such cruel hardships, was the Messiah foretold by the prophets. All these marks, whereby the Messiah was to be known, were found in the blessed Jesus; at the time and place, when and where the Messias was to be born, he was born; what the Messias was to teach, to do, and to suffer, he taught, did, and suffered: it follows therefore, necessarily, that Jesus is the Christ.

This method of proving St. Luke has expressed in very proper and apposite words, when he tells us, that St. Paul reasoned out of the scriptures, opening and alleging; the word Tapatioéμevov, which we translate alleging, doth properly mean applying: the apostle first opened to them the sense of the prophets, explained their words, and showed their true meaning; and when he had thus opened the prophecies; when he had shown what their scope and intention was; what was the sense which they designed to convey to the minds of those who should hear or read their prophesies, by the expressions which they used; he did then fit and apply the prophecies thus explained to the person and the doctrine and works of Jesus; he placed the one by the other, to discover their agreement; he compared the predictions with the events, the shadows with the bodies, the figures with the things prefigured; so that by this method the truth of the gospel which they preached was manifestly and irrefragably demonstrated.

Since therefore this way of arguing was made use of by Christ and his apostles; since all their proofs of the doctrines by them preached do turn upon this one supposition, that what may be inferred from the prophets, that is taught by the prophets; we must acknowledge, that those things are fully, rightly, and substantially proved out of scripture, which do evidently and necessarily follow from the doctrines taught in

scripture, though they are not directly, expressly, and in so many words, any where to be found in the word of God.

And as we have the example of Christ and his apostles warranting us, so we have their commands enjoining us, to make use of this method of reasoning. John v. 39. Our Saviour bids the Jews to search the scriptures; not

barely to consult them, but to compare them; not only to find what they expressly, but what they implicitly, taught; not only to read what was plainly said in them, but to discover what might manifestly be deduced from them. For by the circumstances of the command given by our Saviour it appears that he recommended to them the study of the scriptures to this end, that out of them they might understand that he was the Messias promised by God; which, as bath been shown, was a truth not expressly taught in the Old Testament, but by the help of reasoning to be deduced from it; so that it is plainly the will of our Saviour that we should so search the scriptures, as from them to learn, not only those truths which are in so many words expressly delivered therein, but moreover those other truths, which may, by evident and easy deductions, be rightly inferred therefrom.

When our Saviour in another place proved the resurrection of the dead from a testimony of Moses, in which this doctrine is not plainly asserted, but obscurely implied, he charges them with error and ignorance for having not discovered in the scriptures that truth which yet was not there expressly delivered, but Mark xii. covertly couched. He blames them for not knowing the scriptures: they did not know the scriptures, because they did not rightly understand them: they misunderstood them, because they did not, when they read them, discover therein the resurrection of the dead. But in

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that scripture from whence they ought to have learned that the dead would rise again, nothing was said expressly of the resurrection of the dead; but they ought to have known, that what was not explicitly taught therein, was, however, by implication, there contained; and for not apprehending and believing this implied truth, they are accused of ignorance by our Saviour.

We must therefore own it to be our bounden duty, not only to embrace those truths which are in the book of God in so many words delivered, but also those which by searching the scriptures we can there find out. These may not so easily offer themselves to our understandings as others; but when they do, they are with the same faith and reverence to be embraced as far as we have reason to doubt of their being rightly inferred from scripture, so far we may doubt of their credibility; but the inference is sometimes so plain and evident, that we have no reason to doubt but that it is rational and just; and in that case, the truth inferred is to be embraced by us with the same firmness and readiness of assent, as those very truths expressly and directly delivered in scripture, from which this consequential truth is inferred. For nothing can be more unreasonable, than to allow the scriptures to be true and divine, and at the same time to question the truth and divinity of those doctrines which are evidently deduced from the scriptures. For since it is agreed, on all hands, that from truth nothing can follow but what is truth, he who denies the truth of what is rightly inferred, doth at the same time impeach the truth of those scriptures from whence it is inferred.

Those truths which are by reasoning inferred from the scriptures are not indeed formally contained in them, but they are virtually; or, to speak plainer, they are not in the same words delivered, but they are in

words equivalent, or of the same sense. Now it is the sense of the scriptures we are concerned to inquire after, and not barely the words; and we may as well doubt of the truth of this proposition, Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judæa, because the inspired writers did not deliver to us this doctrine in these very English words, but in words of their own tongue of the same signification with these in English, as we may doubt of the truth of this proposition, that Christ had an human soul, because the scriptures do not in so many words affirm that he had, but only teach us that he was truly man; or of this, that the Holy Ghost is truly God, because, as some pretend, this doctrine is not in so many words delivered in scripture, when yet it is there Acts v. 4. said, that those who lied unto the Holy Ghost lied unto I John v. 7. God; that the Spirit is the Lord; and that the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost are one.

There are several truths thus interpretatively included in scripture which are as easily discerned, and which command as ready an assent, as those which are there literally delivered. To say that Christ died for the sins of men, that he gave himself a ransom for sinners, that he reconciled them to God, that by his death he made a propitiation for them, are but so many synonymous expressions for the satisfaction made by Christ; by this satisfaction we mean no other thing than the apostle, as we sincerely believe, did mean, by his dying in our stead: when therefore we allege the authority of scripture to prove his making an atonement for us, we do effectually prove the truth of his satisfaction. When, from a general proposition delivered in scripture, we infer the truth of a particular included in that general; when, from Christ's dying for all men, a Christian is assured that he died for him; no one is so sceptical as to doubt of the

truth of Christ's dying for his sins, because he doth not find his own name expressly mentioned in scripture. In these cases, and in others like these, the consequence is so plain, and there is so little skill required to make it, that there is no one so destitute of reason, but can perceive the connexion of the truths not expressly taught in God's word with those that are there expressly delivered; and therefore he may be as firmly assured of the former as of the

latter.

The holy scriptures would not be so perfect a rule of faith or of manners, of what we ought to believe and what we ought to do, as they are, if we were left to judge of either only by what we are there in so many words expressly taught, and might not use our own reasons to infer from them some necessary truths and some important duties, which are there, though not in terms delivered, yet in reality implied. He would be thought very ridiculous who should plead his being under no obligation from the scripture to obey the lawful commands of a sovereign princess, because, though he is there required to honour the king, he nowhere reads in scripture that he is to honour the queen and that man is equally absurd who hath no better reason for the denial of a Trinity, than that he nowhere finds the word Trinity in the scriptures, though the doctrine by that word signified is therein contained.

But against what hath been delivered it may be urged, that if we thus give a firm assent to any truths which are not plainly and expressly taught in scripture, but are only inferred from thence by our own reason, then we make our faith to depend, not upon the word of God, but upon our own reason. But it might as well be urged, that when St. Paul saith that SMALRIDGE, VOL. II.

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