cept the maliciously blind, to perceive that the true servants. of Christ are a more purified, refined, honest, conscionable, holy, heavenly people than the rest of the world. For my part, I am fully convinced of it; I see it; there is no comparison; for all their imperfections, which they and I lament, I am fully satisfied that there is much more of God on them than on others. And therefore there is much more of God in the doctrine that renewed them than in any other. The church is the living Scripture, the pillar and ground of the truth (1 Tim. iii. 15.); the law is written in their hearts (Heb. viii. 10.) better than it was in the tables of stone; 2 Cor. iii. 3. And by their holy love and works, the world may know that Jesus Christ was sent of the Father, and may be brought to believe on him, by their unity; John xvii. 21-23. Matt. v. 16. God would not concur so apparently and powerfully with a false doctrine, to make so great a change in man; nor so far own it, as to use it for the doing of the most excellent work in all this world, even the gathering him such a church, and sanctifying to himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works; Tit. ii. 14.

If you say that some of the heathens have been as good: I answer, 1. The goodness found in them, is but temperance, fidelity, and such like; and not a holy spirituality, or heavenliness, no, nor a thorough conscientiousness in what they knew.

2. That good was rare in comparison of that which the Gospel worketh, as well as small.

3. That good which they had, was wrought only by some scraps or parcels of the same holy truth that is contained in the Scriptures. And therefore even so much truth among the heathens as profited them to any reformation, was the word of God, and owned by him.

Quest. 6. Do you believe that Jesus Christ did rise again from the dead, or not? and that he and his disciples did work those many uncontrolled miracles, or not? If you do believe it, then what need you further testimony to prove the doctrine to be of God? or to prove that there is a life to come? Shall the Captain of our salvation himself rise from the dead, and conquer death, and ascend up into heaven to shew us that there is a life to come, and yet will you no believe it? Or would God lend to any man his power t confirm a false doctrine to the world? If so, then 1. I

would be God himself that should mislead us. For it is he that worketh the miracles, or granteth special power to the instrument to do it. 2. Man should be unavoidably misled. For if a man rise from the dead, and raise others, and give to thousands the gift of languages, healing, and the like, and all this have no greater contrary evidence from God of some contradiction or controlment, I am unavoidably deceived; and neither my greatest innocency or diligence, or any other help from men, could possibly relieve me. And he that can believe that the infinitely Powerful, Wise, and Good, is either necessitated or disposed to deceive the world, and rule them by deceit and falsehood, and to lend his power to confirm a doctrine that he hateth, and is against himself, this man indeed believeth not that there is any God. 3. Even the brutists themselves, and all the infidels with whom we talk, will confess that if they should see Christ rise, or see such miracles, they would believe: and therefore they do confess that they are cogent evidence to those that know of them.

Object. Did not the sorcerers in Egypt work miracles?' Answ. 1. Wonders they did, but not miracles. 2. They were controlled, and shamed, and disowned by God by Moses' contradictory, conquering miracles.

Object.' But some might have died between the magicians' wonders, and Moses' controlment, and so have been unavoidably lost.' Answ. 1. The time was near, and that not likely of those that knew of them. 2. At the first wonder of the magicians, Aaron's rod swallowed up their rods, (Exod. vii. 22.) and therefore the conquest obliged them to suspend belief of the other. 3. The miracles of Moses were not to reveal a new doctrine of salvation that could not otherwise be known; but partly to convince Pharaoh that the Lord was God, and partly to cause him to let go the Israelites. The people's salvation lay not on the latter; and the former they had abundant means to know by the works and light of nature itself. And the magicians' wonders were not to reveal a new false doctrine any further than to contend against Moses' miracles; and if they had, yet being against the doctrine of the whole creation, that revealeth the Creator, no man could be excusable for believing them, because God hath given so full a testimony before against them, so that this objection is plainly but an impertinent cavil.

But I doubt not but you will say, that you are not sure

that Christ rose again, and that ever such miracles were done. I ask therefore,

Quest. 7. Whether it be possible, that so many and so wise and godly men (as their writings prove them) should give up their lives and all that they had and could have hoped for in this world, to persuade the world that they saw Christ risen, if it were false; and to draw them to believe a falsehood that tended to the worldly ruin of them all?

Quest. 1. And is it possible that if they had been so bad and mad, that so many thousands would have believed them when their own frequent miracles, language, &c. were the witness of their fidelity to which they openly appealed? and this in the very age and place where all these things might easily be confuted if untrue? If I should pretend to convince the world by language not learned, and by other miracles and gifts which I never had, would countries, or any sober persons believe me? or should I not be the common scorn? Would the churches of the world have been planted by pretended miracles that never were? Would they all have given up estates and lives upon an evident lie? It was easy for them all to see and hear whether these things were done or not. And therefore he that seeth those churches which were the proper effects of miracles, may know the cause; a real effect had a real cause.

Quest. 9. Was it possible that so many hundred or thousand persons, dispersed about the world on a sudden, could without coming near each other, agree both upon one and the same false doctrine throughout, and on the same practices to deceive the world?

Quest. 10. Is it possible that among so many thousands, that torments, or death, or common ingenuity, would not have forced some to have repented, and opened the deceits of all the rest?'

Quest. 11. 'Is it possible that so many heretics that did fall from them and set against the true apostles, would none of them have disclosed the deceit, if really the miracles had not been done?'

Quest. 12. Is it possible that none of the Jews, their bitter enemies, nor any of the learned Romans of that age, would have discovered the fraud, and by writing confuted matters of fact, being public, and if false, so easily confuted?'

Where are the books that ever any one of them wrote to dis

prove any of these miracles? If you say the Christians burnt them; give us the least proof of it if you can. When did any Jew complain of such a thing? Nay, how could the dispersed, persecuted Christians destroy the writings of their reigning enemies? The writings of Jews and Romans then written remain to this day, and had fuller human advantages of preservation than any that are against them. No Jews or Romans complained, or to this day complain of such a thing, nor tell us of any such writings of theirs, that ever were in the world.

Quest. 13. Nay, the Jews confessed the miracles themselves, and had no shift left for their unbelief, but by blaspheming the Holy Ghost, and saying that they were done by the power of the devil.

Quest. 14. All the dispersed churches and Christians of the world, have universally concurred in delivering us down these matters of fact, and the writings that contain them; and this as a thing that they grounded all their hope of salvation on, and for which they contemned this present world. And the enemies that gainsaid their doctrine, did not gainsay these matters of fact. Could this be feigned?

Quest. 15. Have I not fully manifested in my book against Infidelity (to which I must again dismiss you), that there is a full and infallible evidence, that this Scripture was written by the apostles and evangelists, and these miracles done, as there is that any of the statutes of this land are the current statutes of those parliaments that are said to make them? And your lands and lives are held by the credit of these statutes.

A word or two to the objections of a masked infidel of this country. Clem. Writer.

Saith he,Men be not commanded to believe these statutes on pain of damnation. Therefore the case is not like.'

Answ. But men are commanded to obey them upon pain of death; and believing is prerequisite to obeying; therefore the case is like. Death is the utmost penalty that man can inflict; or if there be greater, it all runs on the same foundation. And sure that evidence that proves men culpable for breaking men's laws must prove him culpable for breaking God's. You have no other eyes to read the laws of God, than those by which you read man's laws. And doth it follow that God must not condemn you for breaking

his laws, when men do but hang you for breaking theirs? Sure God's laws and man's may be printed in the same character, and read with the same eyes, and both have the same natural means of delivery, and yet the sin and punishment differ as the authority doth. Object. But (saith he) can the miracles confirm the Scripture, when it is the Scripture that reports the miracles?' Answ. 1. Cannot a statute tell you what parliament made it, and what matters of fact were the occasion, and also what shall be your duty upon pain of death? so that the makers and facts shall give force unto the law, and yet the law reveal the maker and facts? Do not church constitutions do the same? The Scripture hath two parts: the history and the doctrine. May not the history confirm the doctrine, and that doctrine oblige us to our duty?

2. But you suppose that the miracles and facts can only be known by a divine belief of the history. But this is false. The common evidence that all statutes, histories, and actions in the world have to make them certain to posterity (as Cicero's or Virgil's writings, or Cæsar's reign, &c.), the same have the books and miracles of Scripture to us. And by these we can know them' de facto' to be such, before we believe them by a divine faith. And as the Scripture is a history that hath the same evidence as the best of histories have, so it may concur with abundance of other evidence (which I have recited in my " Determination against Infidelity," and in my "Key for Catholics,") to prove the facts; and then those facts will fully prove the truth of all the doctrines which they attest, and consequently, we shall add to our human faith and knowledge, a divine faith concerning the history itself.

Object. 3. But (saith this writer) if God had meant that the Scripture should be a law to all, he would not have writ it in a language which they understand not.'

Answ. 1. Any thing will serve to make an infidel, when the mind is corrupted and deplorate. Were they no laws which the Romans wrote in Latin, for the government of all the nations in the Roman world? It was enough that the rulers of the provinces caused them to be so far understood by the people as was necessary to a righteous government. I mean those laws that were added to the proper laws of that people.

2. Was there any one language then that all the world