:

It hath been my own case more than once, or twice, or ten times when means have all failed, and the highest art or reason has sentenced me hopeless, yet have I been relieved by the prevalency of fervent prayer, and that, as the physician saith, tuto, cito, et jucunde ;'. My flesh and my heart failed, but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever.' And though he yet keep me under necessary weakness, and wholesome sickness, and certain expectation of further necessities and assaults, yet am I constrained by most convincing experiences, to set up this stone of remembrance, and publicly, to the praise of the Almighty, to acknowledge that certainly God is true to his promises, and that they are indeed his own infallible word, and that it is a most excellent privilege to have interest in God, and a spirit of supplication to be importunate with him. I doubt not but most Christians that observe the spirit and providences, are able to attest this prevalency of prayer by their own experiences.

Object. Perhaps you will say, If these rare examples were I would believe.

common,

Answ. 1. If they were common, they would be slighted, as common wonders are.

Secondly Importunate prayer is not common, though formal babbling be.

Thirdly: The evident returns of prayer are ordinary to the faithful.

Fourthly: If wonders were common, we should live by sense, and not by faith.

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Fifthly I answer, in the words of Augustin,P God letteth not every saint partake of miracles, lest the weak should be deceived with this pernicious error, to prefer miracles as better than the works of righteousness, whereby eternal life is attained.

And let me now add, that if the Scriptures were not the word of God, undoubtedly there would have been as many wonders of Providence for the disgracing it, as have been for the defending it and God would have destroyed the preachers of it, as the greatest abusers of him, and all the world, that should father

to dissolve by any natural cause, that had been hard like a bone a quarter of a year, notwithstanding all dissolving gargarisms. I thought fit to mention this, because it was done just as I spoke the words here written in this page. Many such marvellous mercies I have received, and known that others have received, in answer to prayer.

such a thing on him. Can any man believe that God is the just and gracious Ruler of the world, (that is, thatt here is a God,) and yet that he would so long suffer such things to be published as his undoubted laws, and give no testimony against it, if it were not true? As Perkins saith, Cases of Cons.' (lib. ii. c. 3. p. 130. sect. 1.) If it had not been God's word, the falsehood had been detected long ago. For there hath been nothing falsely said of God at any time which he himself hath not, at some time or other, opened and revealed; as he did the false prophets.

CHAP. VII.

The Fourth Argument.

SECT. I. My fourth and last argument, which I will now produce to prove the Scripture to be the word and perfect law of God, is this:

Either the Scriptures are the written word and law of God, or else there is no such extant in the world: but there is a written word and law of God in the world: ergo, this is it.

Here I have these two positions to prove; First, That God hath such a written word in the world. Secondly, That it can be no other but this.

That there is such a word, I prove thus: If it cannot stand with the welfare of mankind, and consequently with that honour which the wisdom and goodness of God hath by their welfare, that the world should be without a written law, then, certainly, there is such a written law. But that it cannot stand with the welfare of the creature, or that honour of God, appears thus that there be a certain and sufficient revelation of the will of God to man, more than mere nature and creatures do teach, is necessary to the welfare of man, and the aforesaid honour of God. But there is now no such certain and sufficient revelation unwritten in the world: therefore, it is neces-that there be such a revelation written.

sary

The proof of the major is the main task, which if it be well

a I do of purpose pass over those things which others have fully written of, because I would not trouble the world so often with the same words which others have said before us. In particular, to prove the absolute necessity that there must be some written word among and above others, great Camero

performed, will clearly carry the who e cause; for I believe all the rest will quickly be granted, if that be once plain. Therefore, I shall stand a little more largely to prove it, viz., that there is a necessity for the welfare of man, and the honour of God's wisdom and goodness, that there be some further revelation of God's will, than is in mere nature or creatures to be found. And first I prove it necessary to the welfare of man, and that thus: If man have a happiness or misery to partake of after this life, and no sufficient revelation of it in nature or creatures, then it is necessary that he have some other revelation of it, which is sufficient. But such a happiness or misery man must partake of hereafter, which nature and creatures do not sufficiently reveal, (either end or means,) therefore some other is necessary. I will stand the largelier on the first branch of the antecedent, because the chief weight lieth on it; and I scarce ever knew any doubt of Scripture, but they also doubted of the immortal state and recompense of souls; and that usually is their first and chiefest doubt.

I will, therefore, here prove these three things in order thus: 1. That there is such a state for man hereafter. 2. That it is necessary that he know it, and the way to be so happy. 3. That ́nature and creatures do not sufficiently reveal it.

For the first, I take it for granted, that there is a God, because nature teacheth that; and I shall pass over those arguments drawn from his righteousness and just dispensation, to prove the variety of men's future conditions, because they are commonly known; and I shall now argue from sense itself, because that works best with sensual men: and that thus. If the devil be very diligent to deceive men of that happiness, and to bring them to that misery, then sure there is such a happiness and misery but the former is true, ergo the latter. They

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hath done it fully, 'Prælect. de Verbo Dei,' c. 4—6, Operum, (fol.) pp. 450, 451, &c., and shows how lamentably even the wisest of the philosophers were besotted and ignorant.

See Justin Martyr, Serm. ad Gent., proving the unity of the Godhead out of the heathens themselves, Orpheus, the Sybils, Sophocles, Homer, Plato, Pythagoras, &c.

Hear what a heathen saith of the life to come. Miraris hominem ad Deos ire? Deus ad homines venit; immo, quod propius est, in homines venit. Nulla sine Deo mens bona est. Semina in corporibus humanis divina dispersa sunt; quæ si bonus cultor excipit, similia origine prodeunt, et paria his ex quibus orta sunt surgunt; si malus, non aliter quam humus sterilis ac palustris necat, ac deinde creat purgamenta pro frugibus.-Senec. Epist. lxxiii. p. 278, 279, edit. Elsev. 1672.

that doubt of the major proposition, do most of them doubt, whether there be any devil, as well as whether he seek our eternal undoing. I prove both together. First, By his temptation; Secondly, Apparitions; Thirdly, Their possessions and dispossessions; Fourthly, His contracts with witches. I hope these are palpable discoveries.

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1. The temptations of Satan are sometimes so unnatural, so violent, and so importunate, that the tempted person even feels something besides himself persuading and urging him he cannot go about his calling, he cannot be alone, but he feels somewhat following him, with persuasions to sin, yea, to sins that he never found his nature much inclined to, and such as bring him no advantage in the world, and such as are quite against the temperature of his body. Doth it not plainly tell us, that there is a devil, labouring to deprive man of his happiness, when men are drawn to commit such monstrous sins? Such cruelty as the Romans used to the Jews at the taking of Jerusalem; so many thousand Christians so barbarously murdered; such bloody actions as those of Nero, Caligula, Sylla, Messala, Caracalla, the Roman gladiators, the French massacre, the gunpowder plot, the Spanish inquisition, and their murdering fifty millions of Indians in forty two years, according to the testimony of Acosta, their Jesuit; men invading their own neighbours and brethren, with an unquenchable thirst after their blood, and merely because of their strictness in the common professed religion: I say, How could these come to pass, but by the instigation of the devil? When we see men making a jest of such sins as these, making them their pleasure, impudently, and implacably against knowledge and conscience, proceeding in them, hating those ways that they know to be bet

* Suadent autem miris invisibilibus modis, per illam subtilitatem suorum corporum, corpora hominum non sentientium penetrando, seseque cogitationibus eorum per quædam imaginaria, visa miscendo, sive vigilautiùm, sive dormientium.-Aug. de Divin. Dæmon. cap. 5. Nou potest dæmon instruere novas formas in materiam corporalem, unde nec per consequens in sensum et imaginationem in quibus nil recipitur sine organo corporali; unde relinquitur, ut aliquid præexistat in corpore, quod per quandam transmutationem localem spirituum et humorum reducitur ad principia sensualium organorum; ut sic videantur ab anima imaginaria vel sensuali visione.—Aquin. 1. q. 16. a. 1. Experimur multas sæpe nobis invitis malas cogitationes in mentem obrepere. Unde vero hæ cogitationes? Ab aliquo certe agente eas commovente. Non à nobis; quia inviti illas patimur; non ab angelis bonis, neque à Deo per illos, quia cogitationes malæ sunt. A diabolis igitur sunt,-Zanch, tom. 3. lib. iv. 'De Potent. Dæmon,' c. 1. p. 191.

ter, and all those persons that would help to save them; yea, choosing sin, though they believe it will damn them; despairing, and yet sinning still: doth not this tell men plainly, that there is a devil; their enemy? When men will commit the sin which they abhor in others, which reason is against; when men of otherwise a good nature, as Vespasian, &c., shall be so bloody murderers; when men will not be stirred from sin by any entreaty, though their dearest friends should beg, with tears, upon their knees; though preachers convince them, and beseech them in the name of the Lord; though wife and children, body and soul, be undone by it; nay, when men will be the same under the greatest judgment, and under the most wonderful convincing providences, as appears in England, yea, under miracles themselves.

Surely I think all this shows that there is a devil, and that he is diligent in working our own ruin. Why else should it be so hard a thing to persuade a man to that, which he is convinced to be good?

Sect. II. But yet if this be not evidence sufficient, the frequent apparitions of Satan in several shapes, drawing men, or frighting them into sin, is a discovery undeniable." I know many are very incredulous herein, and will hardly believe that there have been such apparitions. For my own part, though I am as suspicious as most in such reports, and do believe that most of them are conceits or delusions, yet having been very diligently inquisitive in all such cases, I have received undoubted testimony of the truth of such apparitions; some from the mouths of men of undoubted honesty and godliness, and some from the report of multitudes of persons, who heard or saw. Were it fit here to name the persons, I could send you to them yet living, by whom you would be as fully satisfied as I: houses that have been so frequently haunted with such terrors, that the inhabitants successively have been witnesses of it.

Learned godly Zanchius, in his tom. 3. lib. iv. cap. 10. 'De Potentia Dæmonum,' saith, "he wonders that any should deny that there are such spirits, as from the effects are called hags, or fairies, that is, such as exercise familiarity with men, and do, without hurting men's bodies, come to them, and trouble them, and, as it were, play with them. I could (saith he) bring

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Lege Epistolam Vossii de Samuele apparente Saulo, in Joan. Beverovicii Epistolis; et D. Reignol. de Samuele apparente, in variis prælectionibus de lib, Apoc.