(2.) The second end of this doctrine is, to direct mankind in their proper course of living unto God, and attaining that rest and blessed- ness whereof they are capable, and which they cannot but desire. These things are necessary to our nature, so that without them it were better not to be ; for it is better to have no being in the world, than, whilst we have it, always to wander, and never to act towards its proper end, seenig all that is really good unto us consists in our tendency thereunto and our attainment of it. Now, as these things were never stated in the minds of the community of mankind, but that they lived in perpetual confusion ; so the inquiries of the philoso- phers about the chief end of man, the nature of felicity or blessed- ness, the way of attaining it, are nothing but so many uncertain and
CHAP. III.] EXTERNAL ARGUMENTS FOR DIVINE REVELATION. 29
fierce digladiations, wherein not any one truth is asserted nor any- one duty prescribed that is not spoiled and vitiated by its circum- stances and ends. Besides, they never rose up so much as to a sur- mise of or about the most important matters of religion; without which it is demonstrable by reason that it is impossible we should ever attain the end for which we were made, or the blessedness whereof we are capable. No account could they ever give of our apostasy from God, of the depravation of our nature, — of the cause, or neces- sary cure of it. In this lost and wandering condition of mankind, the Scripture presenteth itself as a light, rule, and guide unto all, to di- rect them in their whole course unto their end, and to bring them unto the enjoyment of God ; and this it doth with such clearness and evidence as to dispel all the darkness and put an end unto all the confusion of the minds of men (as the sun with rising doth the shades of the night), unless they wilfully shut their eyes against it, " loving- darkness rather than light, because their deeds are evil : " for all the confusion of the minds of men, to extricate themselves from whence they found out and immixed themselves in endless questions to no purpose, arose from their ignorance of what we were originally, of what we now "are, and how we came so to be, by what way or means we may be delivered or relieved, what are the duties of life, or what is required of us in order to our living to God as our chiefest end, and wherein the blessedness of our nature doth consist. All the world was never able to give an answer tolerably satisfactory unto any one of these inquiries, and yet, unless they are all infallibly de- termined, we are not capable of the least rest or happiness above the beasts that perish. But now all these things are so clearly declared and stated in the Scripture that it comes with an evidence like a light from heaven on the minds and consciences of unprejudiced per- sons. What was the condition of our nature in its first creation and constitution, with the blessedness and advantage of that condition; how we fell from it, and what was the cause, what is the nature, and what the consequences and effects, of our present depravation and apostasy from God; how help and relief is provided for us herein by infinite wisdom, grace, and bounty; what that help is, how we may be interested in it and made partakers of it ; what is that system of duties, or course of obedience unto God, which is required of us, and wherein our eternal felicity doth consist, — are all of them so plainly and clearly revealed in the Scripture, as in general to leave man- kind no ground for doubt, inquiry, or conjecture. Set aside invete- rate prejudices from tradition, education, false notions, into the mould whereof the mind is cast, the love of sin, and the conduct of lust, — which things have an inconceivable power over the minds, souls, and affections of men, — and the light of the Scripture in these things is
SO THE REASON OF FAITH. [BOOK VI., PART I.
like that of the sun at noon-day, which shuts up the way unto all farther inquiry, and efficaciously necessitates unto an acquiescency in it. And, in particular, in that direction which it gives unto the lives of men, in order unto that obedience which they owe to God, and that reward which they expect from him, there is no instance con- ceivable of any thing conducing thereunto which is not prescribed therein, nor of any thing which is contrary unto it that falls not under its prohibition. Those, therefore, whose desire or interest it is that the bounds and differences of good and evil should be unfixed and confounded ; who are afraid to know what they were, what they are, or what they shall come unto; who care to know neither God nor themselves, their duty nor their reward, — may despise this book, and deny its divine original: others will retain a sacred veneration of it, as of the offspring of God.
4. The testimony of the church may in like manner be pleaded unto the same purpose. And I shall also insist upon it, partly to manifest wherein its true nature and efficacy do consist, and partly to evince the vanity of the old pretence, that even we also, who are departed from the church of Rome, do receive the Scripture upon the authority thereof; whence it is farther pretended, that, on the same ground and reason, we ought to receive whatever else it pro- poseth unto us.