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ART. spirations, it is necessary (both for the undeceiving of VI. those who may be misled by a hot and ungoverned imagination, and for giving such an authority to men truly inspired, as may distinguish them from false pretenders) that the man thus inspired should have some evident sign or other, either some miraculous action that is visibly beyond the powers of nature, or some particular discovery of somewhat that is to come, which must be so expressed, that the accomplishment of it may shew it to be beyond the conjectures of the most sagacious: by one or both of those a man must prove, and the world must be convinced, that he is sent and directed by God. And if such men deliver their message in writing, we must receive such writings as sacred and inspired.

In these writings some parts are historical, some doctrinal, and some elenchtical or argumentative. As to the historical part, it is certain that whatsoever is delivered to us, as a matter truly transacted, must be indeed so: but it is not necessary, when discourses are reported, that the individual words should be set down just as they were said; it is enough if the effect of them is reported: nor is it necessary that the order of time should be strictly observed, or that all the conjunctions in such relation should be understood severely according to their grammatical meaning. It is visible that all the sacred writers write in a diversity of style, according to their different tempers, and to the various impressions that were made upon them. In that the inspiration left them to the use of their faculties, and to their previous customs and habits: the design of revelation, as to this part of its subject, is only to give such representations of matters of fact, as may both work upon and guide our belief; but the order of time, and the strict words having no influence that way, the writers might dispose them, and express them variously, and yet all be exactly true. For the conjunctive particles do rather import that one passage comes to be related after another, than that it was really transacted after it.

As to the doctrinal parts, that is, the rules of life, which these books set before us, or the propositions that are offered to us in them, we must entirely acquiesce in these, as in the voice of God, who speaks to us by the means of a person, whom he, by his authorising him in so wonderful a manner, obliges us to hear and believe. But when these writers come to explain or argue, they use many figures that were well known in that age: but because the signification of a figure is to be taken from common use, and not to be carried to the utmost extent

VI.

that the words themselves will bear, we must therefore in- ART. quire, as much as we can, into the manner and phraseology of the time in which such persons lived, which with relation to the New Testament will lead us far: and by this we ought to govern the extent and importance of these figures.

As to their arguings, we are further to consider, that sometimes they argue upon certain grounds, and at other times they go upon principles, acknowledged and received by those with whom they dealt. It ought never to be made the only way of proving a thing, to found it upon the concessions of those with whom we deal; yet when a thing is once truly proved, it is a just and usual way of confirming it, or at least of silencing those who oppose it, to shew that it follows naturally from those opinions and principles that are received among them. Since therefore the Jews had, at the time of the writing of the New Testament, a peculiar way of expounding many prophecies and passages in the Old Testament, it was a very proper way to convince them, to allege many places according to their key and methods of exposition. Therefore when divine writers argue upon any point, we are always bound to believe the conclusions that their reasonings end in, as parts of divine revelation: but we are not bound to be able to make out, or even to assent to, all the premises made use of by them in their whole extent; unless it appears plainly that they affirm the premises as expressly as they do the conclusions proved by

them.

And thus far I have laid down such a scheme concerning inspiration and inspired writings, as will afford, to such as apprehend it aright, a solution to most of these difficulties with which we are urged on the account of some passages in the sacred writings. The laying down a scheme that asserts an immediate inspiration which goes to the style, and to every tittle, and that denies any error to have crept into any of the copies, as it seems on the one hand to raise the honour of the Scriptures very highly, so it lies open on the other hand to great difficulties, which seem insuperable in that hypothesis; whereas a middle way, as it settles the divine inspiration of these writings, and their being continued down genuine and unvitiated to us, as to all that, for which we can only suppose that inspiratfon was given; so it helps us more easily out of all difficulties, by yielding that which serves to answer them, without weakening the authority of the whole.

I come in the last place to examine the negative conse

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ART. quence that arises out of this head, which excludes those books commonly called Apocryphal, that are here rejected, from being a part of the Canon: and this will be casily made out. The chief reason that presses us Christians to acknowledge the Old Testament, is the testimony that Christ and his Apostles gave to those books, as they were then received by the Jewish Church; to whom were committed the oracles of God. Now it is not so much as pretended, that ever these books were received among the Jews, or were so much as known to them. None of the writers of the New Testament cite or mention them; neither Philo nor Josephus speaks of them. Josephus on the contrary says, they had only twenty-two books that deserved belief, but that those which were written after the time of Artaxerxes were not of equal credit with the rest: and that in that period they had no prophets at all. The Christian Church was for some ages an utter stranger to those books. Melito, Bishop of Sardis, being desired by Onesimus to give him a perfect catalogue of the books of the Old Testament, took a journey on purpose to the East, to examine this matter at its source: and having, as he says, made an exact inquiry, he sent him the names of them just as we receive the Canon; of which Eusebius Euseb.Hist. says, that he has preserved it, because it contained all 1. iv. c. 26. those books which the Church owned. Origen gives us the same catalogue according to the tradition of the In Psal. i. Jews, who divided the Old Testament into twenty-two

books, according to the letters of their alphabet. AthaIn Synop. nasius reckons them up in the same manner to be twenty

In Ep.

pasch.

two, and he more distinctly says, "that he delivered "those, as they had received them by tradition, and as "they were received by the whole Church of Christ, be"cause some presumed to mix apocryphal books with the "divine Scriptures: and therefore he was set on it by "the orthodox brethren, in order to declare the canonical "books delivered as such by tradition, and believed to "be of divine inspiration. It is true," he adds, "that "besides these there were other books which were not "put into the Canon, but yet were appointed by the "fathers to be read by those who first come to be in"structed in the way of piety: and then he reckons up "most of the apocryphal books." Here is the first mention we find of them, as indeed it is very probable they were made at Alexandria, by some of those Jews who lived there in great numbers. Both Hilary and Cyril of Jerusalem give us the same catalogue of the books of the Old Testament, and affirm, that they delivered them thus

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according to the tradition of the ancients. Cyril says, that ART. all other books are to be put in a second order. Gregory Nazianzen reckons up the twenty-two books, and adds that Catech. 4. none besides them are genuine. The words that are in the Article are repeated by St. Jerome in several of his prefaces. And that which should determine this whole matter is, that the council of Laodicea by an express canon delivers the Can. 95, catalogue of the canonical books as we do, decreeing that and 60. these only should be read in the Church. Now the canons of this council were afterwards received into the code of the Canons of the universal Church; so that here we have the concurring sense of the whole Church of God in this

matter.

It is true, the book of the Revelation not being reckoned in it, this may be urged to detract from its authority: but it was already proved, that that book was received much earlier into the Canon of the Scriptures, so the design of this Canon being to establish the authority of those books that were to be read in the Church, the darkness of the Apocalypse making it appear reasonable not to read it publicly, that may be the reason why it is not mentioned in it, as well as in some later catalogues.

Here we have four centuries clear for our Canon, in exclusion to all additions. It were easy to carry this much further down, and to shew that these books were never by any express definition received into the Canon, till it was done at Trent: and that in all the ages of the Church, even after they came to be much esteemed, there were divers writers, and those generally the most learned of their time, who denied them to be a part of the Canon. At first many writings were read in the Churches, that were in high reputation both for the sake of the authors, and of the contents of them, though they were never looked on as a part of the Canon: such were Clemens's Epistle, the books of Can. 47. Hermas, the Acts of the Martyrs, besides several other things which were read in particular Churches. And among these the apocryphal books came also to be read, as containing some valuable books of instruction, besides several fragments of the Jewish history, which were perhaps too easily believed to be true. These therefore being usually read, they came to be reckoned among canonical Scriptures for this is the reason assigned in the third council of Carthage, for calling them canonical, because they had received them from their Fathers as books that were to be read in Churches: and the word Canonical was by some in those ages used in a large sense, in opposition to spurious; so that it signified no more than that they were genuine.

ART. So much depends upon this Article, that it seemed necessary to dwell fully upon it, and to state it clearly.

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It remains only to observe the diversity between the Articles now established, and those set forth by King Edward. In the latter there was not a catalogue given of the books of Scripture, nor was there any distinction stated between the Canonical and the Apocryphal books. In those there is likewise a paragraph, or rather a parenthesis, added after the words proved thereby, in these words, Although sometimes it may be admitted by God's faithful people as pious, and conducing unto order and decency: which are now left out, because the authority of the Church as to matters of order and decency, which was only intended to be asserted by this period, is more fully explained and stated in the 35th Article.

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