1. They speak not of a defect in our evidence or in the soundness of our reasons given, as if we could not give you such reasons as you are bound to be convinced by, but they speak of the defect of your reason for the reception of our reasons; and say, that through your darkness and pravity, no reason, how sound soever, will satisfy you without supernatural grace. 2. They deny not that you may come to a common belief by the persuasion of these reasons and the common help of the Spirit; but only that you can have the special saving faith of the saints, without the Spirit's special grace. An historical belief, which is true in its kind, they confess you may come to by rational persuasions, without special grace: but not that deep and firm belief, which shall carry over the will effectually to God in Christ, and captivate the whole man into the obedience of his will.

6. And as for the papists, as it is their interest and pre-engagement and contentious study, that causeth this and other their errors; so in this they are not of one mind among themselves, and therefore, their error is no disparagement to the cause of Christ.

7. No more is the error of these on the other side, who, through darkness, passion, or inconsiderateness, are carried to take the part of infidels against Christianity; so far as to say, that we have no reason for our religion, or that it is not to be proved by any dispute, or that it is to be believed and not to be known or proved that Scripture is God's word, or that our religion is true. I say of them in this, as of you: we may have proof and full proof, though neither they nor you can see it. None of them all is able to confute the proofs that are brought by Austin, Eusebius, or the rest of the fathers for the christian faith; nor to answer the apologies of Justin Martyr, Athenagoras, Clemens Alexandrinus, Tertullian, Origen, Lactantius, Arnobius, Minutius Foelix, Athanasius, Cyril Alexand., with many more on this subject. None of these quarrelsome men can confute the arguments that our ordinary common-place books and bodies of divinity, or catechisms written by reformed divines, do bring to prove the Scripture to be the word of God. Nor the treatises of Ficinus, Lod. Vives, Mornay, Grotius, Jackson, &c. that are written to that end. If either you or any peevish, factious men that will so far befriend you, will undertake such a task, I doubt not but they shall find enough to vindicate the christian cause and doctrine, and to manifest their error.

For my own part, I am willing to give to contenders the last words in the most evident points, which are not of necessity to salvation. I have seen so much the fruit of disputations, and what an intolerable provocation it is to some men to be contradicted, and how strongly it tempteth them to passion, untruth, and palpable injustice, and the disadvantage of the clearest reasons, when prejudice is to encounter them, that I shall be as little in contradiction of such impatient souls as I can; and if they will maintain that homo is not animal rationale, if they enforce it not against spirituals, I shall give them the day. But yet while God gives me life, and ability, and opportunity, I undertake to make good against them or you, that there is sound proof to be given of the two principles of our faith, viz. : that God is true, and that Scripture is his word; and that these are first, in true order of nature, to be known, before they are to be believed fide divina, though a human faith is usually preparatory, and that we are not unfurnished of solid arguments to deal with a heathen or infidel, or to establish a tempted Christian in the faith; and that he that will tell an infidel, or tempted Christian, or a papist, or any adversary of our churches, that we have no sound reason to be Christians rather than infidels, and that we have no solid proof that Scripture is God's word, shall deal liker a betrayer than a preacher of the word of the Gospel, and is unfit to preach to the unbelieving world. And if any of you that are infidels are encouraged by their conceits, I tell you, we shall easily manifest the vanity of such conceits, whether they are from you or them.

Object. But it is not only these few, but the most of you are disagreed among yourselves, on what grounds or reasons you take the Scriptures to be the word of God. Though most of you say, in general, that you have sufficient reasons for it; yet, when you come to manifest them, how many minds are you of? That which to one seems an irrefragable reason, another doth contemn; so that all of them are slighted by one party or other. The papists' reason is from the authority of their infallible church. The protestants, some of them say that Scripture is as the sun that is seen by its own light; and so our belief of it is resolved into itself. Others fetch their reasons from the attestation of miracles; others resolve all into the private testimony or revelation of the Spirit. You know more than one have told you lately that we cannot believe this by a divine faith, but by the testimony of God: nor must we fetch this tes

timony out of the Scriptures; for this were to believe the Scriptures before we believe them: therefore the ground is the witness of God to our spirits. The witness of God to their spirits, they say, is the first ground on which their faith is built, and this is by a secret causing us to believe, and so some truth is believed without reason.

Answ. 1. I have before given you my answer, as to the papists, and those few of our own that run into such extremes. All arguments be not weak, which some men dare deny. Is not the highway right except every man hit it? A drunken man may go beside it, and a wise man that is not used to it may miss it, or by credulity may be turned by others out of his way; and yet the way may be right and plain too for all that. Will you think nothing certain in philosophy, because philosophers are of so many minds; or will you renounce all physicians because they ordinarily disagree; or, as one saith, if a Londoner have a journey into the country, which his life lieth on, will he not go his journey because the clocks disagree; or will he not set on till all the clocks in London strike at once, or will never give any credit to a clock till then?

2. Our divines disagree not so much as you pretend. Their ordinary judgment is this, which we shall easily make good against your opposition, that Scripture hath not sensible evidence, or the things believed are not evident; but yet there is sufficient evidence of the verity of them, in that it is evidently proveable, that God is the Author of that word, and that God cannot lie that our evidence objective of the divinity of Scriptures is partly the internal light of their own perfections, partly in providential attestations, especially miracles, and partly in the effects that the Holy Ghost, by special inspiration, was the Author of these Scriptures, and by extraordinary endowments was the Author of those miracles which were wrought for its confirmation, and is also the Author of the faith of the believer, and having wrought that faith and the rest of God's image, the effect is a further argument to confirm the faith that was wrought before: but yet they say not that the Holy Ghost doth cause men to believe without any evidence; which were to see without light, or to know or believe that which is no object of assent. There is evidence of truth in Scripture, and there are sound reasons for the christian faith, before the Holy Ghost persuades men to believe them. The Holy Ghost is not sent to cure the Scripture of obscurity or any defect, but to cure men's

men.

eyes of blindness that cannot see that which is visible to seeing The Spirit is not given to make our religion reasonable, but to make sinners reasonable, in habit and act, for the believing it. The Spirit, therefore, is not first any objective cause of our belief, unless you speak of the Spirit in the apostles or others, and not in men's selves, but it is the efficient cause; nor doth he cause us to believe by enthusiasm, or without reason, but he works on man as man, and causeth him to believe nothing but what is credible; and his causing us to believe is by showing us the credibility of the thing, or the evidence of the truth to be believed, and elevating the soul to the belief thereof. And for those that contradict this, it may suffice me now to tell you that their singular opinion is no disparagement to the Scripture, or the christian cause. If they will either make the Spirit to cause an act without its object, that is, faith without apparent reasonable, credibility in the thing believed, or if they will make the first work of faith to be enthusiastical, and introduce a constancy of new revelations; if they will assign such a work to the Holy Ghost of their own heads, beyond the work which Scripture' assigneth, which was so to inspire the penmen of Scripture, that it may be a sufficient revelation, and then to illuminate men's understandings by a cure of their depravity, that so they may believe, and effectually to excite the heart thereto, if they will accuse the Scripture of being an insufficient revelation, or if they will accuse the christian verity of unreasonableness, or being a doctrine that hath no proof; if they will profess that we have no rational means to confute or convince an infidel, nor to confirm a tempted professor of Christianity; if they will tell all infidels that we can give them no such sound reasons for our faith, as should bind them to believe, by making it their duty, and condemn them if they believe not; but will justify all such infidels from being guilty on that account; if they will say that natural verities are not presupposed to those of supernatural revelations, and may not afford some proof of our principles of faith; if they will unavoidably cast themselves into the circle which the papists, falsely, charge upon protestants in general, but is the case but of these few, to wit, to prove by the Spirit that Scripture is God's word, and to prove by Scripture that this is God's Spirit, circularly; or if they will teach men to be enthusiasts, and to plead new revelations and witnesses of the Spirit, of which they can give no proof that they are of God; if they will tell men of a Spirit, which is not

to be tried by the word whether it be of God or not, seeing its testimony must be believed before we believe the word; if they will contradict themselves, and make two first credibles, that is, Scripture to be God's word, and that it is God's Spirit that witnesseth it; if they will deny that honour to the Scripture to be propter se credibile, and yet give the same honour to the testimony which they say they have from the Spirit; if they will cross the experience of all those Christians that know of no inspiration or testimony of the Spirit which caused them to see a truth without any persuading objective evidence, but caused them to believe, because they believe; seeing no more reason, at the same time, why they should believe, than why they should not believe; finally, if indeed they see no reason why they are or should be Christians themselves, nor can give to him that asketh them a reason of their hope; I say, if all this be so with them, it is not so with me; it is not so with other reformed divines; it was not so with the ancient fathers of the church that confuted the infidels; nor was it so with the apostles who made full proof of their doctrine to the world, and set to that seal that is not yet void or taken away. You may see these men sufficiently confuted by our divines, especially by Rob. Baronius contra Turnebull, and Thes. Salmuriens. de S. Script. et Testim. Spir. For their quarrels with us, we leave them till we shall meet them in the presence of that God whose light will effectually dispel all our darkness and reconcile our differences, and mollify our angry, self-conceited minds, and where it shall be known which of us was in the wrong.

But as to all the friends of infidelity, as we have showed you already such reasons of our belief as will convince you, or condemn you, so are we ready yet to produce more. We undertake not to cure your prejudice, or blindness, or sensual opposition to the word of God, or proud arrogancy that causeth you to censure the word which you should learn, and therefore we undertake not to cause you to believe. And for those of you that have done despite to the Spirit of grace, we have little hope that ever you should be true believers; but yet we undertake to produce such reasons for our religion as should wholly prevail with a reasonable man; and I dare say there are such, even in this imperfect discourse, which here I offer you; but much more by the more judicious, and upon more deliberation, may be said.

Object. You magnify your own reasons, but you know other men of your own religion do vilify them, and maintain them to