holy, high, and heavenly, and doth so much control their lusts. See therefore that you distrust your corrupted hearts, and earnestly beg the Spirit of Christ. 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 easier 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. t Quest. By what reason, evidence, or obligation, were the Jews bound to believe the prophet? Seeing Isaiah, Jeremy, 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', 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 these laws and covenants by which God would rule and judge the people were all confirmed beyond all just exception. that 4. It must be noted, that many other prophets also wrought miracles to confirm their doctrine, and they were sent of God, as did Elias and Elisha. 11 Cor. xii. 10. prove 5. It must be noted, that there were schools of prophets, or societies of them in those times ", who were educated in such a way as fitted them to the reception of prophetical inspirations, when it pleased God to give them. Not that mere education made any one a prophet, nor that the prophets had at all times the present, actual gift of prophecy ; but God was pleased so far to own men's commanded diligence, as to join his blessing to a meet education, and at such times as he thought meet, to illuminate such by visions and revelations above all others: and therefore it is spoken of Amos, as a thing extraordinary, that he was made a prophet of a herdsman. 6. Therefore a prophet among the Jews was known to be such, usually, before these recorded prophecies of their's, which we have now in the Holy Scriptures: 1. The spirits of the prophets which are subject to the prophets, were judged of by those prophets that had indeed the Spirit; and so the people had the testimony of the other prophets concerning them. 2. The Lord's own direction to know a true prophet by", is the coming to pass of that which he foretelleth. Now it is like that before they were received into the number of prophets, they had given satisfaction to the societies of the prophets, by the events of things before foretold by them. 3. Or they might have wrought miracles before to have satisfied the members of the college of their calling, though these miracles are not all mentioned in the Scripture. 4. Or the other prophets might have some Divine testimony concerning them by visions, revelations, or inspirations of their own. So that the people were not left to the credulity of naked, unproved assertions, of any one that would say that he was sent of God. 7. There were some signs given by some of the prophets to confirm their word. As Isaiah's predictions of Hezekiah's danger and remedy, and recovery, and of the going back of the shadow on Ahaz's dial ten degrees, &c.; and more such there might be, which we know not of. 8. All prophecies were not of equal obligation. The first prophecies of any prophet who brought no attestation by miracles, nor had yet spoken any prophecy that had been m 1 Sam. x. 10. xix. 20. 1 Kings xx. 35. 41. xxii. 13. 2 Kings ii. 3.5.7. 15. iv. 1. 38. v. 22. vi. 1. ix. 1. 1 Cor. xiv. 32. n Deut. xviii. 22. fulfilled, might be a merciful revelation from God, which might oblige the hearers to a reverent regard, and an inquiry into the authority of the prophet, and a waiting in suspense till they saw whether it would come to pass; and the fulfilling of it increaseth their obligation. Some prophecies that foretold but temporal things (captivities or deliverances) might at first (before the prophets produced a divine attestation) be rather a bare prediction than a law; and if men believed them not, it might not make them guilty of any damning sin at all, but only they refused that warning of a temporal judgment, which might have been of use to them had they received it. 9. But our obligation now to believe the same Scripture prophecies is greater, because we live in the age when most of them are fulfilled, and the rest are attested by Christ and his apostles, who proved their attestations by manifold miracles. 10. When the prophets reproved the known sins of the people, and called men to such duties as the law required, no man could speed ill by obeying such a prophet, because the matter of his prophecies were found in God's own law, which must of necessity be obeyed. And this is the chief part of the recorded prophecies. 11. And any man that spake against any part of God's law (of natural or supernatural revelation) was not to be believed, because God cannot speak contrary to himself. 12. But the prophets themselves had another kind of obligation to believe their own visions and inspirations, than any of their hearers had; for God's great extraordinary revelation was like the light, which immediately revealed itself, and constrained the understanding to know that it was of God: and such were the revelations that came by angelical apparitions and visions. Therefore prophets themselves might be bound to more than their bare word could have bound their hearers to; as to wound themselves, to go bare, to feed on dung, &c.: and this was Abraham's case in offering Isaac. Yet God did never command a prophet, or any by a prophet, a thing simply evil; but only such things as were of a mutable nature, and which his will could alter, and make to be good and such was the case of Abraham himself, if well considered. • Deut. xiii. and xviii. PART II. ·Directions against Hardness of Heart. It is necessary that some Christians be better informed what hardness of heart is, who most complain of it. The metaphor is taken from the hardness of any matter which a workman would make an impression on; and it signifieth the passive and active resistance of the heart against the Word and works of God, when it receiveth not the impressions which the Word would make, and obeyeth not God's command; but after great and powerful means remaineth as it was before, unmoved, unaffected, and disobedient. So that hardness of heart is not a distinct sin, but the habitual power of every sin, or the deadness, unmoveableness, and obstinacy of the heart in any sin. So many duties and sins as there be, so many ways may the heart be hardened against the Word, which forbiddeth those sins, and commandeth those duties. It is therefore an error, that hath had very ill consequences on many persons, to think that hardness of heart is nothing but a want of passionate feeling in the matters which concern the the soul; especially a want of sorrow and tears. This hath made them over-careful for such tears, and grief, and passions, and dangerously to make light of many greater instances of the hardness of their hearts. Many beginners in religion (who are taken up in penitential duties) do think that all repentance is nothing but a change of opinion, except they have those passionate griefs and tears, which indeed would well become the penitent; and hereupon they take more pains with themselves to affect their hearts with sorrow for sin, and to wring out tears, than they do for many greater duties. But when God calleth them to love him, and to praise him, and to be thankful for his mercies; or to love an enemy, or forgive a wrong: when he calleth them to mortify their earthlymindedness, their carnality, their pride, their passion, or their disobedience, they yield but little to his call, and shew here much greater hardness of heart, and yet little complain of this or take notice of it. I entreat you therefore to observe, that the greater the duty is, the worse it is-to harden the heart against it; and the greater the sin is, the worse it is to harden the heart by ob |