not fully." We must here excuse the doubtfulness of his talking, concerning the discovery of his other necessary articles. For how could he say, they were discovered, or not discovered, clearly or obscurely, fully or not fully; when he does not yet know them all, nor can tell us, what those necessary articles are? If he does know them, let him give us a list of them, and then we shall see easily, whether they were at all published or discovered in our Saviour's time. If there are some of them that were not at all discovered in our Saviour's time, let him speak it out, and leave shifting: and if some of those that were "not necessary for our Saviour's time, but for the succeeding one only," were yet discovered in our Saviour's time, why were they not necessary to be believed in that time? But the truth is, he knows not what these doctrines, necessary for succeeding times, are: and therefore can say nothing positively about their discovery. And for those that he has set down, as soon as he shall name any one of them to be of the number of those," not necessary for our Saviour's time, but necessary for the succeeding one," it will presently appear, either that it was discovered in our Saviour's time; and then it was as necessary for his time as the succeeding: or else, that it was not discovered in his time, nor to several converts after his time, before they were made Christians; and therefore it was no more necessary to be believed to make a man a Christian in the succeeding, than it was in our Saviour's time. However, general positions and distinctions without a foundation serve for show, and to beguile unwary and inattentive readers.

2. Having thus minded him, that the question is about articles of faith, necessary to be explicitly and distinctly believed to make a man a Christian; I then, in the next place, demand of him to tell me,

XXXIX. Whether or no all the articles, necessary now to be distinctly and explicitly believed, to make any man a Christian, were distinctly and explicitly published or discovered in our Saviour's

time?

And then I shall desire to know of him,

XL. A reason why they were not.

Those that he instances in, of Christ's death and resurrection, will not help him one jot; for they are not new doctrines revealed, new mysteries discovered; but matters of fact, which happened to our Saviour in their due time, to complete in him the character and predictions of the Messiah, and demonstrate him to be the Deliverer promised. These are recorded of him by the Spirit of God in holy writ, but are no more necessary to be believed to make a man a Christian, than any other part of divine revelation, but as far as they have an immediate connexion with his being the Messiah, and cannot be denied without denying him to be the Messiah and therefore this article of his resurrection, (which supposes his death) and such other propositions as are convertible with his being the Messiah, are, as they very well may be, put for his being the Messiah; and, as I have showed, proposed to be believed in the place of it.

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All that is revealed in Scripture has a consequential necessity of being believed by all those, to whom it is proposed; because it is of divine authority, one part as much as another. And, in this sense, all the divine truths in the inspired writings are fundamental, and necessary to be believed. But then this will destroy our unmasker's select number of fundamental articles; and "the choicest and sublimest truths of Christianity," which, he tells us," are to be met with in the Epistles," will not be more necessary to be believed than any, which he may think the commonest or meanest truths in any of the Epistles or the Gospels. Whatsoever part of divine revelation, whether revealed before, or in, or after our Saviour's time; whether it contains (according to the distinction of our unmasker's nice palate) choice or common, sublime or not sublime truths, is necessary to be believed by every one to whom it is proposed, as far as he understands what is proposed. But God, by Jesus Christ, has entered into a covenant of grace with

mankind ; a covenant of faith; instead of that of works, wherein some truths are absolutely necessary to be explicitly believed by them to make men Christians; and therefore those truths are necessary to be known and consequently necessary to be proposed to them to make men Christians. This is peculiar to them to make men Christians. For all men, as men, are under a necessary obligation to believe what God proposes to them to be believed; but there being certain distinguishing truths, which belong to the covenant of the Gospel, which if men know not, they cannot be Christians; and they being, some of them, such as cannot be known without being proposed ; those, and those only, are the necessary doctrines of Christianity I speak of; without a knowledge of, and assent to which, no man can be a Christian.

To come therefore to a clear decision of this controversy, I desire the unmasker to tell me,

XLI. What those doctrines are, which are absolutely necessary to be proposed to every man to make him a Christian?

XLII. 1. Whether they are all the truths of divine revelation contained in the Bible?

For I grant his argument, (which in another place he uses for some of them, and truly belongs to them all) viz. that they were revealed and written there, on purpose to be believed, and that it is indispensably necessary for Christians to believe them.

· XLIII. 2. Or, whether it be only that one article, of Jesus being the Messiah, which the History of our Saviour and his apostles' preaching has, with such a peculiar distinction, every where proposed?

XLIV. 3. Or, whether the doctrines necessary to be proposed to every one to make him a Christian, be any set of truths between the two?

And if he says this latter, then I must ask him,

XLV. What they are? that we may see, why those, rather than any other, contained in the New Testament, are necessary to be proposed to every man to make him a Christian; and, if they are not every one proposed to him, and assented to by him, he cannot be a Christian.

The unmasker makes a great noise, and hopes to give his unwary, though well-meaning readers, odd thoughts and strong impressions against my book, by declaiming against my lank faith, and my narrowing of Christianity to one article; which, as he says, is the next way to reduce it to none. But when it is considered, it will be found, that it is he that narrows Christianity. The unmasker, as if he were arbiter and dispenser of the oracles of God, takes upon him to single out some texts of Scripture; and, where the words of Scripture will not serve his turn, to impose on us his interpretations and deductions, as necessary articles of faith; which is, in effect, to make them of equal authority with the unquestionable word of God. And thus, partly in the words of Scripture, and partly in words of his own, he makes a set of fundamentals, with an exclusion of all the other truths delivered by the Spirit of God, in the Bible; though all the rest be of the same divine authority and original, and ought therefore all equally, as far as they are understood by every Christian, to be believed. I tell him, and I desire him to take notice of it, God has nowhere given him an authority thus to garble the inspired writings of the holy Scriptures. Every part of it is his word, and ought, every part of it, to be believed by every Christian man, according as God shall enable him to understand it. It ought not to be narrowed to the cut of the unmasker's peculiar system; it is a presumption of the highest nature, for him thus to pretend, according to his own fancy, to establish a set of fundamental articles. This is to diminish the authority of the word of God, to set up his own; and create a reverence to his system, from which

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the several parts of divine revelation are to receive their weight, dignity, and authority. Those passages of holy writ which suit with that, are fundamental, choice, sublime, and necessary: the rest of the Scripture (as of no great moment) is not fundamental, is not necessary to be believed, may be neglected, or must be tortured, to comply with an analogy of faith of his own making. But though he pretends to a certain set of fundamentals, yet, to show the vanity and impudence of that pretence, he cannot tell us what they are; and therefore in vain contends for a creed he knows not, and is yet nowhere. He neither does, and which is more, I tell him, he never can, give us a collection of his fundamentals thered upon his principles, out of the Scripture, with the rejection of all the rest, as not fundamental. He does not observe the difference there is between what is necessary to be believed by every man to make him a Christian, and what is required to be believed by every Christian. The first of these is what, by the covenant of the Gospel, is necessary to be known, and consequently to be proposed to every man, to make him a Christian the latter is no less than the whole reve-i lation of God, all the divine truths contained in holy Scripture: which every Christian man is under a necessity to believe, so far as it shall please God, upon his serious and constant endeavours, to enlighten his mind to understand them.

The preaching of our Saviour and his apostles has sufficiently taught us what is necessary to be proposed to every man, to make him a Christian.. He that believes him to be the promised Messiah, takes Jesus for his King, and, repenting of his former sins, sincerely re-s solves to live, for the future, in obedience to his laws, is a subject of his kingdom, is a Christian. If he be not, I desire the unmasker to tell me what more is requisite to make him so.. Until he does that, I rest satisfied, that this is all that was at first, and is still necessary to make a man a Christian.

This, though it be contained in a few words, and those not hard to be understood; though it be in one: voluntary act of the mind, relinquishing all irregular