story of Christ's life and death, to save their own credit, that they interweave the weaknesses and sins of one another all along their relations. Hence we read of the sinful passion and revenge working in the sons of Zebedee ; Peter acting the devil's part to tempt his Master at another time ; the ignoi'ance of all the twelve in some main principles of Christianity for a while ; their ambition who should be the greatest, and wrangling about it ; their unbelief and cowardice, one denying his Lord, and the rest flying their colours, when they should have interposed their own bodies between their Master and the danger, as resolved either to die for him, or at least with him, and not save their lives with so dishonourable a flight : these, and such like passages, declare them to be actuated in their writings by a spirit higher than their own, and that no other than of God himself, for whom they so willingly debase themselves in the eyes of the world, and lay their names in the dust, that the glory of his name might be exalted in this their free acknowledgment.
CHAPTER V.
THE DIVINITY OF THE SCRIPTURES DEMONSTRATED FROM THE PROPHETIC PART IN IT.
Secondly, The prophetic part of the Sci'ipture, which contains wonderful predictions of such things to come, as could drop from no pen but one guided by a Divine hand, all which have liad their punctual performance in the just period foretold. Indeed, from whom could these come but God? ' Secret tilings belong to God,' Deut. xxix. 29. And predictions surely may pass very well for secrets ; they are such secrets, that God off'ers to take him, whoever he is, and set him with himself in his own throne, that is able to fore- tell things to come. Isa. xli. 23 : ' Shew the things that are to come hereafter, that we may know that ye are gods.' This must be confessed to be a flower of the crown, and an incommunicable property and prerogative of the only true God, who stands upon the hill of eternity, and from thence hath the full prospect of all things, and to whose infinite understanding they are all present ; for his will being the cause of all events, he must needs know them, because he knoweth that. The devil, indeed, who is very ambitious to be thought able to do this, and to gain the reputation hereof, hath had his mock-prophets and prophecies in all ages, with which he hath abused the ignorant, credulous world ; but, alas ! his predictions are no more true prophecies than his miracles are true miracles ; he puts a cheat upon the understanding of silly souls in the one, as he doth on their senses in the other ; for his predictions are dark and dubious, cunningly packed and laid, which, like a picture, carry two faces under one hood. In these folds the subtle serpent wrapped himself to save his credit, which way soever the event fell out : and this got Apollo the name of Loxias ; of Obliquus ; Propter oblique et torfitosa responsa ejus, because he mocked them that consulted his oracle with such ambiguous answers, that sent them as wise home as they came to him. Indeed, the devil found it necessary thus to do. Had he not with this patch of policy eked out the scantiness of his own understanding, the nakedness thereof would have been seen by every eye, to the shame and contempt of his oracles. Or if his predictions were more plainly delivei'ed, they were, First, Of such things which he spelled out by the help of nature's alphabet, and came to the knowledge of by diving into the secrets of natural causes, before they discovered themselves unto the observation of man's dulled understanding; and this made them be cried up for wonderful predictions, and supernatural, by those who could not see this clue in Satan's hand that guided him. If a man should meet you, and tell you such a friend of yours will die within a few months, whom you left well to your thinking but a few minutes before, and the event should seal the trutii of what he said, you might possibly begin to think this a wonderful prophecy ; but when you afterwards knew he that told you was a physician, and had, upon much study and strict observation of your friend's bodily estate, found a dangerous disease growing insensibly upon liiin, you would alter your opinion, and not think him a prophet, but a skilful physician. Thus, did we but consider the vastness of Satan's natural parts, (though limited, because created,) and the improvement lie hath made of them by the study and experience of so many thousand years,
5(3(5 AND THE SWORD OF THE SPIRIT.