among the learned, have often had this salutary effect, that they have occasioned enquiring minds, after being bewildered by human disputes, to look back to the scripture, where they have found the truth more clear than by all the labored arguments of disputants, who by their subtilty, render things unintelligible to common capacities. But the truth remains in its native simplicity, and open to the view of every diligent and impartial enquirer in revelation.

Among all the inventions of the devil, there never was one so well calculated to render the scriptures useless to the generality of christians, as the character commonly given them, that they are dark, abstruse, and ill to be understood. A more horrid falsehood cannot be uttered, nor a greater affront offered to the God of truth. Yet this is the foundation of all the pretended right of some dictating to others in matters of faith. It hath been productive of all the schemes that have been im posed upon mankind: and, I may say, of all the blood that hath been shed among religious zealots and devotees to systems invented by men. It is the very foundation of popery; for once admit the principle, and we are more than half way to Rome, where we will find ample provision made for this great defect in the scriptures, by having an infallible interpreter to depend upon; which is certainly necessary, if revelation is so dark, as after diligent enquiry, the things belonging to salvation cannot be understood from them.

That the scriptures are not easily understood, if the sense of them is to be taken from the various explications that have been made of them, may be readily granted; but to maintain they are so in themselves, is subversive of the great end for which they were given to mankind. God hath provided for the salvation of the vulgar, by making his religion plain and easy to their understandings. It is an affront to our reason itself, to depend upon men for the meaning of that on which our salvation rests, who at the same time that they would be confided in as the trustees of the secret councils of heaven, in their great humility disclaim the character of infallibility, and so by their own consent, may deceive us in all that is dear to us.

Such as represent the scriptures to be mysteterious, should shew what it is that God requires christians to believe, that is not clearly revealed in his word. There is not one text that will prove that any such article of religion exists. But if they should produce an article not clearly revealed, they have next to prove, that it is necessary to salvation, which they can never do, seeing it is not so revealed; for all things necessary are clearly revealed in the scriptures, otherwise they could not make the man of God wise unto salvation.

It is not only the grossest reflection on the wisdom of God, who indited and imposed the scriptures upon mankind as a rule of faith and

practice, while they needed the assistance of some of the creatures who were to be ruled by them, before they could be intelligible to others: but also, upon the goodness of God, to command conformity to a rule, upon the pain of damnation, which was not in itself so clear and plain as to be understood by those who were bound by it; and that he is resolved to damn his creatures for want of capacities to know what he himself had made above their capacities.

It is a strange conceit men have of themselves, and still stranger opinion of their maker, that he should not speak in a book designed for the in.struction of all, so as to be understood by them, whom he intended to instruct by it! Does not God, who made man, know what will suit their capacities, better than any number of men met in a synod or council? Every attack upon the perfection of revelation, is an attack upon the perfections of God himself, and plainly saying, he is not so capable to teach his creatures, as they are to teach one another,

No sooner did men think of dictating others, than they propagated this opinion of the scriptures, to which, in a great measure, may be attributed all the ignorance that has prevailed among the generality of professed christians. The people being once persuaded that the scriptures are dark, and above their capacities, are easily led away from the

use of them to other books, which they think are necessary to make them plain, and unfold the mysteries which they suppose are otherwise incomprehensible to them.

To mend this supposed defect in the scriptures, some men have summed up religion in systems, and by authority imposed them upon whole nations, as tests of orthodoxy to the adult, and rules of religious education for youth, who, by their parents and tutors, are taught to lay up these summaries in their minds, as the only necessary truths to be known, which it is criminal to forget, or in the least to call in question. The ground-work being laid in their acquaintance with human directories, they are confirmed in their adherence to them, by being admitted to all the privileges of the church they belong to, by shewing a very superficial knowledge of what they have been taught in their childhood: from that time, they hold themselves bound to believe and maintain all the doctrines adopted by the church or party they belong to. Hence, they rest satisfied with what they have attained, and consequently are as wise at sixteen years old in religion, as at sixty, which is far too frequently the case: and if they use the scriptures, it is with a strong bias on their minds, in favor of what they have already received as undoubted truths; what is not agreeable to these, they pass over superficially, or pervert the obvious meaning of the texts, and force them into the service of their cause. Thus they take the very

reverse method to finding the truth. For, whereas all doctrines should be tried by the scripture, before they are received as truth, they first receive the doctrines, and then make the sense of scripture agreeable to them. For the sense of scripture is neither more or less than what such men and books have said it is. Such searchers are not likely to find the truth, nor yet embrace it when it evidently appears. What is plain and easy to a free enquirer, is dark and obscure to them.

There are many, who under the influence of this bad opinion of the scriptures, that they are above their capacities, conclude themselves in great humility (as they think) unfit to judge for themselves, and determine to be guided by certain men and books, which they approve of. Such persons do not remember, that at the same time they are so self-diffident, they are judging for themselves in a manner that requires greater qualifications, than learning religion from the word of God itself. For, is not the choice of such men and books an act of their judgment? And who taught such ignorant persons, as they reckon themselves, to judge so precisely, in so many things, where there was the greatest danger of being mistaken; and yet could not judge of doctrines laid down in the clearest manner, by the unerring wisdom of God?