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that measure of my grace which shall work a reformation in them, that they walk in my statutes and keep my ordinances, as it follows, ver. 20.

§. 21. Lastly, for that of Hag. ii. 5, My Spirit remaineth with you it is evident that God's power and mighty work of deliverance, such as had been shown in rescuing the Israelites out of Egypt, is the thing there meant by my Spirit; for thus the words are introduced, (being spoken of the reedifying of the temple,) According to the word that I covenanted with you when ye came out of Egypt, so my Spirit remaineth among you: and therefore, as an effect of confidence in that power, it follows, Fear ye not; which can no way pertain to the pretensions of the enthusiast.

§. 22. Having taken this view of the chiefest of those places which have been deemed favourable to the pretenders of new light, and discovered the mistakes of them, I proceed to the second branch of my method, the setting down the form of sound doctrine in this matter, and that will be most fitly done by these steps and degrees.

§. 23. First, That all knowledge of God's will is confessedly (as every good gift) from God, communicated by those means and degrees which God hath been pleased to choose, the light of nature, the revelations, and oracles, and voices from heaven to the fathers, and at last by his own Son Jesus Christ, and his apostles commissionated by him; which being the last method or way of revelation which we have reason to expect, our whole duty is hereby resolved to be contained and set down in those laws of the Old, but especially of the New Testament, which make up the Christian canon or rule.

§. 24. Secondly, That any further light than that which is thus afforded us cannot in any reason be pretended to by any, or so as may satisfy himself or others, unless it may appear by means sufficient to convince a rational man, 1, in general, that it is agreeable to the economy under the gospel that any one, after Christ and his apostles, and others of that first age extraordinarily endowed, should to the end of the world be called to the office of a prophet, as that signifies one that is sent to make known de novo, to publish God's truth or will unto men: and, 2, that he particularly is such a prophet, and so sent, and by authentic testification of divine miracles, or of mighty works, which neither man nor devil can work without the assistance of an Omnipotent Power, demonstrated and evidenced to be so.

§. 25. Thirdly, That if it should now be affirmed that any man is, or since the apostles' age hath been, thus endowed, it would be under a very strong prejudice from the contrary opinion of the whole church of God for fifteen centuries, who, having received the books of the Old and New Testament for the one constant durable canon of faith, must be supposed to resolve

that nothing else shall ever be added to that canon, that is, no new revelations shall ever be made, (for if they should, our faith must be regulated by them as well as by any part of God's word already received;) and therefore in all reason this affirmation must be testified by arguments or proofs fit to outbalance so great an authority, which cannot be by any one man's affirmation of himself, whose testimony in this matter is of no validity; and yet it is evident that there are no other.

§. 26. Fourthly, That the understanding the word of God contained in the scripture, is no work of extraordinary illumination, but must be attained by the same means, or the like, by which other writings of men are expounded, and no otherwise. In other writings some things are so plain, that by the strength of common reason any man that is master of that, and understands the language wherein they are written, may understand them; others have such difficulties in them, arising either from the conciseness or length of style, or sublimity of the matter of the discourse, or intermixture of old forgotten customs, &c., that there will be need of proper helps in each of these to overcome the several difficulties. And so it is in the understanding of scripture: those places that are plain want no further illuminating either of the medium or of the eye, to discern or understand the meaning of them: and for the searching to the bottom of the greater depths, it is as certain that the use of human means doth ordinarily assist and conduct us successfully, (as observation of the usage of the word or phrase in other places, considering the customs of the people, the scope of the writer, and many the like;) and when it doth not so, it is visible that it is from my want of such assistances, which when I after come to meet with, I get through the difficulty, and by growth in knowledge and observation do come as perfectly to understand the more abstruse passage to-day, as I did the more perspicuous yesterday. And indeed if extraordinary illumination were required to understand the more difficult places of scripture, it could not be denied to be necessary to all the most easy also; (it being evident that the plainest precept in the original language, which alone is the word of God, is as inexplicable by him that understands not Greek or Hebrew, as the closest subtlest arguings in St. Paul's Epistle ;) and so no man should be acknowledged to understand any part of God's will but the saint that knows all of it; a supposition most evidently contrary to those many texts of scripture, which suppose men to know the will of God which they do not practice.

§. 27. Fifthly, It is most true that there is need of the concurrence of God's assistance and blessing, his grace and his providence, to the use of all ordinary means, to render them successful to us; and so there is need of God's illuminating Spirit to assist our weak eyes, our dark faculties. But then

this illumination is but that which is annexed to the use of the means, and not that which works without them; and this act of his providence is a suggesting of means which had not otherwise been thought of, had not God by his good hand directed to them, which he doth not by any inspiration, but by offering of occasions, which human industry is left to improve, and if it do not, receives no benefit by them. And so still this is the old light which hath commonly been afforded the diligent, no new illumination for the enthusiast. And of this sort of illumination three things are observable: 1st, That it is not discernible to be such in the principle, but only in the fruits of it: it is not (nor can it without miracle be) known by any that it is divine illumination, nor consequently that it is true, (the suggestions of my own fancy, nay of the devil, may be mistaken for it,) but only by the agreeableness of it with those truths which are already revealed from God, and that are by other evidences than that of the private spirit known to be so revealed: nay that agreeableness with divine is not always sufficient to define it an illumination; for my fancy may and doth sometimes suggest truth, and the devil, that knows much truth, may, when it is not his interest to lie, help men to the knowledge of truth, and so in the oracle he often did. However, that truth is again to be examined by human, rational means, not by the Spirit; for if it were, that second sentence or judgment of the Spirit would again want other means to discern whether that were a true Spirit or no. 2dly, That those illuminations come not so irresistibly, but that they may be opposed by human interpositions, prejudices, prepossessions, pride, opinionating, &c., and so still it will be at every turn uncertain, whether they be thus resisted or no; and till that be revealed by some new light also, it will still be unevident which is the truth of God to which the illumination or the providence assists or directs any. And, 3dly, That the illuminations ordinarily afforded by God are proportioned not to his all-seeing knowledge, but to our capacities and our real wants; and so, as his sanctifying grace is not given in such a degree or manner as to preserve us impeccable, so neither his illuminations, as to render us inerrable or infallible. But it being certain in both that God is not wanting to us in necessaries, (as he doth not bind himself to abound to us in superfluities,) the only conclusion from thence will be, that where God affords not his grace, he requires not of us those performances to which that grace was necessary; and so that he will supply by his pardon what was wanting in our strength, (and sure he will pardon errors of weakness as well as sins of weakness, human nesciences as well as human frailties,) and not that he will give all light, when, by not exacting all knowledge, that light was rendered unnecessary for us.

§. 28. Sixthly, That God's illuminations being proportioned

to our wants, and not to our ambitions or wantonnesses, it will be sufficient that they be afforded to those who are by him regularly called and sent to some office in his church of instructing and teaching others, those others being left to such more moderate degrees, which are agreeable to their more private condition, and the supplies which are allowed them from the pastor, whose lips are to preserve knowledge, and they to seek the law at his mouth. And as this advantage belongs not to the Ahimaaz, who runs, or assumes authority to himself, when he is not so sent, but only to him that can shew the regularity of his mission; so neither to him unlimitedly, but only so far as may competently fit him for the discharging his office, which is, the calling sinners to repentance, and directing and confirming them. in Christian practice, (and a moderate proportion of knowledge may be as competent for that as a greater measure of illumination; he that hears not plain duty from Moses and the prophets, neither will he repent though one were sent from the dead;) nor to him without use of the ordinary means, study, &c.; nor to him. without possibility of error, through his human weakness; nor of heresy, and even apostasy, through the vicious habits in his own heart, which this light doth not dissolve or dispel, but leaves to be mortified by other means.

§. 29. Seventhly, The sanctifying Spirit of God being received and employed effectually to the mortifying of carnal sins, and all filthiness of the spirit also, pride, obstinacy, faction, singularity, ambition, vain-glory, sluggishness, and all irregular passions and interests, &c., is an excellent preparative to the receiving benefit from God's illuminations; and the truly humble pious man is, cæteris paribus, more likely to be led into all profitable or practical truths than he who hath all or any of those clouds of darkness in him: but this again not so that the pious man shall be able to acquire knowledge without human means, to understand the Bible in the original without many years studying of those languages wherein it was written, or to divine the meaning of scripture without the assistance of those that have searched into the depth of it, nor so as to be infallible in what he doth use means to search, when those means are perhaps imperfect, (and will always be so till he comes to the state of vision,) and so incompetent to find out the truth, or else his parts incompetent for the judging or fathoming of it, it being evident in the most pious man what St. Paul personates in himself, 1 Cor. xiii. 12, that we now see as in a glass darkly, and know but in part.

§. 30. Eighthly, That after all this the common illuminations of God's Spirit are imparted, as God's sun and rain, to the unthankful and unjust and wicked, as well as to the saints and koly ones, (we know the devil's science, acquired by natural means, is great beyond any man's, and could not be so, unless

either those natural means were able to carry him as far as common illuminations do others, or else the illuminations afforded one be also communicated to the other.) The chief differences are, 1st, in the use of their knowledge: the one useth it to the benefit of himself and others; the other useth it not at all to his own advantage, but abuseth it to the destruction of others. 2dly, The one, through humility and many other virtues, is kept from assuming knowledge where he hath none, or of boasting it where he hath, and so is preserved from many errors and foul misadventures, which the arrogance of another betrays him to; but still these differences and others arise from the qualifications of the recipient, not from the degrees of the illuminations. If illuminations of themselves were competent to purge the heart, and prepare them for that holiness without which no man shall see the Lord, it might then be reasonable to extend God's promise of more grace to the humble, by way of reward for their humility, to the more illuminated. But the use of illuminations being to fit some men to instruct others, (and that being reconcilable with the eternal perishing of the instructors, 1 Cor. ix. 27,) there appears not any reason of extending that promise from sanctifying grace to that which is so distant from it, the increase of light and knowledge being so frequently what the apostle affirms in his time, the betraying and ruining of humility, 1 Cor. viii. 2, that it cannot regularly be looked on as the reward of it.

§. 31. It now remains, that in the last place I proceed in few words to demonstrate the great necessity of opposing and rejecting the enthusiast's pretensions, and adhering to the true doctrine. And that will be done by considering the dangers consequent to those pretensions.

§. 32. First, that of diminishing or increasing the scripture or canon of the written word, whensoever the enthusiast (who by his trusting on a broken reed is of all men the most likely to fall often) shall mistake in interpreting any part of it. For the new light, if it be from heaven, being as certain to discover truth as it is certain that God cannot lie, whatsoever is taught by it must necessarily be as true as that holy scripture itself; and if it be the interpretation of any particular parcel of scripture, and yet vary from the true sense of it, it must consequently (to every one that believes it) take out so much of God's word out of the canon as that parcel did truly contain, and add as much to it also as that false interpretation amounts to: which being as often iterable as there be places of scripture explicable, or mistakable by the enthusiast, these substractions and additions may also be infinite, and as many different new canons of scripture every year made as there be, or may be, assuming pretenders to interpretation, and those are infinite also. And this is one competent danger.

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