the written word, in the choice of the several religions they now profess, and they all pre-engage themselves to their sect before they have ever read the Scriptures, it is not without good reason we summon them back to the trial: Return back to judgment to the law and to the testimony.

That the holy Scripture is of great weight in deciding controversy, and ought strenuously to be insisted upon in dispute, nay, that it is even an infallible rule in what it teaches, when we are fully assured of the true sense of it, is what no Roman Catholic denies; and every Protestant must confess, that when this sacred book is interpreted in a wrong sense, it is then no rule at all. Whosoever then has built his belief upon the words of Scripture misunderstood, has not in fact built his religion upon the word of God, as he vainly imagines, but upon the conceptions of his own mind, which indeed may be called the word of man, and may very possibly be fraught with errors contrary to the word of God, but can never be set in equal authority with it.

Yet Protestants are the people who abhor the thought of a religion which is built upon the authority of men, and for this reason they appeal from fathers, from tradition, from general councils, through pretence, that the pastors and doctors of the Church, which compose these most august assemblies, are but men. The word of God, say Protestants, is above them all, and our faith shall not stand upon the authority of men, but the pure word of God; not one of them in all this time making this obvious reflection, That the Protestant interpreters of this pure word of God are themselves not more than men, and their authority not more than

human. The first thing, therefore, that I desire to extort from the mouth of every Protestant is, a fair confession, that all the interpreters of Scripture which they have in their reformed churches, whether ministers or people, are but men, and all of them together not infallible; and that when any of these mistake the sense of Scripture, their religion then is no longer built upon the word of God, but upon the authority of mistaken men.

Now, that this may really be the case, and that Protestants, who presume to be the interpreters of Scripture, may in fact have mistaken the true meaning of it, must never be denied by those who make open profession, that the gift of infallibility is in none of their churches. They may remark, too, that many numerous societies before them, which numbered within them persons of as sound judgment as any of the reformed churches, as good scripturists, and persons as well versed in the learned languages, in which that sacred book was originally written, as any of the Protestants of our own time can boast of, and yet mistook the sense of Scripture, and fell into errors against what Protestants themselves term the fundamentals of Christianity, as the Sabellians, Arians, Macedonians, and the Socinians, erring against the Trinity: the Nestorians, Eutychians, and Monothelites, erring against the Incarnation; Pelagians, erring against Grace and Original Sin, &c. These, and many other sects, fell into the most intolerable errors, not for want of learning or industry in the study of Scripture, but merely by following a wrong and fallacious rule of faith, the same rule which Protestants follow: The written word of God, as understood by every man of sound judgment,

as, without question, every one of them thought theirs to be.

What security shall Protestants of our own times give, that they are not guilty of the like mistakes in their interpretations of the sacred text? I know of no security they can give. For, in the first place, it would be excessively ridiculous in any one sect of Protestants to prefer themselves, as to the gift of understanding, before all the rest who dissent from them, or to pretend that sound judgment is entirely confined to their party, there being no grounds imaginable why those who belong to any particular reformed church should think that they have better talents, either natural or supernatural, than their brethren, for understanding holy writ. At the same time, too, all of them unanimously agree, that the gift of infallibility is among none of them. And should it be pretended by any of them that they have, by the means of prayer, obtained the gift of interpreting Scripture, this pretence, too, must seem highly ridiculous, since we know that every sect of them pretends to pray without intermission for this gift, and yet have hitherto obtained no other gift but that of contradicting each other's interpretation. Nor do I know of any promise God has made, that every private man and woman among the laity, who shall pray for the gift of interpreting Scripture, shall be infallibly guided by the Holy Ghost to the true sense of it: nor have I faith to believe that they who have first made a stubborn resistance against that Church which Christ commanded them to hear under pain of being accounted heathens, could afterwards petition heaven, and find such favour there, as to obtain an extraordinary gift of

the Holy Ghost, to become inspired interpreters of Scripture, and infallible oracles. The gift of interpreting the word of knowledge, the word of wisdom (1 Cor. xii. 8), are extraordinary gifts of the Holy Ghost, which are given in the Church to some, for the sanctification of others, like the gift of working miracles and prophecy (ver. 10), which are not to be ordinarily obtained by prayer, or by any other means, but by the absolute will of God: and although some person should assure me, that he has prayed half his life for the gift of prophecy, I shall not thenceforward conclude that such an one will certainly be a prophet some time or other before he dies, nor that every Protestant who pretends to pray for the gift of interpreting Scripture, will of course become an oracle. I hope then that Protestants of every sect will be so ingenuous as to own at least the possibility of their mistaking the sense of Scripture, since they can pretend to no better talents, natural or supernatural, for expounding Scripture, than other numerous sects who have erred before them; nor have they any assurance from the promises of God, nor any kind of security from their own industry or from their church's veracity, that they do not actually err in their interpretation of those sacred oracles.

Protestants being thus clearly convicted of the possibility of their mistaking the sense of Scripture, they will, I hope, abate something of that immense esteem and fondness for their own private judgment, which has hitherto been so remarkable in them, and no longer with scorn reject the kind informations offered them by their Catholic friends, through a pretence of absolute certainty that they are already in the right, and that, being all taught

of God (Isa. liv. 13), they have no need of being farther instructed by any man. For, in the first place, the reformed churches all teaching contradictories to one another, have made it evidently appear that they are not all taught of God: and since there is neither infallibility in any of their churches, nor evidence in the things they believe, nor have they received any new revelation from God, nor is there better understanding in themselves than in others who dissent from them; since their pretended absolute certainty is thus destitute of all the grounds of certainty, and contrary to the principles of their own religion, which disclaims infallibility, true certainty it cannot be; and they must pardon us, if what they call their certainty, we term their self-conceits and self-wills, or their strong prejudice, or their partiality for a religion which they have once espoused and made their own, or their obstinate resolution of adhering to their first choice, without being able to give one good reason for such their resolution.

Had Protestants this one grain of humility, to own that their own private judgment is no unerring guide, and may very possibly have misled them into a mistaken choice of religion, this humble distrust of themselves might be the beginning of their entire conversion. For, did they but distrust their former choice, as their own conscience informs them they ought to do, since they see it destitute of all grounds of certainty, we might then hope they would begin their serious inquiry after truth, and I shall not be too bold, if I affirm, that a clear discovery of the truth will be the upshot and conclusion of such their inquiry.

For if it be the will of God that all men should be