18. (2.) Did their forefathers at any time before the captivity transgress this oral law, or did they not? If they say they did not, but kept it, and observed it diligently, we may easily see of what importance it is, that the most strict observation of it could not preserve them from all manner of wickedness; and what a hedge it is to the written law, when, notwithstanding the obedience yielded unto it, that was utterly despised and neglected. If they shall say,
that law also was broken by them, I desire to know whence it comes
SECT. 12-14.] ORAL LAW DISPROVED. 133
to pass, that whereas God by his prophets doth reprove them for all their other sins, and in particular for contempt of his written law, the statutes, ordinances, and institutions of it, he nowhere once men- tioneth this their greater guilt of despising the oral law, but there is as universal a silence concerning its transgression as there is of its giving and institution, Can we have any greater evidence of its being fictitious than this, that whereas it is pretended that it is the min rule of their obedience to God, God did never reprove them for the transgression of it, though, whilst he owned them as his church and people, he suftered none of their sins to pass by unre- proved, especially not any of that importance which this is by them pretended to be of ?
(3.) Moses was commanded to write the whole law that he re- ceived from God, and did so accordingly, Exod. xxiv. 3, 4, xxxiv. 28; Deut. xxxi. 9, 24. Where was this oral law, which they say was not to be written, when Moses was commanded to write the whole daw that he had received of God, and did accordingly? This new law was not then coined, being indeed nothing but the product of their apostasy from the law which was written.
(4.) The sole ground and foundation of this oral law lies in the ¢m- perfection of the written law. This is that which they plead for the necessity of it: “The written law extends not to all necessary cases that occur in religion; many things are redundant, many wanting in it ;’ and hereof they gather great heaps of instances: so that they will grant that if the written law had been perfect, there had been no need of this traditional one. But whom in this matter shall we believe ?—a few ignorant Jews, or God himself, bearing witness that his law is perfect, and requiring no more in his worship but what is in that law prescribed? See Ps. xix. 7,8; Prov. xxx. 5, 6; Deut. iv. 1, 2. And this perfection of the written law, though it be perfectly destructive to their traditions, not only the Karaites among themselves do earnestly contend for, but also sundry of their Gemarists do ac- knowledge, especially when they forget their own concernments out of a desire to oppose the gospel. And to this head belong all the arguments that divines make use of to prove the perfection of the Scripture against the new Talmudists in Christianity.
(5.) God everywhere sends his people to the written law of Moses for the rule of their obedience, nowhere unto any Cabala, Deut. x. 12, 13, xi. 32, xxviii. 1; Josh. i. 7, 8, xxiil. 6; 2 Chron. xxx. 16; Isa. viii. 20. If there be such an oral law, it is one that God would not have any man to observe, which he ealls none to the obedi- ence of, nor did ever reprove any man for its transgression.
14, And many more arguments of the like nature may be added, to prove the vanity of this pretence. And yet this figment is the bottom of the present Judaical religion and obstinacy. When the
134 AGREEMENT OF JEWS AND PAPISTS [EXERC. VIL
apostle wrote this Epistle, their apostasy was not yet arrived at this “rock of offence;” since their falling on it, they have increased their blindness, misery, and ruin. Then they were contented to try their cause by what God spake to their fathers “in the prophets;” which kept open a door of hope, and gave some advantages for their conver- sion, which are now shut up and removed, until God shall take this veil away from their faces, that they may see to the end of the things that were to be done away.
15. By this means principally have they, for many generations, both shut owt the truth and secured themselves from conviction. For whatever is taught and revealed in the Scripture concerning the person, office, and work of the Messiah,—seeing they have that which they esteem a revelation of equal authority herewithal, teaching them a doctrine quite of another nature, and more suited unto their carnal principles and expectations,—they will rest rather in any evasion than give way to the testimony thereof. And whilst they have a firm persuasion, as they have, received by the tradition of many genera- tions, that the written word is «mperfect, but a half revelation of the mind of God, in itself wnintelligible, and not to be received or understood but according to the sense of their oral law, now recorded in their Talmuds, what can the most plain and cogent testimonies of it avail unto their conviction? And this hath been the fatal way and means of the grand apostasy of both churches, Judaccal and Christian. How far that of the Jews was overtaken with it in the days of our Lord’s conversation on the earth, the Gospel doth abundantly declare; and how they have brought it unto its height, we have given now some brief account. That ot the Roman church hath been the very same; and hath at length arrived unto almost the same issue, by the same degrees. This some of them perceiving, do not only defend the pharisaical opinion among the Jews about the oral law and succession of their traditions, as consonant to the pretensions of their own church, but also openly avow that a very great number of their several respective traditions are either the same, or that they nearly resemble one another; as doth expressly Josephus de Voysin in his Procemium to the Pugio Fidei of Ray- mundus Martini. And because it is evident that the same have been the way and means whereby both the Judaical and Roman church have apostatized and departed from the truth, and that they are the same also whereby they maintain and defend themselves in their apostasy and refusal to return unto the truth, I shall, a¢ 2 rapédw, manifest their consent and agreement in this principle about their as and authority of them, which have been the ruin of them