PROTESTANT DOCTRINE OF UNITY OF FAITH. 277
and supernatural; and this, we say, is the especial work of the Holy Ghost in the hearts of the elect. And I know not how many other exceptions you make to keep yom-selves from a right understanding of our intention in this inference ; but, as yourself elsewhere learnedly observe, "Who so blind as he that will not see?" I shall therefore once more, that we may proceed, declare unto you what it is that we intend in this assertion; — it is, namely, that the things which are revealed in the Scripture, to the end that, by the belief of them and obedience unto them, we may please God, are so proposed and de- clared that a man, any man, free from prejudices and temptations, in and by the use of the means appointed him of God for that pur- pose, may come to the understanding (and that infallibly) of all that God would have him know or do in religion, there being no defect or hinderance in the Scripture, or manner of its revealing things neces- sary, that should obstruct him therein. What are the means appointed of God for this purpose we do not now inquire, but shall anon declare. What defect, blindness, or darkness there is, may be, in and upon the minds of men in their depraved, lapsed condition, — what disadvan- tages they may be cast under by their prejudices, traditions, negli- gences, sins, and profaneness, — belongs not unto our present disqui- sition. That which we assert concerns merely the manner of the proposal of the truths to be believed which are revealed in the Scrip- ture; and this, we say, is such as that there is no impossibility, no, nor great difficulty, but that a man may come to the right understand- ing of them, — not as to the comprehension of the things themselves, but the perception of the sense of the propositions wherein they are expressed. And this assertion of ours is, as the formei', gi-ounded on the Scripture itself. See, if you please, Deut. xxx. 11; Ps. xix. 8, cxix. 105; Prov. vi. 23; 2 Cor. iv. 3; 2 Pet. i. 19. And to deny it is to pluck up all religion by the roots, and to turn men loose unto scepticism, libertinism, and atheism; and that with such a horrid reproach imto God himself, as that nothing more abominable can be invented. The devil of old, being not able to give out certain answers unto them that came to inquire about their concernments at his oracles, put them off a long time with dubious, enigmatical, unintel- ligible sophism.s ; but when once the world had, by experience, study, and observation, improved itself into a wisdom beyond the pitch of its first rudeness, men began generally to despise what they saw could not be certainly understood. This made the devil pluck in his horns, as not finding it for the interest of his kingdom to expose himself to be scoffed at by them with whose follies and fanatical credulity, in esteeming highly of that which could not be understood, he had for many generations sported himself. And do they not blasphemously expose the oracles of the true, holy, and living God to no less con-
278 A VINDICATION OF THE ANBIADVERSIONS ON FIAT LUX.
tempt, who, for their own sinister ends, would frighten men from them with the ugly scarecrow of ohscurity, or their not being intel- ligible unto every man by the use of means, so far as he is concerned to know them, and the mind of God in them? And herein also Protestants stand as firmly as the fundamentals of Christianity will bear them.
IV. Protestants believe that it is the duty of all men who desire to knoiu the ivill of God, and to worship him according unto his mind, to use diligence, in the improvement of the 'ineans appointed for that end,_io come unto a right and full understanding of all things in the Scripture wherein tlieir faith and obedience are concerned. This necessarily follows from the principles before laid doAvn; nor is it possible it should be otherwise. It is doubtless incumbent on every man to study and know his duty. That cannot be a man's duty which he is not bound to know, especially not such a duty as whereon his eternal welfare should depend ; and I suppose a man can take no better course to come to the knowledge of his duty than that which God hath appointed for that purpose. His commands and exhorta- tions, which we have given us in the Scripture, for our diligence in this matter, with the explications and improvements of them in the writings of the fathers, are so obvious, trite, and known, that it were mere loss of time to insist on the repetition of them. I suppose I should speak within compass if I should say that one Chrysostom doth, in a hundred places, exhort Christians of all sorts to the dili- gent study and search of the Scriptures, and especially of the epistles of Paul, — not the most jolain and easy part of them. I know the practice of your church lies to the contrary, and what you plead in the justification of that practice; but I am sorry both for her and you, — both for the contrivers of, and consenters unto, this abomina- tion; and I fear what your account will be as to this matter at the last day. God having granted the inestimable benefit of his word unto mankind, revealing therein unto them the only way by which they may attain imto a blessed eternity, is it not the greatest ingra- titude that any man can possibly contract the guilt of, to neglect the use of it? What, then, is your condition, who, upon slight and tri- vial pretences, set up your o^vn wisdom and authority against the wisdom and authority of God; advising and commanding men, upon the pain of your displeasure in this world, not to attend unto that which God commands them to attend unto, on pain of his displeasure in the world to come? So that though I confess that you deny this principle, yet I cannot see but that you do so, not only upon the hazard of your own souls and the souls of them that attend unto you, seeing that " if the blind lead the blind, both must fall into the ditch ;" but also that you do it to the great prejudice of Christian religion in