(3.) That every Christian is bound, with a divine faith to receive the Scripture as the word of God, they grant as well as we do.
(4.) That the Holy Spirit hath a hand in men's believing the Scrip- ture to be the word of God, allow the Papists their sense, and they will likewise yield no less than we. That the faith whereby men own the t' "vipturcs (if it be a divine one, as they say it is) is Avrought in the , T ,-5 of men by the Spirit of God, they do grant, and must, un- less ttr,j • .; avow themselves to be Pelagians,
(5.) Ai.,a, lastly, that the church (allow us our sense) may be a help to us, and furtherance to our faith, in receiving the Scripture as the word of God, we will grant as well as they. That the universal con- currence of all believers in receiving the Scripture, and [that] the
AUTHORITY OF THE SCRIPTURE. 503
testimony they do, and in all ages have, in their way and capacity, given to it, is a strong argument to persuade dissenters to submit to the divine authority of it, we easily yield; and that it is the duty of the present church, during its time, to labour to preserve the Scripture pure and entire, and to hold it forth to others, and en- deavour to persuade them of its divineness, and so to perform the part of a teacher, we are willmg likewise to yield. And so, in a word, we acknowledge the usefulness of the church's testimony, as an external help, and that by which some benefit may be reaped by men at the beginning of their faith. For it is the foundation of a human faith, and sufficient for the producing of that. And when a man hath so far yielded, as to receive the Scripture as God's word, though only on the credit of men, yet coming afterward to peruse and study it, and look more narrowly into it, he may then come to see better and inore solid grounds for his belief; and, God working on his heart by the word, he may come to receive it with a divine faith, which at first lie did only with a human ; as, in John iv., the men of Samaiia, who first believed Christ for the woman's words, did afterwards believe him becaiise they heard himself. Thus far, therefore, there is some agreement between them and us. So that the question is not con- cerning the object of our faith, the thing to be believed; for both acknowledge it, in this business, to be the divineness of the Scripture : nor concerning the efficient cause of that faith; for both will own it to be the Spirit which works this faith in the heart : but concerning the medium or argument whereby the Spirit works it, and so the ground and foundation of our faith, that which is the formal reason why we believe the Scripture to be the word of God.
2. This, therefore, is the thing wherein we and they differ: some- thing they affirm which we deny, and something we affirm which they deny.
(1.) They affirm the testimony of the present church (and that must be of Rome only now, for they count that only the catholic one) — that is, of the pastors of it convened in a general council, either with the pope, as some of them say, or without him, as others, or virtually in him, as others — to be the only sufficient ground of men's believing the Scripture to be the word of God ; and so tell us that the Spirit bears witness to the divinity of the Scripture by the testi- mony of the church, and makes use of that as the medium or argu- ment by which he persuades men to receive the Scripture as the word of God ; and that without that testimony, or antecedently to it, men cannot know, nor are bound to believe, the Scripture so to be. This we deny.
(2.) We affirm, on the other side, that the testimony of the Spirit of God in the word lYse//'— witnessing it to be of God, by that stamp
50 t AUTHORITY OF THE SCRIPTURE.
.and impress, or, wliich comes to the same, by those notes and marks of divhiity which everywhere appear in it — is the immediate and principal, and a sufficient, reason of our beUeving it to be the word of God, and tlie medium the Spirit useth in working faith in us, or making us assent to the divinity of the Scripture. So that, as the Spirit, working inwardly in our hearts, moves as the efficient of our faith, so the Scripture itself, in its own intrinsical beauty, lustre, power, and excellency, is that which moves us, in the way of an object or medium, to yield our assent to its being of God. By this the Spirit of God, as the author of the Scripture, wituesseth it to be of God; and, by an internal application of this to our minds, induceth us to assent to its so being. The testimony of the Spirit in the word is open, publ ic, general, to all, if they have ])ut eyes to see it ; whereas the inward ap]>lication of it by the efficiency of the Spirit is only to believers.