Object. But we live not in the age of miracles, oracles, and visions, which people had in former times.
Ans. Man is apt to indent with God, and to prescribe to God that he may believe upon terms of his own making : ' Let him now come down from the cross, then we will believe him,' Mat. xxvii. 42 ; ' Can he prepare a table in the wilderness ? ' Ps. Ixxviii. 19 ; 'If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread,' Mat. iv. 3. We are not to think that God should be at our beck, and do what we require. Many require new apostles and miracles ; that maketh them turn sceptics and atheists. We must not prescribe to God how he shall reveal his mind to men, but submit to the way he seeth best and fittest for us.
[2.] There lie more prejudices by far against any way of our own devising than the course God hath taken. The people slighted Moses, and would hear God himself speak ; but when it thundered upon the mount, they cried out, Exod. xx. 19, ' Speak thou with us, and we will hear ; but let not God speak with us, lest we die.' We would have miracles, but thereby the simplicity of Christianity is lost, and it would lay us open to the juggling tricks of wonder-mongers, and that would be little for our safety. We would have one from the dead, Luke xvL 30 ; but they are out of the sphere of our commerce ; that is no familiar way, nor so fit to instil faith and reduce men to obedience to God. And if we should learn our religion from ghosts and apparitions, we should never be free from delusion : Gal. i. 8, ' But though we or an angel from heaven preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed.'
[3.] Extraordinary means will do no good where ordinary prevail not. But man is never satisfied with the present dispensation : Pa Ixxviii. 22, 23, ' But they believed not in God, and trusted not in his
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ealvation, though he had commanded the clouds from above, and opened the doors of heaven.' Whatever means God useth, man is man still. There were carnal wretches when there were miracles, and so there will be still. When the heart is out of order, bare means will not set it in frame.
[4.] Though we live not in the age of miracles and oracles, yet if we have valuable testimony of them, it is enough to beget faith : Ps. Ixxviii. 5-7, ' He commanded our fathers that they should make them known to their children, that the generation to come might know them, even the children that should be born, who should arise and declare them to their children, that they might set their hope in God.' It were endless to attest former miracles with a new supportation of miracles ; report is enough to convey them to us ; and if we cannot contradict them, why do we not believe ?
Use 1. To check the dream of the efficacy of extraordinary means above the ordinary, which God seeth fit to give us. Our Lord imper- sonateth our thoughts : Luke xvi. 30, 31, 'If one went unto them from the dead they would repent. And he said unto them, They have Moses and the prophets ; if they hear not them, neither will they be persuaded though one rose from the dead.' We think the word is an antiquated, stale dispensation, that hath lost all its force. If God would assure us and invite us to faith and repentance some other way, it would be more successful ; as if one came from the other world, or an extraordinary messenger from heaven or hell. Let us argue the case. It must be either because he is supposed to bring a more necessary doctrine to work men to faith and repentance, or can urge better arguments, or with more persuasiveness, or propound these truths with more certainty, or convey a power greater than is ordinarily dispensed by the word. It must be one of these four things, but neither the one nor the other can be.
1. Not a doctrine more necessary to convince men of their misery and remedy, sin and duty. The Son of God is a sufficient teacher of all divine things, for he lay ' in the bosom of God,' John i. 18 ; and he came on purpose to reveal what was necessary to man's salvation.
2. Not better arguments to enforce it. What ! would we have an hotter hell or a better heaven, more direful threatenings, or sweeter promises, or more powerful motives ? Surely nothing can be added. What is beyond eternal misery or eternal happiness ?
3. Not propound these things with more certainty ; for these things are offered to our understandings by a full and fair credibility. Christ being fore- described by prophecies, authorised by miracles, mightily declared to be the Son of God by his resurrection from the dead, requiring nothing of us but what is suited to God's nature and our necessity. What certainty would a spectre, or ghost, or an angel, or apparition give above this ?