upon the world, and then denounce the wrath and vengeance of God against those who shall speak in God's name, hut were never sent of him, as the Scrip- ture mentions? Certainly, that earth which sv/allowed Korah, and his ungodly companions, for pretending to an authority from God, as good as the priest's, to offer incense, would not have spared Moses himself if he had spoken that in God's name which he liad not from him, but was the invention of his own private bi-ain. Thus we see no creature, good or bad, can be the author of the Scriptures ; so that none remains but God to own them, which he hath done with miracles enough to convince an atheist of their divinity.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE HEART-SEARCHING PROPERTY OF THE SCRIPTURES.
The second argument to demonstrate the divine extraction of the Scriptures shall be taken from the supernatural eftects they produce. Nothing can be the cause of an effect higher and greater than itself; if therefore we can find such effects to have been produced by the Scriptures, as are above the sphere of any ci'eature's activity, it will then be evident, that the Scripture itself is superna- tural,— not the word of a mere creature, but of God himself. What the psalmist saith of thunder, that loud voice of nature from the clouds, we may apply to the voice of God speaking from heaven in the Scriptures ; it is a mighty voice, and full of majesty ; itbreaketh the cedars, kings and kingdoms, it divideth the flames of fire. The holy martyrs have with one bucket of this spiritual water quenched the scorching flames of that furious element into which their perse- cuting enemies have thrown them : it shaketh the wilderness of the wild, wicked world, making the stout hearts of the proudest sinners to tremble like the leaves of the trees with the wind ; and bringeth thepangs of the new birth upon them, whose hearts before were never disturbed at the most prodigious crimes. It discovereth the forests, and hunts sinners out of their thicket and refuge of lies, whither they run to hide themselves from the hue and cry of divine vengeance. But, to speak more particularly and distinctly, there are four {powerful and strange effects which the word puts forth upon the hearts of men, all which will evince its divine original. First, It is a heart-searching power, whereby it ransacks and rifles the consciences of men : it looks into the most secret transactions of the heart, and tells us what we do in our bed-cham~ ber, as Elisha did by the king of Syria, 2 Kings vi. 12, It cometh where no prince's warrant can impower his officer to search— I mean, the heart. We read that Christ came to his disciples when the doors were shut, and stood in the midst of them, John xx. 19. Thus the word (when all doors are shut, so that men can have no intelligence what passeth within the breasts of men,) comes in upon the sinner without asking him leave, and stands in the midst of his most secret plots and counsels, there presenting itself to his view, and saith to him, as Elisha to Gehazi, Went not my eye with thee when thou didst this and that? How often doth the sinner fi'.id his heart discovered, by the word preached, as if the minister had stood at his window, and seen what he did, or some had come and told tales of him to the preacher. Such I have known, that would not believe to the contrary, but that the minister had been informed of their pranks, and so levelled his discourse particularly at their breasts, when he hath been as ignorant of their doings, as of theirs that live in America, and only shot his reproofs like him that smote Ahab, who drew his bow at a ven- tiu'e, without taking aim at the person of any. From whence can this property come, but God, who claims it as his own incommunicable attribute ? ' I the Lord search the heart,' Jer. xvii. 10. God is in the word, and therefore it find- eth the way to get between the joints of the harness, though sent at random out of man's bow. If any creatiu-e could have free ingress into this retiring room of the heart, the devil, being a spirit, and of such a piercing, prying eye, were the most likely to be he ; yet even he is locked out of this room, though indeed he can peep into the next. Now if God can only search the heart, then that word which doth the same can come from no other but God himself. Who, indeed, can make a key to this lock, but he that knoweth all the wards of it? Suppose you locked up a sum of money in a cabinet, and but one in
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