium either Weak or Fallacious is to betray the first Fundamental of Religion I know no Idea's formally Innate what we commonly call so are the Results of the Exercise of our Reason The Notion of God is not otherwise inbred then that the Soul is furnished with such a Natural Sagacity that upon the Exercise of her rational Powers she is Infallibly led to the Acknowledgment of a Deity And this is first effected by her looking inwardly upon her self and her own Acts and we are with Facility and by a short way of Argumentation conducted thence to the Existence of God For 1 st We perceive that the Faculty resident in us is not furnished with all perfections and therefore not Self-existent nor indebted to it self for those it hath otherwise it would have cloathed it self with the utmost perfections it can Imagine and by consequence finding it's own Exility and Imperfection it Naturally and with Ease arrives at a perswasion of deriving it's Original from some First Supreme and Free Agent who hath made it what it is and this can be nothing but God 2 dly We perceive that we have such a Faculty that apprehendeth judgeth reasoneth but what it is whence it is and how it performeth those things we know not And therefore there must be some Supreme Being who hath given us this Faculty and understands both the Nature of it and how it knoweth which we our selves do not 3 dly Our Natures are such that assoon as we come to have the use of our Intellectual Faculties we are forced to acknowledge some things Good and other things Evil. There is an Unalterable Congruity betwixt some Acts and our reasonable Souls and an Unchangeable Incongruity betwixt them and others Now this plainly sways to the belief of a God For all distinctions of Good and Evil relate to a Law under the Sanction of which we are and all Law supposeth a Superiour who hath Right to command us and there can be no Universal Independent Supreme but God 4 ly We find our selves possessed of a Faculty necessarily reflecting on it's own Acts and passing a Judgment upon it self in all it does Which is a further Conviction of the Existence of God for it implies a Supreme Judge to whom we are accountable 5 ly We find that we are furnished with Faculties of vast Appetite and Desires and that there is nothing in the World that can satisfie our Cravings and by consequence there must be some Supreme Good adequate and proportionate to the Longings of our Souls which can be nothing but God This is his Meaning who said of the Heathen that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 By the Light of Nature they nodded after a Summum Bonum It were to put a Slur upon Nature to suppose that she hath put those Propensions and Inclinations into us only to delude and abuse us 6 ly We find the
not material and makes not to the business it self Mahometism began not till the sixth Century about which time and for a considerable season before the whole East was sorely Infected by Heresies and rent by Schisms which together with the impure Lives of the Professors of the Gospel both there and in the West might justly provoke God to permit this Deceiver to accost the World Arabia had been ever Fertile of Dotages and Dreams for besides other Hereticks the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and the Collyridians sprung from thence so that we may the less wonder that it gave Birth to the Distractions of Mahomet Obtruding a New Religion upon the World and such an one as neither Reason nor any former Revelation of God befriended it concern'd him to have justified his Mission by some Miracle or other as to what he went about But these himself plainly disclaims and though some of his Followers ascribe such to him yet there is so little brought in Proof of them and withal they are so silly and ridiculous in themselves that they serve for nothing but to disparage both the Person and Cause in whose behalf they are brought I know that all Persons who have spoken immediately from God have not had the Attestation of Miracles nor was it always needful especially when they only called Men to Obedience to that which had been sufficiently so attested before In such a Case it became the Wisdom of God to be sparing of Miracles and indeed he thereby better provided for the Credit of such Doctrines as were either really or only in appearance New and also more served the Interest of Mankind than if he should have wrought Wonders in Attestation of every ordinary Messenger and familiar Truth And this may be a reason why none of all the Pen-men of the Scripture are reported to have wrought Miracles save Moses the Giver of the Law and the Apostles the Promulgers of the Gospel But though every Herald of Heaven had not the Attestation of Miracles yet no one came inspired by God who had not some Testimony or other born to him to distinguish him from an Impostor Either the Doctrines they delivered were of that Sublimeness that no Finite Understanding could have invented them and yet when discovered were so Correspondent to our Rational desires and so perfective of our Natural Light that being duly weighed the Reason of Man acquiesceth in them and sayes this is what I look't for but could not find Or else they made known some present Matter which lay out of the reach of all Humane Knowledge such as the Secrets of the Heart or declared some Fact done either at a distance or with that Secrecy that no Man could know it Or else they foretold some future Contingent soon after to come to pass which accordingly fell out in every Circumstance Nor is it unlikely but that most if not all the Old Testament Prophets had their Missions confirm'd by the Prediction of some thing future which no Humane Prudence could fore-see Or else they were born Witness to by the Prevalency and immediate Success of their Prayers in the preventing some impendent Judgment or in the procuring some needful Mercy for thereby was declared either their Fore-sight of what God was ready to do or the Interest Favour and Power they had with him Nor is it without probability that most of the Prophets under the Mosaick Dispensation justified their Mission by some such thing But as for Mahomet though he not only pretended to speak immediately from God but withal introduced a Doctrine really New yet he came Authorized by no Miracle Sign or Badge by which he might be distinguished from an Impostor Yea whereas he owns that both Moses and Christ were sent from God it is an Infallible Argument that He was not their Doctrine and his being altogether inconsistent It hath been generally acknowledged not only by Jews and Christians but by Heathens and that agreeably to the Light of Reason that Prophetick Illapses never befel Impure and Unclean Souls and that God never made an Unhallowed Person his Oracle at least that never any such were imployed for the Divine Amanuenses Now if we examine the Alcoran by this prophetick Test we find the Author of it to have been a Person Lustful and Tyrannical made up of nothing but Bloud and Dirt grosly Sensual and prodigiously Cruel which plainly demonstrates how unfit he was to lay Claim to the prophetick Priviledge and Dignity If we consult the Doctrine of the Alcoran we have all the Evidence that the Reason of Man can desire that it neither did nor could proceed from God It is true there are some things in it stollen from the Scripture but even those are so perversely related and so wretchedly Corrupted with Fables that they lose the very similitude of Truth through the villanous Management of them Persons are so Mis-named Times are so Mistaken the whole so Interlarded with Contradictions and disguised with Absurdities that we must needs say the Contriver had a bad Memory and a worse Understanding In a word the whole Alcoran is nothing but a Cento of Heathenism Judaism and Christianity all miserably Corrupted and as wildly blended together The Doctrines of it are for the most part either impossible Blasphemous or Absurd The Rewards promised to the Embracers of it are impure and foolish The whole was at first Invented out of Pride and Ambition propagated by Violence and Rapine and is still maintained in the way 's that it was Established Profound Ignorance sensual baits and force of Arms gave it its first promotion and do still maintain its credit in the World The meanest Reason if duly exercised is able to disprove the Divinity of the Alcoran Some Revelation from God in order to our guidance in Religion being necessary and it being also needful that this Revelation should somewhere or other be consigned to writing and no other writing that we either know or ever heard of being sit to enter the list and stand competitor with the Bible in this matter we have hereby lay'd a considerable Foundation in Reason for the evincing the Divinity of the Scripture However in the Fourth place we shall further consider by what positive Media the Divine Authority of the Scripture may be rationally Demonstrated And First we shall consider it with respect to those Subjective Characters which as so many Authentick marks and infallible Signatures of its Inspiration from God are impressed upon it And these are so many Mediums of artificial Arguments to Reason by which we may Scientifically demonstrate its Divinity 'T is but reasonable to suppose that every Work of God should be of that frame and complexion as to reveal its Author We find this in the Works of Creation where there needs no other evidence to assure us who made them but what themselves are fraught with God hath left those impressions of his Infinite Power Immense Wisdom and exuberant Goodness upon them
that we need not the Authority of any Man or Church to convince us whose they are but they carry a demonstrative assurance of their Author in themselves The like evidence may be justly expected to attend the Word of God as we find to accompany his Works And indeed Gods End in Revelation being more Noble than his End in Creation and the World being more liable to be imposed on in that matter than in this 'T is but Rational to believe that He should leave at least as conspicuous and glorious impressions and characters of himself upon his Word as upon the Works of his Hands And if men in the writing of Books do not onely leave on them such an impression of Reason that we may know them to be the product of rational Creatures but withal according to their several degrees of accomplishments either as to eminency of knowledg heavenliness of mind elegancy of stile c. do imprint on them those footsteps of their several qualifications that we can for the most part by the very frame of the writing discover its individual Authour It may be justly expected that what proceeds immediately by inspiration from God should carry something in it correspondent to the Wisdom Holiness Power Omniscience and Goodness of Him from whom it Flows And yet let me premise That as we do not build our assurance of the Worlds being the Manufacture of God upon every petty Phaenomenon which like the image of Foam that Apelles struck upon his Table by a hasty cast of his pencil some may be look upon onely as a disport of matter in the fortuitous encounters of one particle with an other but we raise our persuasion on the curious Fabrick of the nobler pieces and the Harmonious Structure of the Universal Machine In like manner we are not so much to seek for the evidences of the Divinity of the Bible in every Verse and Chapter as in the complex of the whole and in the principal Parts Branches and Sections of it The intrinsick Evidences of the Divine Revelation of the Scripture may be reduced to several Heads The First Topick regards the matter of it And here the plain and convincing enlightning of us about natural Truths of which we are at best doubtful is one internal Evidence of the Divinity of the Bible The bringing into Light such things as we could never have thought of which yet being discovered have that admirable Connexion with all true Reason that we are Ravished with the Glory of Truth that shineth in them is a Second The purity and fulness of Scripture-Precepts commanding every Virtue forbiding every Vice and enjoyning nothing either superfluous or burdensome is a Third The greatness and spirituality of the Scripture-promises where we have the nature of Happiness so describ'd and stated the directions for the attainment of it so full and clear the grounds of its certainty so many and incontestable and the whole so fram'd as to be both a powerful inducement to an alacrous and uniform Obedience and a powerful Antidote against all Temptations to sin and sensuality make a Fourth The quality of Scripture Prophesies and the Events still answering the prediction is another undeniable Evidence of the Divinity of the Bible The Nature and exactness of Scripture History relating things of the greatest Weight with the greatest Truth is another Evidence arising from the subject matter of the Scripture It alone informs us of many matters of Fact which no other Writings either have or could and as the knowledg of such things was indispensably necessary so being examined as they are recorded in the Bible we find the account of them rational and satisfactory What other Nations have onely faint glimpses of in fabulous Stories of those the Scripture gives us exact and authentick Records Not to speak of the Date of the Bible it self what Book can vie with it as to antiquity of contents As all Ethnick Histories are latter than some parts of the Scripture so most of them are traductions from thence and are but parts of the Mosaick Story corrupted and debased with Egyptian being Grecian Fables Where have we such an exact and full display of the Origine and several periods of the World and the Original of Nations as the two first and tenth Chapt. of Genesis do afford us Yea in the Narration of such things whereof we have also some register in Humane Records it were not difficult to demonstrate that there are peculiar Characters in the History of the Scripture differencing it from all writings of meer Humane Original and manifesting it to be of Divine extract The Second Head of Arguments by which evidence is given to the Divine Original of the Scripture from the Characters impressed on it respect the Form of it or the manner in which things are delivered and treated And here the Majestick Authority that it dictates to mankind in is hugely remarkable In no other writing whatsoever is there that Soveraignty of Commanding usurped that the Scripture assumes It alone treats with us in a way of Supremacy Majesty and Authority becoming Him in whose Name it pretends to speak Whatever else hath laid claym to the being a Revelation from God to Mankind doth by its sneaking creeping flattering way of address evidently betray the meanness of its Original 2 dly The Stile of the Scripture doth plainly breath of God With what Brevity without Darkness with what Simplicity without Corruption with what Gravity without Affectation with what Eloquence without Meretricious Ornaments with what Plainness without Flatness or Sordidness with what Condescensions to our Capacities without Unsuitableness to the Subject Matter is the Scripture written When the Holy Inspirer of the Sacred Pen-men stoops most to our Capacities he even then retains a Prerogative in his Stile above what is to be met with in meerly Humane Writings There is that Succinctness Prespicuity Plenitude and Majesty in the Stile of Scripture-Laws that Sweetness and Spirituality in Promises that Austerity in Comminations that wonderful 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 force and Emotion in Expostulations that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 meet Accommodation of Words unto things through the whole Bible that no Humane Writing can equal If there be at any time Obscurity in the Scripture-Stile it is either from the Sublimity of the Matter declared which no Words though never so easie in themselves can help us to adequate Notions of Or it is from some Reference to ancient Customs and Stories which made the Expressions easie to the Age and Persons first concerned in them though they may be Dark to us through our Unacquaintedness with those things that were both the occasion of them and the Key to them Or else it is because they regard Futurities which it was neither for the Safety of the Church in General nor the Interest of Primitive Believers to have had plainly foretold and as the fulfilling of them will give Convincing Light about them so
to believe what God hath said The first Argument levied from Scripture for this Warfare is drawn from what the Magicians did in their Contest with Moses in Egypt whereof we have an Account in the 7 th and 8 th Chapters of Exodus To which I reply 1. That most yea all saving one or two Interpreters deny any thing done by them to have been truly Miracles 2. The Way Manner and Rites they used in effecting what they attempted do plainly acquit God from any Agency about their Works further than the permitting them For they are said to have done so by their Inchantments Exod. 7.11 and 8.7 I dare not think that God was at the Magicians Beck or that he would conciliate Credit to their Hellish Arts by subserving them or that he would exert his Sacred and Almighty power in Honour of Satans Institutions and Ceremonies 3. The Magicians finding themselves out-done by Moses in the matter of turning Dust into Lice cry out that the Finger of God was there Exod. 8.19 which I take to be no less than an Acknowledgment that whatsoever they had done before they had done it by Magick And that it was through the influence and Agency of the Devil that their Rods had been turned into Serpents and that Frogs had been brought upon the Land 4 ly Though what they did in the two first Instances wherein they confronted Moses seems to bear such a Resemblance to true Miracles that it was not at first easie to distinguish the one from the other yet it were easie to demonstrate that the things which they effected were not without the compass of the Power of Daemons And that it might appear that the Power by which Moses acted was different from that by which they acted God therefore wisely ordered it that his Rod should devour theirs thereby leaving an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 singular Peculiarity in the Miracles of Moses to witness their Divine Original The second Argument mustred from Scripture to fight in this cause is brought from Mat. 24.24 2 Thes. 2.9 Apoc. 13.13 To all which I answer 1. By granting that the Expressions are lofty wherein the Holy Ghost predicts the Signs and wonders which false Christs and false Prophets were to work yet I think we are not to conclude from the Majesty of the Terms in which they are foretold that the Works themselves were real Miracles But that God would intimate to us either that they should be such as would so hugely resemble true Miracles that it would not be easie to detect them or that he would thereby awaken us to examine the Doctrines of Men by their Consonancy to the Scripture which was then given out and established rather than Implicitely to resigne our selves to the Conduct of every Wonder-monger 2. The best Key to judge of the quality of the Signs and Wonders there foretold whether they be true Miracles or not is to take a View of the extraordinary Works Recorded to have been done by the pretended Jewish Messiahs and the Apostatical Roman Church one or both of whom are referred to in the objected places And if we will apply our selves to this Method of Tryal I dare undertake that there is not so much as one Sign or Wonder truly Recorded concerning them which may not be solved either by a Co-incidence of Natural Causes or by the hidden Power of Daemons 3. They are expresly stiled 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 lying Wonders and that not so much Respectu finis because they were wrought in Confirmation of a Falsity as Respectu Materiae because they only Ap'd true Miracles but in truth were not such Yea as if that were not enough to acquit God from being the Author of them they are expresly ascribed to an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Agency of the Devil The third and last Argument brought in Relief of their Opinion who think that God may exert a Miracle-Working Power in the Confirmation of a Falsity is taken from Deut. 13.1 2 3. To which I answer 1. That the place doth more especially relate to the fore-telling of Events than to the working of Wonders And therefore if God never lent his Omniscience to the Service of an Impostor we have no reason to think that he should lend his Omnipotency to the Service of one And if all the Predictions of false Prophets may be salved without Recourse to Divine Inspiration as indeed they may I suppose their Wonders may be also salved without Recourse to God's Infinite Power 2. They are the Prophets after the Promulgation and Establishment of the Law of Moses that are there spoken of and therefore the Law being given out as the Test of after-Revelation at least during that Oeconomy God tells his People that they are not to try the Mission of Prophets only by Miracles but especially by the Agreeableness of their Doctrine to that of Moses And this may be a reason why we do not find that other Pen-men of Old-Testament Scripture were honoured with the working of Miracles I know indeed that some Prophets were intrusted with Miraculous Power but so far as I remember there was not one besides Moses who was made use of in giving forth the Revelation of God to the Old-Testament-Church that had this Priviledg conferred on him Having thus made appear that all Miracles are Effects of a Divine Power and that wheresoever God exerts his Miracle-Working Power in Confirmation of any Doctrine he declares it to be of and from himself and to be Unquestionably True I shall not now insist on the proving that the Bible is justified by Innumerable Great and Undeniable Miracles that being largely and beyond all possibility of Reply done by other Hands I shall only say that even those who suppose that God may sometimes put forth his Wonder-working Power in Attestation of an Error do not hereby design to Rob us of the Evidence of Miracles for the Divinity of the Script For as none have gone beyond them in the proof of the Divine Authority of the Bible in general so no one hath improved the Medium of Miracles to better purpose As they have shewed that the Scripture is attested by a greater Number of Miracles and those both more eminent more conspicuous longer continued and oftner repeated than ever any Errour either was or ever could be So they not only prove that God never wrought a Miracle in confirmation of a Falsity for Tryal till he had first incontestably established his own Truth but they also declare that he could not It is not then upon an apprehension of their having disserved the Authority of the Bible in this particular that I have assumed the freedom of discoursing these things but that an opportunity of more light in this matter may be afforded The Cause of the Scripture will suffer nothing in the main on what side soever this Controversy issues And as I know my self in more need of being instructed than of capacity to offer information to any So it
determine their import is the context and subject Matter Hence the Hebrews have a saying that he preverts the Word from its true intendment who doth not observe what precedes and what follows And the Civil Law tells us that incivile est tota Lege non inspecta ex una ejus tantum parte proposita judicare velle de toto legis sensu It is an irrational thing to judge of the whole Law by consulting only one part of it Scripture texts hang together in a chain of mutual dependance and to know the Sense of one Scripture requireth a due consideration of many And though some passages of the Bible be in themselves difficult yet there is such light reflected on lent to them in other places that the meaning of God in them may be sufficiently understood And this is what our Divines generally intend when they say that Scripture is the Interpreter of Scripture God in the enditing the Bible hath spoken with that perspicuity accommodation of himself to our Capacity that we may know what he aimes at and intends and if any Texts be obscure and dark yet by those rays of Light which they borrow from other places their sence and meaning may be easily understood Nor is there one Text alledged by the Anonymous Author of Philosophia Scripturae Interpres after all his operose and impertinent wrangling to prove the Scripture ambiguous and obscure which may not be plainly unfolded either by a due observation of the subject matter and Context or by comparing it with parellel places where the same things are declared in equivalent Terms but with more clearness and evidence without the least necessity of recourse to Philosophy as the Standard of sensing the Bible Nor is the forementioned Book any thing else but a plea for Socinianism only instead of Reason we have Philosophy advanced to a Dictatorship over the word of God and Des-Cartes made master of the Chair And wheras Mons r. Wolzogius in a pretended reply to the said Author hath constituted the Custom and usage of Speech the only Rule of Interpreting Scripture I must crave leave to say that he confounds what he ought to have distinguished namely the Rule of expounding the word with the media of Interpretation And besides a knowledg of the usage of words in common speech is rather adapted to help us in the Verbal sence of Scripture usually called Version or Translation than in the Exegetical and real Sense vulgarly and truly stiled exposition And withal there are many things which God designs our instruction in by Words and Phrases as they lie in the Systeme of the Bible and in a Habitude to the things there treated of which they were never in Forraign Authors or customary Speech among men applyed to the manifestation of Scripture is avowedly the best expositor of it self God by framing it in the manner he hath done by giving it such a Texture and by inculcating the same things in the greatest variety of expressions hath made it self the alone measure by which it is fully to be understood and hath taken upon himself to be suorum eloquiorum optimus Interpres Now the line that in order to our attaining the sense of Scripture we are to be guided by is this That Scripture Phrases Propositions Paragraphs Sections c. do actually signifie every thing which in such a disposition and Texture with reference to the subject matter and context and in Analogy to the Systeme of the whole Bible they can signifie I do not say that they always excite that sense of themselves in the heart and mind of the Reader but my meaning is that they are then only rightly apprehended and the intendment of the Holy Ghost in them fully attained when this latitude of signification is alow'd them There are no empty frigid phraseologies in the Bible but where the expressions are most splendid and lofty there are Notions and things enough to fill them out God did not design to endite the Scripture in a pompous tumid stile to amuse our fancies or meerly strike to our Imaginations with the greater force but to instruct us in a calm and sedate way and therefore under the most stately dress of words there always lyes a richer quarry of things and Truths Words being invented to express natural things and humane thoughts the utmost signification they can possibly bear proves but scanty and narrow when they are apply'd to the manifesting Spiritual and celestial Objects The serviceableness of this Notion against Jews Socinians Arminians and others lies in the view of every discerning person and the advantage I promise my self from it Chap. 3. hath led me to suggest it here How are the most plain and magnificent Testimonies in proof of Christs being the Messiah the true God Reconciling us by his death mans inability to Good the necessity and efficacy of renuing Grace c. enervated by affixing some low secondary and metaphorical meaning to them or by turning the Scripture into meer Hyperboles Allegories rampant and empty Schemes of Speech Nor secluding this from being the measure of our judging of the sence of Scripture is it possible to arrive at any Certaâ—nty about the meaning of it If it do not actually signifie all and every thing which with respect to the subject matter the context the agreement of one part with another and every part with the whole it can signifie there is not one 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 assignable by which we can make a judgment what it doth signifie God being Omniscient knows what all words are by men ordained to denote and what import they have in their combinations one with another and in the several textures into which they may be disposed being Wise he can pitch upon such Words and digest them into that frame as is most adapted to beget a Conception and apprehension of those things in us which he would instruct us in the knowledg and win us to the belief and obedience of And being Veracious Good and Faithful it is repugnant to his Nature to design the imposing on us or the leading us into Errors and Fallacies Men either through unaccquaintedness with the just Valor of Words or through Ignorance of the Nature of things or through oscitancy and neglect in the Election of Terms may diliver themselves in expressions both too lofty for the things they intend and dissonant to their own Conceptions but all these being inconsistent with the Divine perfections we dare admit no such thing in reference to him It is the character of the Spirit of man to speak much and in effect to say little but 't is the Caracter of the Holy Spirit to speak little and therin to comprehend much nor do we throughly penetrate into Scripture Misteries without enlarging our Conceptions beyond the letter The Stile of the most reputed Oratours is for the most part too pompous flatulent for the subjects they treat of neither the Images
express and explicite Authority of God upon it For whosoever explicitely reveal's the thing defined reveals in effect all those things which we have enumerated concerning it While the Scripture for example assureth us that Christ is a man it doth at the same time assure us that he is a Rational Creature and by telling us that he is a man it doth in effect tell us that he is not an Angel And however some late Papists talk in this Matter not to speak of others that they may shift the Protestant Arguments which they cannot Answer Yet I am sure the most learned that ever espoused the Romane Cause are at an agreement with us in this point That is an Article of Faith says Bellarmine which God hath either revealed by the Prophets and Apostles or which may be evidently inferred from thence Smiglesius against Mascorovius proclaims it ridiculous to think otherwise That is not only a part of the Christian Doctrine which is expressly revealed by the Apostles but whatsoever can be evidently deduced thence though one of the propositions going to the deducement of it have its certainty only in Natural Light saith Canus And whereas they say that Conclusio sequitur debiliorem partem the Conclusion receives it specification and is denominated from the weakest proposition I reply 1 Were that Logical Maxime to be taken in the universal Latitude which they affix to it they are yet so far from gaining any thing thereby that their whole Cause in this Matter is supplanted For if both Propositions be evidently true their Dogm's must be evidently false seeing the Conclusions that lye in repugnancy to them are our Enemies being Judges deduced from true propositions God is as much the Author of the Rational Faculty in its Regular Exercise as of Scripture and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to be persuaded by God and to be persuaded by Right Reason is one and the same thing 2. That proposition in a Philosophical sense is the weakest which is remotest from self evidence and therefore where there are two premisses whereof the one hath no other Evidence but what it borrows from the Authority of the Infallible Revealer the other in the mean time havâ—ng â—ts Evidence from a light residing in it self and from its Congruity to the Essential Rectitude of our Intellectual Faculties if the Conclusion follow the fortune of the weaker proposition it must be a Conclusion of Faith and not of Science For though the Certitude of Faith be not only equal but transcendent to the Certitude of Reason Sense and Experience 2 Pet. 1.16 17 18 19. Yet the Evidence of Reason and Sense is with respect to the Object assented to the habitude it stands in to us beyond the Evidence of Faith 2 Cor. 5. â— 1 1 Cor. 13.12 Nor do the School men only allow a proposition grounded on an Axiome of Reason to be more evident than a proposition founded only on Revelation but withal not a few of the Learned'st Romanists both School-men and others will have the former to be also more Certain at least quo ad nos than the latter See Bellarm lib. 3. de justifiâ— cap. 2. Durand in 3. d. 23. quest 7. Compt. Tom. poster disp 9. 3. The forementioned Logical Axiome referrs only to the Quantity and Quality of the premisses and not to any other affections incident to them If one of the Premisses be Negative the Conclusion in the virtue of the alledged Maxâ—me must be Negative also or if one of the propositions be a particular nothing beyond a particular can be concluded though the other be an Universal And howsoever in some cases it may hold further yet this and no more was the intendment of the first establishers of it Nor indeed is it admittable in the full Latitude which the Terms seem to bear seeing of two propositions whereof the one only is true there may follow sometimes a Conclusion that is true though the other proposition be in the mean time palpably false But ere I undertake the probation of the thing it self two or three things must be necessarily premised 1. That all Fundamental Articles are contained 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in so many letters and syllables in the Scripture Nor is there any thing necessary in order to our assent to them but that we understand the Terms of the Enunciations in which they are delivered 'T is true there are Terms and Phrases made use of to declare them unto the edification of Believers to secure the Minds of men from undue apprehensions of them that are not in the Scripture but this is no more than what is needful in the explaining of all Divine Truths yea all Moral Duties For example That there is One God and that the Father is this one God and that the Son is so also and the Holy Ghost likewise is declared in many express Testimonies in the Bible but in the Explication of this Doctrine and in the application of it to the Faith and Edification of Believers namely how God is One in respect of his Nature and Essence how being Father Son and Holy Ghost He subsists in these three distinct Persons what are their mutual respects to each other and what are the incommunicable Properties in the manner of their subsistence by which they are distinguished the One from the other there are such woâ—ds and phrases made use of as are not literally and syllabically contained in the Scripture but teach no other thing but what is there revealed 2. That these very Fundamental Articles may be also confirmed by consequences and logical deductions from express literal Testimonies nor do probations of this nature alter or enervate the quality of them The thing is in it self the same though the method of proof be varied For example the Doctrine of the Trinity is equally a Fundamental whether we prove it from express Texts or by consequences from literal Testimonies or by its connexion with the whole Systeme of the Gospel the Incarnation of the Son of God the Oeconomy of Redemption c. 3. That though all Fundamentals be in Terminis expressed in the Scripture that yet these very Truths do include others in them which cannot be proved but by Consequences For instance That God is a Spâ—rit is revealed in so many letters and syllables in the Bible but that therefore he hath not hands nor feet nor any corporeal members can only be concluded by way of Consequence In lâ—ke manner the Incarnation of the Son of God that the Word was made Flesh is expresly taught in the Scripture but yet there are many things predicable of the Word Incarnate which cannot be otherwise demonstrated but by Consequences and by borrowing some proposition or other from principles of Natural light Now these things being premised the lawfulness of arguing from express Scripture-Truths by deduction of Conclusions which though they be not mentioned in the Bible in letters and syllables are
yet there in effect and were accordingly intended may briefly be thus justified 1. In that to preclude this is to render the Word of God of no significancy to any particular person seeing 'tis by this method alone that general precepts promâ—ses and Comminations are applicable to single Individuals Nor can any one Universal direction be otherwise brought down to a particular case 2. God in instructing us how we are to demean our selves towards his Word doth it in Terms and Phrases which are peculiar to such as Discourse ratiocinate and deduce Conclusions from acknowledged Principles See Rom. 3.28 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 therefore we conclude Rom. 6.11 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 likewise reckon ye also your selves 1 Cor. 2.13 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 comparing Spiritual things with Spiritual Act. 17.11 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 they searched the Scriptures namely whether the things which the Apostles deduced from the Testimonies of Moses and the Prophets had foundation in them yea or not 1 Thes. 5.21 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 prove all things Hence we are enjoyned 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 rightly to divide the word of Truth 2 Tim. 2.15 and to Prophesie 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 according to the analogy of Faith Rom. 12.6 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to convince by argument and demonstration gainsayers And 't is said of Paul that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 he reasoned wth the Jews out of the Scriptures Acts 17.2 And of Apollos that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 he mightily in the way of ratiocination convinced the Jews demonstrating by the Scriptures that Jesus was Christ Acts 18.28 Nor was it possible by any text of the Old-Testament for the Apostles to prove Jesus of Nazareth to be the Messiah but by argumentation trains of deductions There was no other way or Method by which this could be don but by shewing from Moses and the Prophets that to whomsoever such properties Characters c. agrâ—ed such a one behoved to be the Messiah and then evincing from History and Experience that all these Characterisms centred in and agreed to Jesus of Nazareth And in this way the Apostles proceeded in their dealing with the Jews by producing places out of their own Scriptures where the Properties Signatures Characteristical notes of the Person Natures Offices and Work of the Messiah were foretold and described and by which the Faith of the Church was guided to him and on which the World was bound to receive him and then in shewing that all these agreed to were verified of and met in our Lord Jesus as their Center they concluded that he was infallibly the person concerning whom the Promises were made unto the Fathers And this leads me to the 2d argument in proof of that we have undertaken to justifie namely the Method which the Inspired Writers observed in the conviction of Jews and Heathens There can be no fallacy where we act conformably to such a pattern nor can that be disclaimed as Sophistical in others which we find practiced by the Sacred Penmen without impeaching both the Wisedome and Truth of God by whom they were inspired To allow it to have been lawful for them to argue by Consequences and yet in the mean time to deny it to others is to be perverse partial and humoursome and to lodg it as an accusation on Them that they mistook in the course they steered is not only to justifie the Jews in their unbelief and the Heathen in their Idolatry but to blaspheme the Holy Spirit by whom they were acted and conducted in what they did Now that this was the Method which the Apostles observed in their demonstrating many of the chief Articles of the Christian Faith may be made good by many instances scattered up and down the New-Testament See Act 9.22 Act 18.28 Act 15.8 9. Act 17.16.17 Act 2.16 17 18. Act 3.22 23. Rom. 1.20 Rom. 3.9 to 21. Gal. 3.10 1 Cor. 15.4 5 6 7. Joh. 1.33 34. In all these places not to name more nor to urge the suffrage of the Author of the Epistle to the Hebrews in whom this way of procedure manifests it self in every Chapter and paragraph We must acknowledg that they not only argued by consequences but that if their Arguments were digested into syllogisms there will be only one proposition found that is of Revelation the other being assumed either from Reason or Sense Besides the attestation of Apostolical practice in this matter we have also the example of our blessed Saviour to convince us not only of the lawfulness but to assure us of the obligation that lyes upon us of accounting all that for the Word of God which can by any train of Natural deduction be concluded from it If men were not resolved to be obstinate this alone were enough to issue the debate and to advance what we are pleading for beyond all jurisdiction of being gainsaid It is by way of argumentation and by consequences that he proves the Divinity of his Person Mat. 22.44 45. The Quality and Authority of his Office John 5.39 45 46. John 10.25 37 38. Luke 7.20 21 22. The necessity of the Death and sufferings of the Messiah Luke 24 26.27 The Resurrection of the Dead in General Mat. 22.31 32. All his Reasonings in the forecited places should they be reduced into a Logical Form will be found to bear upon one only Scripture premiss the other being constantly either a proposition drawn from natural Light or from the evidence of Sense And to affirm that the Ratiocinations of Christ and the Apostles though they joyned one premise from Reason or experience to another from Scripture were nevertheless conclusive because the Proposition from Reason by their very using of it became upon the account of the infallible authority they were clothed with a part of Divine Revelation I say to affirm this is ridiculous and impertinent For had they intended to have immediately concerned their authority in what they said Argumentation from an acknowledged Scripture Truth had been both needless and superfluous Where the whole evidence depends upon the Authority of the immediate Speaker a naked assertion is not only sufficient but most becoming Let the Authority of a person be what it will yet so far as in transacting with others he recurrs to arguments either from Reason or the Testimony of an other so far in that instance he plainly declines his Authority Nor did all these with whom Christ and the Apostles dealt in way of Argumentation acknowledg any such authority by vertue of which whatsoever they said in such a case became immediately a part of Divine Revelation to have belonged to them When the Scribes and Pharisees confessed Christ in the way and Method of proving the Resurrection to have said well Marc. 12.28 Luke 20.39 They did not thereby intend the acknowledgment of Christ as a prophet sent from God or that any authority upon that account resided in him For that they disclaimed but it was the Authority of God Exod.
3.6 and the rationalness of his deduction from thence though made by the joyning of a proposition of another Nature to it which they paid a respect to The Multitude were swayed in this case by the meer strength and weight of his argument and are therefore said to have been astonished at his Doctrine Mat. 22.33 They admired his Wonderful Wisdom and profound Sagacity nor were they influenced by any Authority they held him vested with Nor indeed is it any great evidence of a profound Wisedom or of his insight into the Scripture to argue from Media which have no further convincing efficacy or force but what they borrow from his authority that useth them In brief either the Text quoted by our Saviour was sufficient antecedently to Christs using of it and abstracting from his Authority to demonstrate the Resurrection or it was not If it was then it was not meerly from his Authority that they came under an Obligation to a belief of that conclusion If it was not than how comes Christ to lodg their unbelief in reference to the ResurrectioÌ„ upon their ignorance of the Scriptures Marc. 12.24 Mat. 22.31 For if they stood not under the obligation of that consequence but meerly because of his Authority then the best acquaintance imaginable with the sense and meaning of that place could have ministred them no relief in that point yea it had been utterly unlawful to have drawn any such inference from it 5. Exclude Scripture-Consequences and the Papists are not able to impugn one Tenet of the Protestants nor are they in Capacity to prove the first Article of the Roman Faith namely the pretended Infallibility of their Church While they wrest such Weapons out of our hands they at the same time disarm themselves And by endeavouring to disserve the Cause of the Reformed Churches they utterly undo their own For if our Reasonings of this kind be insignificant against them theirs are also insignificant against us and by the same art that they endeavour to blunt the edge of our Swords they are bound to throw away their own I shall discourse this no farther only shut it up with a saying of Justin Martyr 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 without Philosophy and right Reason there can be no knowledge nor science in the World § 12. The next thing that belongs to Reason in matters of Religion regards those Doctrines which besides the Foundation that they have in Revelation have also Evidence in the light of Nature And as I intimated before § 5. more is allowable to Reason in and about these than about those we are indebted only to the Scripture for the discovery of 'T is not enough that we enquire into the declaration of them as it lyes in the Bible and how they are there expressed c. but we are further to see what Media there are in the light of Nature by which they may be both discerned and confirmed Yet I shall here crave liberty to premise That where the Authority of the Scripture is owned our chief Topicks in all Theological debates ought to be fetcht from the sacred Records Thence we should both frame our Idea's of them and borrow as well the Arguments as the Colours and Ornaments by which we would commend them to the Minds and Consciences of Believers Especially a regard ought to be had to this in popular Discourses and Sermons As humane Authority ought to have very little place if any at all in the Pulpit so we ought not there to serve our selves too much from Maxims of Philosophie and principles of Reason As God hath impressed more of his Authority upon the Scriptures than upon any thing else that he hath made Himself and his Will known by so there is an Efficacy of the Spirit promised to attend the naked Preaching of the Word beyond what we can expect to accompany our Ratiocinations from principles of Reason As Faith prepares the spirits of men to a submission to what they hear immediately out of the Bible so there is something great and elevated which I know not how to express in Truths as nakedly delivered by the Holy Ghost which Argumentations from Natural Maximes doth for the most part obnubilate and darken The Majesty of God whose commands we deliver doth above all things most attract the respect of our Auditors nor do we at any time so effectually persuade as by the meer authority of him in whose Name we speak Yet I do not deny but that Rational proofs are of great use not only to such with whom Scripture-Testimonies signifie nothing but even to those who own and adore its Authority by shewing that as it is highly reasonable to believe whatsoever God hath said so the things themselves are agreeable to and have foundation in Reason and the two lights of Revelation and Nature do excellently harmonise This being premised among other Truths which besides their being plainly revealed in the Scripture have also evidence given to them in the Light of Nature the Immortality of the Soul and the certainty of Providence are especially remarkable 'T is True there are many other Doctrines of this quality viz. the Attributes of God the Creation of the World Moral Good and Evil c. All which as they are revealed in the sacred Scripture so they are demonstrable from undoubted principles of Reason But wavâ—ng these at present I shall only by way of essay and with all imaginable brevity consider what media there are in Nature by which the two former may be evinced and the serviceableness of Reason in the doing of it I shall begin with the Immortality of the Soul and the Unhappiness of the Age wherein we live doth render the inculcation of this Truth not only seasonable but necessary Men having degraded themselves into Beasts by practice they thence take the Measures of their Opinions and allow no difference betwixt themselves and the pâ—ttifullest Brute but that Matter in them is fallen into a more lucky texture and modification To justifie their sensualities they contend that they have nothing but their Animal inclinations to gratifie and indeed the soul of a Brute will very well serve all the Ends that some men propound to themselves Next the Belief of the Beeing of God the persuasion of the souls being Immortal is the hinge upon which all Religion turns 'T is this that leads us both to contemn the gratifications of the Flesh and to be solicitous about a happiness hereafter though it be with the undergoing of present inconveniences rather than here There is no one Truth hath a more powerful influence upon the whole course of our present life than a steddy and vigorous belief that the soul is immortal Now when we assert the Immortality of the Soul we do nâ—t intend that it is Immortal in such a sense as that by no cause it can be annihilated God alone is thus Immortal for as there are no principles of Corruption in his Nature so there is no forraign
faileur in one of these both most of the Arguments against the Doctrine of the Trinity and for Communication of Omnipresence to the Humane Nature of Christ because it agrees to the Person of the son of God not to instance in more particulars may be easily avoided and answered 2 by shewing that if it be an universal and true Maxime of Reason that the Objection is grounded on how that there is not any thing in Revelation that doth contradict it There is an excellent Harmony betwixt Truth and Truth and though they be distinct and different yet they are not contrary and repugnant the one to the other They who reject Gospel Mysteries on supposition of a Repugnancy they lye in to Reason have not been able to this day to justifie their Charge 'T is true the more we adventure too neerly to look into them the more we find our selves dazled with their Fulgor but yet we find no thing in them that implye's a Contradiction to our Faculties or that is repugnant to the Nature and Attributes of God Nor is there any one Argument produced to this day in proof of the repugnancy of the Mysteries of the Trinity the Incarnation of the Son of God his satisfying Divine Justice in the Room and behalf of Sinners the Eternal Decrees c. Which hath not received an answer and the Authors of it been shamefully baffled § 14. Having unfolded the Interest and concernment of Reason in and about Religion it will be necessary ere we shut up this Discourse more particularly to state and fix the Bounds betwixt these two and to offer some Measures by which Reason may have allotted all that belongs to it and yet nothing in the mean time be detracted from Faith First then Reason is the Negative Measure in Matters of Religion Nothing contradictory to right Reason is to be admitted as a Mystery of Faith What Right Reason say's cannot be done we must not father it upon God to do If Reason be objected against any Scripture Testimony how plausible and subtile soever it seems yet Right Reason it cannot be but only deceives through an Unbrage and shew of it And if Scripture Authority be urged against an undoubted and evident Principle of Reason he that doth so presseth not the true meaning of the Scripture for that he doth not reach but only imposeth his own Sense and urgeth what himself phancieth to be there instead of what indeed is so saith Austin These two lights though different yet they do not destroy one another God is the Author of natural as well as Supernatural Light nor can he bely himself We have no greater Certainty than that of our Faculties for by that alone are we inabled to discern a Divine Revelation from Humane or Diabolical Delusions Should God reveal such Doctrines as contradict Natural Truths and Principles of Right Reason He would thereby eradicate what himself hath planted in our Souls The Law of Reason being the first declaration of the Will of God originally annexed to and communicated with our Natures 't is not to be imagined that by any after declaration he should thwart his first Besides all Revelation is to instruct us in a reasonable though supernatural way and therefore though in many things it may exceed our Reason fully to comprehend it yet in all things it must be consistent with our Reasons To admit Religion to contain any Dogm's Repugnant to Right Reason is at once to tempt Men to look upon all Revelation as a Romance or rather as the invention of distracted men withall to open a Door for filling the World with figments and lyes under the palliation of Divine Mysteries We cannot gratifie the Atheist and Infidel more than to tell them that the prime Articles of our Belief imply a contradiction to our Faculties In a word this Hypothesis were it received would make us renounce Man espouse Brute in matters of the chiefest greatest concernment for without debasing our selves into a lower species we cannot embrace any thing that is formally impossible Nothing but mens entertaining opinions which they cannot defend from being absurd and irrational could have sway'd them to reproach Reason in the manner they do but they do only decline the weapons they are sure to be wounded by When men have filled Religion with Opinions that are contrary to common Sense and Natural Light they are forced to introduce a suitable Faith namely such a one that commends it self from believing Doctrines repugnant to the evidence and principles of both And thus under a respect that is pleaded to be due to sacred Mysteries do the wildest fancies take Sanctuary And meerly out of fear of violating that regard which ought to be paid to Objects of Faith we must believe that to be true which the Universal Reason of Man-kind gives the lye to Thus the first Hereticks that troubled the Christian Church under pretence of teaching Mysteries overthrew common sense and did violence to the Universal Uniform and perpetual Light of Mankind Some of them having taught that all Creatures are naturally Evil Others of them having established two Soveraign Gods one Good and another Bad Others having affirmed the Soul to be a part of the Divine Substance not to mention a thousand falsities more all these they defended against the assaults of the Orthodox by pretending that they were Mysteries about which Reason was not to be hearkened to Thus do others to this day who being resolved to obtrude their fancies upon the World and being neither able to prove nor defend what they say they pretend the Spirit of God to be the Author of all their Theorem's Nor can I assign a better reason for the antipathy of the Turks to Philosophy than that it overthrows the follies and absurdities of their Religion This themselves confess by devoting Almansor to the vengeance of Heaven because he hath weakned the Faith of Mussul-men in the Alcoran through introducing Learning and Philosophy amongst them There is no Combating of the Valentinians Marcionites Eutychians and others but by shewing the repugnance of their Opinions to first principles of Reason We do not make Natural Light the positive Measure of things Divine do only allow it a Negative voyce We place it not in the Chair in Councels of Faith but do only permit it to keep the door and hinder the entring of Contradictions and Irrational Fancies disguised under the Name of Sacred Mysteries This I thought fit to propose in the first place and have the more largely insisted on it because of its serviceableness against the Corporal presence of Christ in the Eucharist and the ubiquity of Christs Body and divers other Articles both of the Romane and Lutheran Creeds What the Universal Reason of Man-kind tells us is finite commensurable and impenetrable c. they would have us believe it to be Infinite Immense and subject to penetration The great Article of the Roman Faith viz. Transubstantiation must needs be
rationally in surrendring themselves to the guidance of it The Article it self may be plainly revealed and yet not only the reason and mode of it lye altogether hid but the thing it self may over-power our Faculties and dazle them with its Majesty and Splendour 1. Reason is often non-plust and puzled about its own proper Objects and the phaenomena of Nature and shall we think it a competent judge of Objects it was never adapted for It is below many of the Works of God and therefore much more below Mysteries of Revelation See this Argument elegantly and strenuously handled by Bradwardine de causa Dei lib. 1. c. 1. Here are many things which we ought to admire but must never hope fully to understand Our work here is to believe not to enquire 2. If our minds will not submit to a Revelation until they see a reason of the proposition they do not believe or obey at all because they do not submit till they cannot chuse Faith bears not upon demonstration but upon the Authority and Veracity of the speaker and therefore to believe nothing but what we do comprehend is not to believe but to argue and is Science not Faith Ye that will believe in the Gospel what you please and what ye think fit ye will not believe you renounce the Gospel saith Austin to the Manichees for you believe your selves not it 3. To believe nothing but what we can fully comprehend is to remonstrate to the Wisdom and Power of God at least to challenge to our selves an Omniscience proportionable to the Divine Wisdom and Omnipotence 4. The Rule and Measure of Faith must be certain but no mans Reason universally is so because one Mans Reason rejects what anothers assents to Every man pretends to right Reason but who hath it is hard to tell If it be lawful for one man to reject a plain Revelation in one particular because he cannot comprehend it why may not a second do the same with reference to Revelation in another particular As the Socinians by making their Reason judge of what they are to believe will not admit many of the prime Articles of the Gospel so the Philosophers would make their Reason judge of what they should receive their Reason would not admit the Gospel at all 5. The certainty of Revelation is preferred to all other Evidence and we are commanded to subject our Reason to the Authority of God in the Scripture and by consequence Reason cannot be the positive Measure of Religion The Sacred Writers do every where remit us to the Scripture it self as the Rule of Faith and not at all to the Tribunal of Reason Herein are the Socinians justly impeachable for though sometimes they acknowledge Religion to be above Reason as we lately heard yet at other times they speak in a very indifferent Manner By Reason alone saith Smalcius can we define what is possible and what is impossible in matters of Faith See to the same purpose Ostorod Instit. cap. 6. Schlicting de Trinit advers Meisner p. 67. c. Hence that of Socinus that he would not believe Christ to have satisfied for our sins though he should read it not only once but often in the Scripture and that the Infallibility of the Revealer had not been enough to establish it supposing Christ to have said it and to have risen from the Dead to declare his own Veracity unless he had declared it by its Causes and effects and so shewn the possibility of it To which agrees a passage of Smalcius in reference to the Incarnation of the Son of God that he would not submit to it though he should meet with it not only often but in express Terms in the Bible I wish others did not say the same in effect But while they renounce Doctrines upon no other account but their incomprehensibleness or because we cannot fully fathom them they must give us leave to think whose principles they have drunk in and whose cause they plead Thus have I discoursed the whole Interest of Reason in Religion and as I know not that I have said any more in this Matter than what is generally maintained by all the sober Nonconformists so I hope I may say that the charge which some men have fastned upon us as if we wholly renounced Reason in all Concernments of Religion and that no Contradiction can astonish or stagger us and that this is the foundation and support of the Credit of the party especially amongst Vulgar Hearers is a false aspersion groundless calumny and an impudent Crimination And though I do not think that it savour's of over-much Modesty that a few young Theologues of the Church of England if indeed they be so should monopolize to themselves the name of Rational Divines yet for my own part I neither envy them the Title nor have any quarrel with them upon that account it being indeed their want of Reason that I find fault with And as it hath generally been the unhappiness of others who have too much boasted of and relyed upon Reason to fall into the most irrational sentiments so I do not see but that it is in a very great measure the misfortune of our New Rationalists As the Philosophers of old made Reason their only Rule and yet most of their Religious opinions whether in reference to Faith Worship or Moral Obedience were perfectly Irrational And as the Socinians pretend to pay more than an ordinary veneration to Reason and yet there are none in the world whose Tenets lye more cross to the Fundamental Maxims of it than some of theirs do For to give Religious Adoration to a meer Creature for such they allow Christ only to be to deny God the fore knowledge of future contingents to ascribe passions and affections to God in the manner they are incident to us are such Repugnancies to Reason that a man had need renounce that as well as Revelation ere he can admit them So I account it of easie proof that many of the Darling Notions about Original Sin Converting Grace the Nature of Regeneration and Justification it self c. of our pretended late Rational Divines are as well repugnant to Reason as they are to Scripture CHAP. II. Of the Import and Vse of Scripture-Metaphors SECT I. SOme men having espoused corrupt designs in reference to the Truths of the Gospel are in pursuance thereof led to Methods which may subserve and countenance their Undertakings For the End being fixed Means must be found out and adapted for the compassing of it Now among other little arts and contrivances supposed conducible to their Undertaking I find some late Writers improving their skill and industry especially in these two things First under pretence of banishing all wrangling brawling and vain talking they study to cashier and discharge all Disputes in and about Religion and 't is become their Interests upon two accounts so to do 1. That they may have the liberty to vent
efficacious operation of the Holy Ghost so through our being United to Him he becomes not according to Mr. Sherlock a Quickning Head and a Vital Root of Influences to us He is says he only styled our Head because invested with Authority to Govern us by his Laws and our Vnion with Him as such consists only in an acknowledgment of his Authority and in Subjection to his commands Hence the making the Person of Christ a Fountain of Grace is reflected upon by our Author in words full of contempt and scorn And by our Fellowship with Christ which the Sacred Writers so Emphatically speak of we are told there is only meant such a Political Union as is betwixt a Prince and his Subjects between Superiours and Inferiors Hence also that Fulness of Grace which is said to reside in Christ is declared by our Author to be nothing but his revealing the Gospel to us which may well be called Grace because it contains so many excellent promises and our receiving out of his Fulness Grace for Grace is paraphrased to denote no more but our being perfectly instructed by Him in the will of God Hence likewise Christs being styled our Life is glossed to import only his publishing the Word of Life to us which contains the most express promises of a blessed Immortality and the most easy and plain directions how to attain it Now I do not deny the things revealed and commanded in the Gospel being both Good in themselves and suited to the Reason and Interest of Mankind and also enforced by the most attractive Motives which we can either desire or Imagine but that men in the alone strength of their Natural Faculties may perform many External Duties and in that manner also that we who judg only according to appearance are thereupon to account them Holy yea that nothing but supineness lustful prejudice consuetude in sin a being immersed into the Animal Life can hinder them from so doing But I deny that any Act or Duty hath the proper Form and Nature of Holiness or is so denominated in the Scripture but what both proceeds from an Antecedent Habit or Principle of Holiness in the persons by whom they are performed and an Immediate influence from Christ in the virtue of our Union with Him as our Quickning-Head Vital Root living Spring in the actual performance of them 'T is he that worketh in us both to will and to do Phil. 2.13 and without him we can do nothing that is Formally Good or acceptable to God John 15.3 That exclusively of an antecedent Habit and seed of Grace communicated to us and Resident in us and of fresh Influences from Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit we are neither Subjectively Holy nor do perform any one thing which the Scripture bestows the Denomination of Holiness upon hath not only been Demonstrated against the Pelagians both by Ancient and Modern Writers but defined in several Councils and Synods And therefore Both these being discharged out of Mr. Sherlocks Hypothesis of our Union with Christ his Doctrine concerning it is so far from having any Influence upon the promotion of True Holiness that it lyes in a Repugnancy to it and makes it impossible to Christians Let us suppose Men satisfied of the Truth and Divine Authority of the Scriptures and accordingly in the Dogmatical Belief of them let us suppose them also perswaded of the Reasonableness and Equity of Gospel-Precepts and that upon the promises and threatnings which accompany and enforce them they are not only inclined and resolved to obey them but that they actually perform the Material parts of all Moral Duties and Acts of Instituted Worship which is the most we can conceive of the persons for whose Union with Christ Mr. Sherlock pleads and indeed more than truly they can be entiled to yet all this admitted I say that providing we will take our Measures of the Nature of Holiness from the Declarations which God hath given of it and not from the ill-digested Notions of the Pelagians and Socinians about it Gospel Holiness is not only disbanded out of the whole of this but undermined subverted by it For as much as the Gospel judgeth nothing to be true Holiness but what presupposeth the Grace of Regeneration as that which adapts to it and implyes a causal Concomitancy of Actual Grace as that which doth immediately influence it Moral Virtue it may be but Christian Holiness 't is not And thus I have declared who they are that stand united to Christ and that our Hypothesis so far as it relates to the Subjects of this Union doth no ways countenance a prophane Course or frown upon a Holy Life And have also demonstrated how the Hypothesis erected by our Author in opposition to it is as it respects that Extreme of this Relation many ways guilty of such an unhappy pernicious tendency § 4. Having declared whom we mean by Believers who are the subjects of this Union we are Discoursing about and having manifested that there is nothing in the Character of the Persons assum'd into this Relation of Oneness with Christ that in the least undermines Holiness or befriends a course of Impiety We are next to fix and determine what we intend understand by Christ who is the other Extreme of this Relation of Union and to whom Believers in the Virtue of it become ligu'd and copulated I confess I should heretofore have esteem'd the engaging in such a service a mee prodigality of Words and Time but the Ignorance and Disingenuity of Mr. Sherlock doth render it a this time a necessary Undertaking Nor can I otherwise either vindicate the Non-conformists from the unjust representation which in this matter he gives of them nor correct the mistakes and prevarications which in assigning the import of the Name and Term Christ I find him guilty of First then neither in the Question before us nor in any other whatsoever doth Christ signify the Name of an Office I expected to have met with Sense whatever I might have mist in the Writings of a Person pretending to so great accuracy as Mr. Sherlock doth and that whatever quarrel he had against any Text in the Bible or the received Rules of Argumentation yet that he would not have fallen out with the Accidence and Syntax If either he had not ability or would not allow himself leasure to write Reason and Truth yet he should have been careful to have avoided Nonsence To affirm that Christ is Originally the Name of an Office or to speak of the Duties and Actions of an Office as our Author doth argues him that I may express it with the greatest modesty I can to have forgotten his Grammar as well as his Logick As every Concrete Term imports a Form Quality or something analogous to these Administring a Denomination so it always implies a Subject denominated from them Though there be Actions belonging to Officers and Actions which Persons
their parts come to Multiply into many different species 2 Some purely Immaterial among whom whether there be any specifical difference is pro and con disputed 3 Man a Compositum of both having an Immaterial Intellectual Soul joyned to an Organical Body Now say they God having in his Soveraign pleasure thought Good to form Man such a Creature he hath not only by an Uncontroulable Law confined the Soul to an intimate presence with and constant residence in the Body while it remains a fit receptacle or till he give it a discharge but withall hath made them dependent upon one another in many of their operations And in this mutual dependence of the one upon the other with respect to many of their operations they state the Union betwixt the Soul and Body to consist For through the impressions that are made upon the Organs of Sense there result in the Soul certain perceptions and on the other hand through the Cogitations that arise in the Soul there ensue certain Emotions in the Animal Spirits And thus say they by the Action of each upon the other their passion from one another they are formally united But all this instead of loosing the knot serves only to tye it faster For 1 This mutual dependency as to operation of one upon the other cannot be apprehended but in posteriority of Nature to Union and consequently the Formal Reason of Union cannot consist in it 2 There are cases wherein neither the impressions of outward objects upon the Sensory Nerves beget or excite any perceptions in the Soul which whether it proceed from obstinacy of Mind or intense contemplation alike answers my drift and also cases wherein Cogitations of the Mind make not any sensible impressions upon the Body as in Ecstasies and yet the Union of the Soul and Body remains undissolved which argues that it imports more than either an intimous presence or a dependence between them in point of operation 3 'T is altogether unintelligible how either a Body can act upon a Spirit or a Spirit upon a Body I grant it may be demonstrated that they do so but the manner of doing it or indeed how it can be done is not intelligible That a Tremor begot in the Nerves by the Jogging of particles of Matter upon the sensory Organs should excite cogitations in the Soul or that the Soul by a meer thought should both beget a Motion in the Animal Spirits and determine through what meatus they are to steer their course is a Phaenomenon in the Theory of which we are perfectly non-plust How that which penetrates a Body without giving a Jog to or receiving a shove from it should either impress a Motion upon or receive an impression from it is unconceivable So that to state the Union of the Soul and Body in a reciprocal action upon and passion by and from one another is to fix it in that which surpasseth the Sagacity of our Faculties to conceive how it can be Now if Common Unions of whose reality and Existence we are so well assured be nevertheless with respect to their Nature not only so unknown but unconceivable we may lawfully presume if there lye nothing else against the Immediate Union of Believers with Christ save that it cannot be comprehended that this is no argument why we should immediately renounce the belief of it If we can but once justify that there is such an Union betwixt the blessed Jesus and sincere Christians the incomprehensibleness of the manner of it ought not to discourage our Faith If we can take up with the Evidence of Sense and Reason as to the reality of other Unions whose Modes are as little understood I see no cause why the Veracity of God providing we can produce the Authority of Divine Testimony should not satisfie us as to the reality of the Union though the manner How it is were a question we could not answer § 6. The import of Terms being fixed we are now to make a nearer approach to the matter it self And the first thing that the threed of Reason conducts us here to is this that be the Kind manner of our Union what it please yet it is the person of Christ which we are united to For suppose it to be Political and that the only Vinculum be our owning his Laws yet forasmuch as Christ only personally considered both doth enact them and exact Obedience to them and punish our Rebellion against them our Relation to Him as Subjects doth ultimately respect his Person All the reverence we pay his Laws under the Reduplication as His bears upon the Veneration we pay Himself However he come by his Soveraign Dominion over the Church 't is his Person that it is stated and vested in Whatever room either our Obedience on the one hand or the Gospel of Christ upon the other have in this Relation of Union the Extremes United they cannot be Whether it be by means of our Union only with the Christian Church or by what Copula soever else we are United to Him Yet 't is still to the person of Christ i. e. to Christ himself that we are United Or suppose it to be only a Moral Union an Union in Mind Love Design and Interest a being acted by the same Principles having the same temper and disposition of Spirit yet still 't is between the Person of Christ and the persons of Believers that this Union intercedes For as they through the guidance of sanctified Reason embrace cleave to and with the greatest complacency delight in him so He through their participating of his likeness and haveing his Image imprinted on them loveth and embraceth them In a word all Unions except Natural or Physical are the Relations of Persons to Persons 'T is the Husband and Wife themselves that are ligu'd together by the matrimonial Tie 'T is between the persons of Subjects and the Person of the Prince as clothed with Authority that the Political Nexus consists I cannot therefore but stand surprised to find Mr. Sherlock both endeavoring to disable such Texts of Scripture as are levied in proof of an Union between Believers and the Person of Christ whereof § 4. and impeaching his Brethren that they are not satisfied that Christ and Believers are united unless their Persons be united too For let the Union as to its Quality and manner be what it will suppose an Union by mutual Relations or Affections or common Interest yet it is the Person of Christ and the Persons of Believers that the Habitude and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 lies between Yea this our Author acknowledgeth though all he reap by it is to contradict himself For this is a very plain case says he If Christ and Believers are United their Persons must be united too for the Person of Christ is Christ Himself the Persons of Believers are the Believers themselves and I cannot understand how they can be united without their Persons that is without themselves Nor
we are copulated to Him then not only sincere Believers but the most obdurate sinners providing only they receive the Eucharist should be united to Him Admitting the Popish Hypothesis I neither see of what advantage Faith is to one Communicant nor of what damage Infidelity can be to another but that the whole of both their securities depends upon this that their Stomacks be not queasy and that they have a good digestion 'T is but to swallow the consecrated Host and Christ and they are one whether they partake of the Spirit of the new Birth or not Either Pauls assertion of some mens eating damnation to themselves is false or else the Popish Notion of our being united to Christ by the eating of his Flesh under the Species and Accidents of a white Wafer is so and which of these is most likely to deserve that Brand I leave to the umpirage of all Christians 2 Were this the Foundation and Bond of Union betwixt Christ and his Members there should then be none United to Him but such as have first been made partakers of the Eucharist which is so remote from all shadow of Truth that on the contrary none ought to approach the sacred Table but they who are first sincere Christians 'T is true their pretending to be so if their claim cannot be disproved obligeth Ministers to admit them but yet it is only their being so that authoriseth them to come 'T is sincere Love and Gospel-Faith that God prerequires of all his Guests though his Stewards are often necessitated to take up with professions of them Although the Sacraments be necessary necessitate praecepti and cannot be neglected by any without guilt yet they are not so necessary necessitate Medii but that God hath and can communicate his Grace independently upon them 3 Were there no other bond of our Union with Christ save that which the Church of Rome suggests our Cohesion to Christ were a very lubricous thing and not such an indissoluble Ligue as the Scripture reports it For the Foundation of Oneness ceasing the Relation superstructed thereupon must cease also Union can hold no longer than the unition upon which it results and from which it emergeth holds now this according to the Romanists continues no longer than till the Form Figure and other Accidents of the consecrated Wafer dissolve and vanish So that instead of an abiding conjunction with Christ a little time unties the knot and the incorporation of Christians with Him comes to nothing 4 Were our Carnal and Corporal eating the Body of Christ the Medium of betwixt Him and us I do not see but that Mice and Rats c. may come to be united to Him as well as Believers For that these through the Priests neglect or by some accident or other may snatch up swallow down the consecrated Wafer is a thing easily conceivable there are instances enough of it and by consequence all that is necessary to the Relation of Union intervening betwixt Christ and them the Habitude and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 it self must ensue also I shall only add upon this occasion that Minutius Felix's argument in disproof of the Heathen Gods doth with equal strength militate against the Corporeal presence of Christ in the Eucharist The Mice Swallows and Crows saith he know better than you Pagans what your Gods are For by gnawing and sitting upon them and being ready to nest in their Mouths if you did not drive them away they know that they have neither sense nor understanding 5 Though I be not forward to concern the Authority of Scripture to confute senseless and irrational Notions reckoning it a condescension to encounter them with Reason and holding it a disparagement put upon the sacred Oracles to call in their Suffrage where Sense alone can give the decision yet I cannot but here observe that our Lord Jesus Christ even there where he most seemingly speaks in Favour of a Carnal eating of his Flesh viz. John 6. hath in words hugely Emphatical said enough to prevent such a Gross stupid and unreasonable Imagination For besides that not a word of that whole discourse relates to feeding upon Christ in the Eucharist as is acknowledged by the most learned of the Roman Writers we have in the preface to it ver 35.40 and in the conclusion of it ver 63. a key afforded us to unlock the whole and to assure that it is not only to be taken in a spiritual sense but that a fleshly eating of the Son of man would conduce nothing to our Good 'T is the Spirit that quickneth the flesh profiteth nothing The words that I speak unto you they are Spirit and they are life § 9. Having declared that whatever the Nature and Quality of our Union with Christ and what ever the Medium by which it is accomplished be that it is the Person of Christ which we are United to and having also declared that it implies something more than a meer participating of the same specifick Humane Nature and having just now manifested that it consists not in a mixture of Christs bodily substance through our eating his Flesh and drinking his Blood in a Carnal and Corporeal Manner with ours The next thing to be disclaim'd from all room and Interest in the Idea of it is its being a Personal Union And this I am the rather obliged to do because Mr. Sherlock with little regard to Truth and as little consistency with himself tells the World That we place all our hopes of Salvation in a personal Union with Christ. A slander so enormous and so void of any colour by which it may be glossed that to what I should impute our Authors charging it upon us I cannot tell Ignorance it cannot be ascribed to seeing Dr. Jacomb whom Mr. Sherlock hath particularly singled out to oppose in this Theme not only barely disclaims but refutes it and seeing our Author himself acknowledgeth else-where that it is only an Union of Persons and not a Personal Union which we plead for p. 198. 293. And to attribute it to a wilful Falsification were to arraign him of a Crime which I would be loath to judge any Man pretending Justice and Honesty much less a Minister of the Gospel guilty of I would rather therefore think it the result of some deduction unduely and illogically drawn from Innocent principles or that he took it up in discourse from some of those who for their diversion throw out accusations against us at adventure than that he either judged it to be held by us in Terminis or that he should fasten it upon us in meer Malice only that he might the better expose us However this in Modesty may be required of him that the next time he writes he would either acquit the Nonconformists from the guilt of this charge or else enforce it by express quotations extracted out of their Books or by lawful Trains of Argumentation from some of their avowed Doctrines
nor others may think themselves imposed upon I shall represent his apprehensions of it in his own words Those Metaphors says he which describe the Relation and Union betwixt Christ and Christians do primarily refer to the Christian Church not to every individual Christian The Union of particular Christians to Christ is by means of their Union to the Christian Church The Church is the Body of Christ and every Christian by being United to this Body becomes a Member of Christ. The Union of particular Christians to Christ consists in their Union to the Christian Church and our Union with the Christian Church is the Medium of our Union to Christ. Those Phrases and Metaphors which represent our Union with Christ signify our visible Society with the Christian Church and our sincere practice of the Christian Religion Now this Union says he between Christ and the Christian Church is a Political Union that is such an Union as is between a Prince and his Subjects Christ is a Spiritual King and all Christians are his Subjects and our Union to Christ consists in our Belief of his Revelations Obedience to his Laws and Subjection to his Authority Fellowship and Communion with God according to the Scripture Notion signifies what we call a Political Union that is that to be in Fellowship with God and Christ signifies to be of that Society which puts us into a peculiar Relation to God This is the account that Mr. Sherlock is pleased to afford us concerning the Union of Believers to Christ and were this a true report and description of it it ceaseth to be Mysterious nor needs the perfect knowledge of it be reserved to the next world or the coming of Elias that I may again usurp our Authors phrase He seems very careful that there should be nothing left Mysteririous in the Christian Religion nor doth the Term Mystical please him being as he tells us a hard word Only I wish that under pretence of wariness and caution there be not any thing in the Gospel acknowledged of arduous conception he did not lay a foundation of going soberly to destroy Christianity Now in the examining Mr. Sherlocks Notion of the Union of Christ with Believers I reckon it necessary before I address to the disproof of what I dislike in his opinion to declare what I own to be true in the matter of a Political Union between Christ and Christians First then That Christ is the Political Head of his Church we readily grant nor is it denyed by any so far as I know that profess themselves Christians The very espousing the Profession of the Christian Religion includes an acknowledgment of Christs being our Supreme Legislatour and Governour and that we are to be subject to his Authority and obedient to his Commands A Right of Erecting Governing and protecting the Church is delegated to and vested in him And as he in the discharge of this Regal Office wherewithal he is entrusted hath enacted Laws appointed Ordinances and ordained Officers for the Government of his Church so we by our submission to them do acknowledg his Authority and make profession of our subjection to him as our Lord and King and therereupon may be said to be related to Him as our Political Head All that own the name of Christians are thus far agreed for though the Papists interpose another immediate ruling Head between Christ and the Catholick Church yet as they acknowledg Christ to be the only Head of Vital Influence to the Church Regenerate so they confess Him to be the only supreme Governing Head of the Universal Church But as their Notion of a Vicarious Political Head over the whole Church is both destitute of all countenance from the Scripture and repugnant to it so no one is capable of enacting Laws for the Universal Church nor of seeing them executed nor hath the Catholick Church ever acknowledged such a constitutive Imperant Head what ever some part of it may have done Upon this account especially we judge the Pope to be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Antichrist and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Opposer who exalteth himself above all that is called God or that is worshipped so that he as God sitteth in the Temple of God shewing himself that he is God because he usurpeth the Headship over the Church of Christ as to Legislation Judgment and Execution dispensing with Christs Laws and enacting his own He challengeth a peerage with Jesus Christ as to Legislative Power and Headship over the Universal Church which is no less than to storm his Throne and Usurp his Scepter The claym of the Roman See is great but their Allegations to justifie it are wholly precatious And when Jesus Christ appears to vindicate his Supreme Authority from the invasions which Usurpers have made upon his Dignity the counterfeiting the broad Seal of Heaven and the suborning Scripture to supplant Christs Throne will prove a Crime unanswerable I shall only add in reference to this particular I have been discoursing that no verbal profession of being a Christian unless it be accompanied with a belief of the Revelations and an Obedience to the Laws of Christ can de Jure entitle us amongst his Subjects Secondly As a visible profession of subjection to Christ testified in the belief of what he hath revealed and in the obedience of what he hath commanded is the foundation of this political Union between Christ and his Church so we do hereby become politically united one to another and are denominated Members of Christs Catholick Visible Church For as the Profession of the Gospel in the belief of its Doctrines an avowed subjection to its Laws is the constituent form of the Church as Visible and the formal reason of its obtaining that appellation so all that profess the Invocation of the Name of the Lord Jesus their Lord and ours 1 Cor. 7.2 do hereby belong to Christs Catholick Church Visible and become Politically united as Subjects of the same Legislator and King In the profession of the same Lord Faith and Baptism doth the Union of the Church under the consideration of Catholick and Visible consist and as the Subjects of one and the same Temporal Prince become politically United together by their being in subjection to the Authority of the same supreme civil Ruler and governed by the same Laws so may all Christians be said upon a parallel account to be politically united one with another And here upon the one hand as Christ hath not made our Right to a room and membership in the Catholick Church to depend upon a formal belief of every thing that he hath revealed though every thing that Christ hath revealed ought to be believed when it appears that he hath revealed it so upon the other hand there are some Doctrines the explicite belief of which is necessary to the having a place in the Universal Church a Church being nothing else but