It remains that we consider how these traditions come to be com- municated unto others, out of the secret storehouse wherein origi- nally they were deposited. This, as I have elsewhere and partly be- fore declared, was by their being committed unto writing by Rabbi Judah Hakkadosh ; whose collections, with their expositions in their Talmud, do give us a perfect account, if we may believe them, of that secret law which came down unto them by oral tradition from Moses. And something like hereunto is by the Romanists pretended. Many of their traditions, they say, are recorded in the rescripts of popes, decrees of councils, and constitutions of the canon law, and the like sacred means of the declaration of the oral instructions of our Lord Jesus Christ and his apostles.
But herein the Jews deal with us far more ingenuously than they, They tell us plainly that now their whole oral law is written, and that they have no reserve of authentic traditions not yet declared. So that where Austin says of his adversaries, “ Nescit habere, praeter scripturas legitimas et propheticas, Judzeos quasdam traditiones suas quas non scriptas habent, sed memoriter‘tenent, et alter in alterum loquendo transfundit, quam deuterosin vocant,”* either he knew not of the Mishnah that was then written, or this opinion of secret traditions was continued until the finishing and promulgation of the Babylonian
1 Aust. lib. ii. Con. adver. Leg. et Prophet. cap. i.
SECT. 1.] MESSIAH, THE DELIVERER FROM EVIL, ETC. 141
Talmud, which was sundry years after his death. But here the Romanists fail us; for although they have given us “ heaps upon heaps” of their traditions, by the means afore mentioned, yet they plead that they have still an inexhaustible treasure of them, laid up in their church stores and breast of their holy father, to be drawn forth at all times, as occasion shall require.
And thus have we taken a brief prospect of the consent of both the apostatical churches in that principle which hath been the means of their apostasy, and is the great engine whereby they are rendered incurable therein.
EXERCITATION VIII.
THE FIRST DISSERTATION CONCERNING THE MESSIAH, PROVING HIM TO BE PROMISED OF OLD.
1. Principles presupposed in the apostle’s discourse in his Epistle to the Hebrews— First, a Messiah promised from the foundation of the world. 2, 3. Of the evil thatisintheworld. 4. Of sin and punishment— Original and entrance of them. 5. Ignorance of mankind about them. 6. The sin and fall of Adam—Their consequents. 7. Jews’ opinion about the sin of Adam; also of the curse and corruption of nature. 8-12. Their sense of both at large evinced. 13. God not unjust if all mankind had perished in this condition. 14. Instance of the sin and punishment of angels—Difference between the sin of angels and man —Angels lost, mankind relieved. 15. Evidences of that deliverance. 16. How attainable—Not by men themselves; 17. Not by angels; 18. Nor by the law —That proyed against the Jews. 19. Their fable of the law made before the world, with the occasion of it—The patriarchs saved before the giving of the law. 20. Observation of the moral precepts of the law no means of relief; 21. Nor the sacrifices of it. 22. The new covenant—God the author of it —How to be accomplished. 23, 24. The first promise of it, Gen. iii. 15, discussed. 25. Sense of the Jews upon*it manifested; 26, 27. Examined. 28. Promise of a deliverer, the foundation of all religion in the world. 29. The promise renewed unto Abraham, Gen. xii. 1-3—-Nature of it as given unto him, 30-33. Testified unto and confirmed—Gen. xlix. 10; Num. xxiy. 17, 19; Job xix. 25, opened; with sundry other places—End of the separation of the posterity of Abraham unto a peculiar people and church. 34. This deliverer, the Messiah—Denotation of the word—The person who.
1. WE proceed now unto our principal intendment in all these dis- courses, which is, the consideration and discussion of those great prin- ciples, as of all religion in general, so of the Christian in particular, which the apostle supposeth as a foundation of his whole treaty [rea- soning] with the Hebrews, and which are the basis that he stands upon in the management of his whole design. For in all discourses that are parenetical, as this Epistle for the most part is, there are always some principles taken for granted, which give life and efficacy unto the exhortations in them, and whereinto they are resolved. For, as to persuade men unto particulars in faith, opinion, or prac-
142 MESSIAH, THE DELIVERER FROM EVIL, [EXERC. VIII.
tice, without a previous conviction of such general principles of truth as from which the persuasions used do naturally flow and arise, is a thing weak and inefficacious; so to be exercised in the demonstra- tion of the principles themselves, when the especial end aimed at is to persuade, would bring confusion into all discourse.
Wherefore, although our apostle do assert and confirm those dog- mata and articles of truth which he dealt with the Hebrews in a way of persuasion to embrace, yet he supposeth and takes for granted those more general xupiag défas, or first maxims, which are the foun- dation both of the doctrines and exhortations insisted on, as all skill in teaching doth require. And these are those which now we aim to draw forth and consider, being these that follow:—