I. CHAP. and destroy; that the roof that covers and protects might minutely overwhelm and bury us: yet are we not such hypochondriacs in these matters of daily use,—and in them that are, it is interpreted an eminent defect or decay of reason, and not a higher pitch of it,-as to deprive ourselves of the benefit of food and raiment upon consideration of these remote possible dangers, nor to fear all things, but what we know infallibly. [Illus men's con 20. And if it shall be said that eating is necessary for the preservation of life, and that that consideration makes it reasonable to trust on those grounds, because by distrusting we should subject ourselves to a certainty of that whereof the other is at most but an hazard; I answer, first, that this instance was produced only to shew that we think it reasonable, without fear or doubt, to rely on some things for which we have no demonstration or knowledge of the impossibility of the contrary; and that is still proved by this instance, though it be granted that eating is necessary; because if the necessity of eating were the cause that made men venture that hazard, they should never venture it till they were necessarily to starve without it; and when they did so, they should do it with continual doubt, and fear of the possible danger: neither of which are thought rational, nor practised by considering men. And secondly, the interpretation of being fed' in the instance, was the whole course of men in feeding,' which is not the proportioning of food to the necessities of life, or the Lessian or Cornarian diet, but the free manner of feeding among men, such as was paralleled to the standing on a floor that might possibly fall, that is, being in an upper room; which being not at all necessary to life, and withal possible in nature that it shall minutely be our death, is yet made use of among all wise men with as much confidence and fearlessness as it is expected of us that we should believe the gospel. 21. This may be enlarged to the several businesses of the trated by world, wherein all men act most confidently; to that of trafficking and trading, and all kinds of merchandising, which are really mixed with not improbable hazards: the whole life of the husbandman is a continual example of those that think fit to adhere and believe and act accord duct in worldly affairs.] And CHAP. ingly, without having received any demonstration. 22. And if we will in the business in hand (the believing of the Apostles' relations concerning those testimonies given Christ from heaven, wherein we have infinitely stronger grounds to build our faith on, securities and convictions incomparably more pregnant and vehement) allow it reasonable for us to do that once, which in all other things we do confidently every minute of our lives, viz., believe what we have all reason to believe, without exacting of evidence or demonstration, there will be no more required of us in this matter. 23. That this is directly the case in hand, and, over and above this, that the testifying of the gospel hath all imaginable advantages, will appear by a bare application of the particulars. I. amount of the testi 24. The voices from heaven concerning Christ are testified [The by the joint concurrence of all that were present at them, no one finding any cause of scruple or interposing any doubt mony.] concerning them. Those very persons, with the addition of many more, are allowed the favour of seeing Him after His resurrection, of using all the most infallible means of securing themselves and others of the reality of this. Being thus assured, they make it the business of their whole lives after to communicate it to others, some in writings, all in preaching through all parts of the world, whither they travelled on purpose to propagate this truth, agreeing in the whole matter of story, and in every circumstance of it. The truth of what they say they again back with miracles on one side, with completion of predictions, both of the prophets of old concerning Christ, and of Christ concerning them and the succeeding ages, especially that concerning His speedy coming in vengeance against His crucifiers, on the other side both testimonies of God, to authorize their testi CHAP. monies. I. In propagating this doctrine as they use not strength or force, which hath been the engine by which all other religions have received their growth, so they never endeavour to disturb states or government for or by the planting this doctrine, but always preach subjection to the powers which are any where established, and without all resistance profess, and by their actions demonstrate, themselves obliged to suffer whatsoever their lawful magistrates inflict on them, and contend only with their prayers to God, that they may live quietly and peaceably under them, having still their cross in their hands, and many times on their shoulders, to follow Christ. And if this were not sufficient to prevent, or to satisfy the jealousies of heathen princes, yet upon that very account it is the greater testimony of the truth of their doctrine, when they that propagate it are so far from designing any temporal advantages to themselves, which might bribe them to the deposing an untruth, that they actually part with their very lives, and consequently with all capacity of those possible advantages, and acquire nothing but reproaches, and torments, and death itself: and all this without any other imaginable reward or payment in commutation or reparation for all this, save only the future expectation of that for which they yet had no further assurance than the truth of that which they thus confessed: nay, yet further, when they have given this costly testimony to this truth, God again bears testimony to them, [Heb. xi. and by miracles wrought at their monuments, "being dead, 4.] they yet speak." 25. That all this is thus true, is again itself testified, not only by records still extant under their hands who wrote the Gospels and the Acts, and by footsteps and remainders of all others' preaching, wheresoever they taught, but also by the like consent of the whole Church, i. e. whole multitudes of that age wherein this is pretended to be written and taught, who being convinced with the truth of what we now enquire after, readily gave up their names to the belief of it, and to the consequent confession of Christ, though the doing it did in like manner cost them very dear, the parting with their espoused customs of living, whether among the Jewish or Gentile world, their pleasures, their CHA P. worldly wealth, and oft-times their lives also. 26. Beyond all this, the success which attended it had so much of strangeness in it,-viz., that from such mean and simple beginnings and instruments, without any kind of power or earthly authority to back it, without one sword ever drawn in defence of it, Christianity should soon obtain such a victory over the hearts of men in so great a part of the world, that nothing but truth, which hath that overruling force in it, can be deemed to have been its champion. 27. Lastly, that these are the writings, those the tradition of those eye-witnesses whose they pretend to be, and that they were by such shoals, such multitudes of men of all nations believed then, and that belief signed by the blood of many, by the hazards and adventures of most, by the professed non-resistance of all, this is as fully testified to us as any matter of fact can be supposed to be, by the concurrent testimonies of all of that age which say any thing of it, and by a general successive attestation of all intervening ages since that time, (the authority of those writings being never contested by any,) i. e. by the same means of probation upon which we believe those things which we least doubt of, and against which men cannot feign any sound or show of proof, save only that testimonies are not demonstrations; which exception will in like manner be in a like or far greater force against all other things which we believe most confidently. I. about the ers.] 28. I am not willing to leave any possible scruple unsatisfied [Question in this matter, and therefore I shall proceed to that other delusion of bolder objection still behind, that that which is pretended the hearto be the voice of God, may not have been such, but some delusion of the hearers, or at least the voice of some other, and not of God; as the devil in the oracle delivered himself by voice and therefore though it be confessed, that if this voice were God's, it is infallibly creditable, yet there will need some certain way of discrimination to assure it was j Among the ὁμολογούμενα, the confessed writings of Scriptures, attested by all, and not TIλeyóμeva, contradicted by any, τακτέον ἐν πρώτοις τὴν ἁγίαν τῶν εὐαγγελίων τετρακτὺν, οἷς ἕπεται ἡ τῶν πράξεων τῶν ̓Αποστόλων γραφή. **** His. To this I answer, that the person whose objection -this may be supposed to be, is either a bare theist, that acknowledges a God, but not the God of Israel; or else he that acknowledges what the Jew did, the truth of the Old Testament. I shall reply somewhat to each of these. 29. To the former, that if this way of objecting would be of force, there could be no way for God to reveal Himself to man; veracity would be an empty attribute of God, of no signification to us. For it is not imaginable that there should be any greater assurance of God's speaking to men, than by the heavens opening, and from thence the Spirit of God descending visibly, and lighting on one, and out of the clouds a voice delivered: whatsoever else can be imagined or named will not be above this. And if all the ways that God can use be not able to give assurance that it is God that speaks, what are we the nearer for knowing that God cannot lie, as long as there is supposed for us no way to know what at any time He saith? nay, to what use, as to this particular, is His omnipotence, if He cannot reveal Himself to us in such a way that may be reasonable for us to believe to be His, and not some deceiver's voice? Nay, in this God shall not be able to do so much as any ordinary man; for He can so reveal Himself, or speak, as no man that is present, and doth not stop his ears, shall be able to doubt of his speaking. 30. To the second sort of objectors I answer, that the ob**w.jection will lose all its seeming force, if it be remembered, that although now among us voices from heaven are not heard, (and therefore we are not at this distance so competent judges of the clearness or certainty that such, when they were, were not delusions, and accordingly the assent required of us of this age is but proportionable to the ground of belief which we enjoy,) yet among that people of the Jews this was very ordinary. God's law was given to Moses in that manner, and God led that people by a pillar of cloud and fire, which was answerable to this : and in after-times, under the second temple, they confess this the only way of God's revealing Himself to them. And therefore in this very matter it was allowed and pleaded by some prime men of that people, that if the Spirit, or an angel, had spoken |