I. CHAP. III. Moses's Fidelity and Integrity proved. I. Moses considered as an Historian, and as a Lawgiver; his Fidelity in both proved; clear Evidences that he had no intent to deceive in his History, Freedom from private Interest, Impartiality in his Relations, Plainness and Perspicuity of Stile. II. As a Lawgiver, he came armed with Divine Authority, which being the main Thing, is fixed on to be fully proved from his Actions and Writings. III. The Power of Miracles the great Evidence of Divine Revelation. Two grand Questions propounded. In what Cases Miracles may be expected, and how known to be true. No Necessity of a constant Power of Miracels in a Church: IV. Two Cases alone wherein they may be expected. When any Thing comes as a Law from God, and when a Divine Law is to be repealed. The Necessity of Miracles in those Cases as an Evidence of Divine Revelation asserted. V, VI, VII. Objections answered. No Use of Miracles when the Doctrine is settled, and owned by Miracles by the first Revelation. No Need of Miracles in Reformation of a Church. BOOK THE second proposition contains the proof of Moses's II. fidelity, that he was as far from having any intent to deceive others, as he was from being deceived himself. Two ways Moses must be considered; as an historian, and as a lawgiver. The only inducement for him to deceive as an historian, must be some particular interest which must draw him aside from an impartial delivery of the truth; as a lawgiver, he might deceive, if he pretended Divine revelation for those laws which were only the issues of his own brain, that they might be received with a greater veneration among the people; as Numa Pompilius and others did. Now if we prove that Moses had no interest to deceive in his history, and had all rational evidence of Divine revelation in his laws, we shall abundantly evince the undoubted fidelity of Moses, in every thing recorded by him. We begin then with his fidelity as an historian; and it being contrary to the common interest of the world to deceive and be deceived, we have no reason to entertain any suspicions of the veracity of any person, where we cannot discern some peculiar interest that might have a stronger bias_upon him than the common interest of the world. For it is otherwise in morals than in naturals; for in naturals we III. see that every thing will leave its proper interest to pre- CHAP. serve the common interest of nature; but in morals, there is nothing more common than deserting the common interest of mankind, to set up a peculiar interest against it it being the truest description of a politician, that he is one who makes himself the centre, and the whole world his circumference; that he regards not how much the whole world is abused, if any advantage doth accrue to himself by it. Where we see it then the design of any person to advance himself or his posterity, or to set up the credit of the nation whose history he writes, we may have just cause to suspect his partiality; because we then find a sufficient inducement for such a one to leave the common road of truth, and to fall into the paths of deceit. But we have not the least ground to suspect any such partiality in the history of Moses; for nothing is more clear than that he was free from the ambitious design of advancing himself and his posterity, who, notwithstanding the great honour he enjoyed himself, was content to leave his posterity in the meanest sort of attendance upon the tabernacle. And as little have we ground to think he intended to flatter that nation, which he so lively describes, that one would think he had rather a design to set forth the frowardness, unbelief, unthankfulness, and disobedience of a nation towards a gracious God, than any ways to enhance their reputation in the world, or to ingratiate himself with them by writing this history of them. Nay, and he sets forth so exactly the lesser failings and grosser enormities of all the ancestors of this nation whose acts he records, that any impartial reader will soon acquit him of a design of flattery, when, after he hath recorded those faults, he seeks not to extenuate them, or bring any excuse or pretence to palliate them. So that any observing reader may easily take notice that he was carried on by a higher design than the common people of historians are; and that his drift and scope was to exalt the goodness and favour of God towards a rebellious and obstinate people: of which there can be no greater nor more lively demonstration, than the history of all the transactions of the Jewish nation, from their coming forth of Egypt, to their utter ruin and desolation. And Moses tells them, as from God himself, it was neither for their number, nor their Deut. vii. goodness, that God set his love upon them, but he loved 7, 8. them because he loved them, i. e. no other account was to be given of his gracious dealing with them, but the free 25. Gen. xlix. 5, 6, 7. BOOK ness of his own bounty, and the exuberancy of his goodII. ness towards them. Nay, have we not cause to admire the ingenuity as well as veracity of this excellent personage, who not only lays so notorious a blot upon the stock of his own family Levi, recording so punctually the inGen. xxxiv. humanity and cruelty of him and Simeon in their dealings with the Sechemites, but likewise inserts that curse which was left their upon memory for it, by their own father at his decease! And that he might not leave the least suspicion of partiality behind him, he hath not done as the statuary did, (who engraved his own name so artificially in the statue of Jupiter, that one should continue as long as the other :) but what the other intended for the praise of his skill, Moses hath done for his ingenuity, that he hath so interwoven the history of his own failings and disobedience with those of the nation, that his spots are like to continue as long as the whole web of his history is like to do. Had it been the least part of his design to have his memory preserved with a superstitious veneration among the Jews, how easy had it been for him to have left out any thing that might in the least entrench upon his reputation? But we find him very secure and careless in that particular; nay, on the other side, very studious and industrious in depressing the honour and deserts of men, and advancing the power and goodness of God. And all this he doth, not in an affected strain of rhetoric, whose proper work is impetrare fidem mendacio, and, as Tully somewhere confesseth, to make things seem otherwise than they are; but with that innate simplicity and plainness, and yet withal with that imperatoria brevitas, that majesty and authority, that it is thereby evident he sought not to court acceptance, but to demand belief; nor had any such pitiful design of pleasing his readers with some affected phrases, but thought that truth itself had presence enough with it to command the submission of our understandings to it. II. Especially when all these were delivered by such a one who came sufficiently armed with all motives of credibility and inducements to assent, by that evidence which he gave that he was no pretender to Divine revelation, but was really employed as a peculiar instrument of state under the God and Ruler of the whole world. Which if it be made clear, then all our further doubts must presently cease, and all impertinent disputes be silenced, when the Supreme Majesty appears empowering any person to dictate to the world the laws they must be governed by. III. For if any thing be repugnant to our rational faculties, CHAP. that is, that God should dictate any thing but what is most certainly true, or that the Governor of the world should prescribe any laws but such as were most just and reasonable. If we suppose a God, we cannot question veracity to be one of his chiefest attributes; and that it is impossible the God of truth should employ any, to reveal any thing as from him, but what was undoubtedly true. So that it were an argument of the most gross and unreasonable incredulity, to distrust the certainty of any thing which comes to us with sufficient evidence of Divine revelation; because thereby we shew our distrust of the veracity of God himself. All that we can desire then, is only reasonable satisfaction concerning the evidence of Divine revelation in the person whose words we are to credit; and this our gracious God hath been so far from denying men, that he hath given all rational evidence of the truth of it. For it implying no incongruity at all, to any notions of God or ourselves, that God should, when it pleases him, single out some instrument to manifest his will to the world; our enquiry then leads us to those things which may be proper notes and characters of such a person who is employed on so high an embassy. And those are chiefly these two: If his actions be such as could not flow from the power of mere natural causes; and if the things he reveals be such as could not proceed from any created understanding. First then for his actions: these striking most upon our outward senses, when they are any thing extraordinary, do transmit along with the impressions of them to the understanding an high opinion of the person that doth them: whereas the mere height of knowledge, or profoundness of things discovered, can have no such present power and influence upon any, but such as are of more raised and inquisitive minds and the world is generally more apt to suspect itself deceived with words, than it can be with actions; and hence miracles, or the doing of things above the reach of nature, hath been always embraced as the greatest testimony of Divine authority and revelation. For which there is this evident reason, that the course of nature being settled by Divine power, and every thing acting there by the force of that power it received at first, it seems impossible that any thing should really alter the series of things, without the same power which at first produced them. This then we take for granted, that wherever such a power appears, there is a certain evidence II. BOOK of a Divine presence going along with such a person who enjoys it. And this is that which is most evident in the actions of Moses, both as to the miracles he wrought both in Egypt and the wilderness, and his miraculous deliverance of the Israelites out of Egypt; this latter being as much above the reach of any merely civil power, as the other above natural. III. We therefore come to the rational evidence of that Divine authority whereby Moses acted, which may be gathered from that Divine power which appeared in his actions; which being a matter of so great weight and importance (it being one of the main bases whereon the evidence of Divine revelation, as to us, doth stand,) and withal of so great difficulty and obscurity (caused through the preferring some parties in religion above the common interest of it,) it will require more care and diligence to search what influence the power of miracles hath upon the proving the Divine commission of those who do them. Whether they are such undoubted credentials, that wherever they are produced, we are presently to receive the persons who bring them, as extraordinary embassadors from heaven, employed on some peculiar message to the sons of men? For the full stating of this important question, two things must be cleared. First, In what cases miracles may be expected as credentials to confirm an immediate commission from heaven? Secondly, What rational evidences do attend those miracles, to assure us they are such as they pretend to be? First, For the cases wherein these miracles are to be expected as inducements to, or confirmations of our faith, concerning the Divine employment of any persons in the world. And here I lay down this as a certain foundation, that a power of miracles is not constantly and perpetually necessary in all those who manage the affairs of heaven here on earth, or that act in the name of God in the world. When the doctrine of faith is once settled in sacred records, and the Divine revelation of that doctrine sufficiently attested by a power of miracles in the revealers of it, what imaginable necessity or pretext can there be contrived for a power of miracles, especially among such as already own the Divine revelation of the Scriptures? To make then a power of working miracles to be constantly resident in the Church of God, as one of the necessary notes and characters of it, is to put God upon that necessity which common nature is freed from, viz. of multiplying things without sufficient cause to |