if Scripture was not clear enough: and you used it as a testimony to Jefus Chrift, they would stone you for a blafphemer. What shall we fay then? that the Jews were of a different opinion from the Chriftians? and that this was their way of understanding the Scripture? No: God forbid. For if we will believe the Scripture itself, it was their way of denying it. Had ye BELIEVED Mofes, fays our Lord, ye would have believed me: and he gives us upon this occafion the true grounds and reafons of their unbelief; because they received honour one of another, and had not the love of God in them. Every hypothefis of human growth, which was pretty fure to agree with their complexion, and reflected some honour upon themselves by exalting the nature of man, that can make a religion for itself, and comes in its own name; that they would gladly receive. But if any thing was offered to them in the name of God, to be rea See John V. 39.-ad fin. e 2 ceived ceived for the love of him, and the fpiritual comfort of a pure confcience, and the hope of a better world; it was rejected, as an encroachment upon their natural rights, and an invective against the innocent pleasures of a carnal Jerufalem. And fo it is with us at this time: for if an Author does but hang out the Sign of Nature and reafon in his title-page, there are readers in plenty, who will buy up and fwallow his dregs by wholefale: but if God, of his infinite mercy and condefcenfion, fhews to them the way of Salvation, his words are to be abftracted from the evidence upon which he requires us to believe them, then put into this Alembic of reason, and demonftrated to be no poifon, before they can be brought to taste them. And if they should happen to be a little disagreeable to flesh and blood, and the operation fhould mifcarry, the fault is charged upon God, and hot upon themselves, who ought to have gone another way to work; as they will certainly find. We We conclude therefore, becaufe Chrift has affirmed it, that every degree of doubt and disputation against the words of God, is just so much unbelief; proceeding not from the head or understanding, but from the heart and affections. And the world is filled with the vain jangling of uncertainty, for this short reason all men have not Faith". a a Heb. III. 12. b 2 TheЛ. III. 2. IN are N all the Texts which are compared together in the following work, thofe particular words, whereon the stress of the comparison lies, are printed in Capitals; that the argument obtained from them may fhew itself to the reader upon the first inspection. And I hope, after what has been observed to him in the foregoing discourse, that this is the only admonition he will ftand in need of. The arguments I have drawn from the scripture are, to the beft of my knowlege, most of them new : and, if I may judge from my own mind, the manner in which they are laid down, is more likely to convince, than any I have yet seen. Had I thought otherwife, I could easily have forbore to trouble myself or the world with the tranfcribing and printing them. The end I have propofed is not to obtain any reputation, (to which this is not the way) but to do fome little good, of which there is much need. I do therefore fin cerely |