_Direct._ XXXVI. Labour earnestly for the love of every truth which you believe, and to feel the renewing power of it upon your hearts, and the reforming power on your lives; especially that you may be advanced to the love of God and to a heavenly mind and life. And this will be a most excellent help against all temptations to unbelief; for the heart holdeth the gospel much faster than the head alone. The seed that is cast into the earth, if it quicken and take root, is best preserved; and the deeper rooted the surer it abideth; but if it die, it perisheth and is gone. When the seed of the holy word hath produced the new creature, it is sure and safe; but when it is retained only in the brain as a dead opinion, every temptation can overturn it. It is an excellent advantage that the serious practical christian hath, above all hypocrites and unsanctified men: love will hold faster than dead belief. Love is the grace that abideth for ever; and that is the enduring faith which works by love. The experienced christian hath felt so much of the power and goodness of the word, that if you puzzle his head with subtle reasonings against it, yet his heart and experience will not suffer him to let it go. He hath tasted it so sweet that he will not believe it to be bitter, though he cannot answer all that is said against it. If another would persuade you to believe ill of your dearest friend or father, love and experience would better preserve you from his deceit than reasoning would do. The new creature or new nature in believers, and the experience of God's love communicated by Jesus Christ unto their souls, are constant witnesses to the word of God: he that believeth hath the witness in himself; that is, the Holy Ghost which was given him, which is an objective testimony or an evidence, and an effective. Of this see my "Treatise of Infidelity." Unsanctified men may be easilier turned to infidelity; for they never felt the renewed, quickening work of faith; nor were ever brought by it to the love of God, and a holy and heavenly mind and life. They that never were christians at the heart, are soonest turned from being christians in opinion and name.
_Quest._ By what reason, evidence, or obligation, were the Jews bound to believe the prophets? Seeing Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, &c. wrought no miracles, and there were false prophets in their days; how then could any man know that indeed they were sent of God, when they nakedly affirmed it?
_Answ._ I mention this objection or case, because in my book of the "Reasons of the Christian Religion" (to which for all the rest I refer the reader) it is forgotten; and because it is one of the hardest questions about our faith.
1. Those that think every book of Scripture doth now prove itself to be divine _propria luce_, by its own matter, style, and other properties, will accordingly say, that by hearing the prophets then, as well as by reading them now, this intrinsic, satisfactory evidence was discernible. All that I can say of this is, that there are such characters in the prophecies as are a help to faith, as making it the more easily credible that they are of God, but not such as I could have been ascertained by (especially as delivered by parcels then) if there had been no more.
2. Nor do I acquiesce in their answer who say that, Those that have the same spirit, know the style of the spirit in the prophets. For, 1. This would suppose none capable of believing them groundedly that had not the same spirit; 2. And the spirit of sanctification is not enough to our discerning prophetical inspirations, as reason and experience fully prove. The gift of discerning spirits, 1 Cor. xii. 10, was not common to all the sanctified.
3. It is much to be observed that God never sent any prophet to make a law or covenant on which the salvation of the people did depend, without the attestation of unquestionable miracles. Moses wrought numerous open miracles, and such as controlled and confuted the contradicters' seeming miracles in Egypt; and Christ and his apostles wrought more than Moses. So that the laws and covenants by which God would rule and judge the people were all confirmed beyond all such exception.
4. It must be noted that many other prophets also wrought miracles to confirm their doctrine, and prove that they were sent of God, as did Elias and Elisha.