to make the trembling sinner rejoice; to make the proud sinner humble, and to quiet the guilty conscience of the humbled sinner, and speak his inward racking horrors into a calm?

How often has God owned it, to discover and endear Christ as a complete and suitable Saviour to the distressed and selfcondemned sinner, and to lead him to Him for righteousness and strength, that he might find safety, and favour, life, rest, and peace in him; to encourage the dejected, to support the disconsolate, to bind up the broken in heart, to raise up the bowed down, to strengthen the weak, to succour the tempted, to heal the wounded, to comfort the afflicted, to satisfy the hungry, and to recover the backsliding soul? How often, to subdue and mortify prevailing corruptions, to govern fierce and disorderly passions, to work the soul up to the image of God, and to bring it to practice with cheerfulness all the duties of godliness, righteousness and sobriety; to draw off its irregular appetites from this world, and to give it a taste, a fore-taste and fore-view of heavenly felicities? And how often has God owned it to make his people apt to forgive injuries, to deny themselves, to be patient in tribulation, to give them the sweetest supports under it, to carry them decently through it, and to do them good by it; to spirit them for signal services, to engage them to cleave to him, to yield up themselves to him, and rejoice in hope of his glory, even to the most exalted triumphs, in the midst of sufferings and cruel deaths for his name's sake?

Numberless are and have been the instances of God's owning his word, to the production of these and such like effects, down from the apostles to this present age. Are not some of you witnesses from experience, that God continues to set his seal to his own word? Have not you found the word of the Lord precious? Have you not sometimes been impressed in a divine manner by it, and felt its victorious prevalence on your hearts and lives? I am persuaded God has not left himself without witness to these things among you. if he had not designed his word for standing use, he would not have continued thus to own it. And his owning it with the power of his Spirit and grace for these purposes, is a good evidence to our reason, and to our spiritual senses, when they are duly exercised, that he designed it for standing use in this, as well as in former generations.

But

This point may be farther argued from the standing use the Old Testament was of to the Jews, in all their generations; from the wisdom and grace of God, which, according

to Scripture accounts of it, cannot be supposed to confine the use of such an admirable discovery to the people then in being;-from his remarkable care in preserving the Scripture through all the violence, fraud, and malice of its adversaries, to our days;-from the light and improvements it has added to the principles of natural religion, even in the minds of those that have rejected its divine authority;—from God's never having given any other revelation, nor the least ground of expecting another, to direct our conduct in this world, or to show us our way to eternal life in the next; he having now set up the new covenant dispensation, which is said to consist of things that cannot be shaken, and is called a "kingdom that cannot be moved," as the old covenant dispensation was;—and from some prophecies, both of the Old and New Testament, which are still to be accomplished; as, not to mention others, particularly those in the book of Revelation, which was the last of the sacred writings, and speaks of the several ages of the church, from that time to the coming of Christ again, and was closed with a solemn charge to preserve it, without any additions to it or diminutions of it, Rev. xxii. 18, 19. But what has been said may be sufficient to show that the Scriptures are of the standing use to the Christian church, in all ages, that has been pleaded for.

OBJECTION.

HERE it may be proper to consider somewhat more particularly an objection which has been alluded to above-How can the Scriptures be useful to us, since they were mostly written on special occasions, or with an immediate relation to some particular persons or societies?

It must be acknowledged, that the greatest part of the Scriptures, both of the Old and New Testaments, was written in that manner. The oracles of God under the Old Testament were committed to the church of Israel, as belonging in a peculiar manner to them; and they were mostly written with an immediate reference to their affairs, and as their occasions required. And upon the great alteration that was made in the state of the church, by the coming of the promised Messiah, the New Testament was written with a peculiar reference thereunto, as the nature of things required it should; and most of it was immediately directed to some particular persons or churches, on some special occasions that then rose amongst them.

But this is no just objection either against the divine authority, or against the standing usefulness of the Scriptures.

1. It is no just objection against the divine authority of the Scriptures. This the apostle intimates when he says, "God, who at sundry times, and in divers manners, spake in time past to the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken to us by his Son." Whatever were the seasons and occasions of speaking, or the persons immediately spoken to, it was God that spoke by the prophets in the Old Testament, and by his Son in the New. God has an undoubted right to take what occasions, and use what methods he pleases, to communicate his mind and will to the sons of men; and the more suitable those occasions were for the revelations he at several times gave, the more his wisdom and goodness appeared in them. This is one part of that divine condescension and skill that is mentioned in Isaiah 1. 4, "The Lord God hath given me the tongue of the learned, that I should know how to speak a word in season to him that is weary."

Yea, this method of forming the Scriptures on different occasions, with a regard to different persons, and in different times and ages, shows that there could be no crafty agreement of designing men in composing them, and that no one such man could be the author of them; and brings in a great variety of persons, societies, and generations, that received them, as witnesses to the truth of those credentials, which attended the sacred writers, to prove that they came and spake from God. And this the apostle alleges to enforce a conscientious subjection to the divine authority of the doctrines of the New Testament, as well as of the Old. For if the word spoken by angels was stedfast, and every transgression and disobedience received a just recompence of reward, how shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation, which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed unto us by them that heard him; God also bearing them witness, both with signs and wonders, and with divers miracles, and gifts of the Holy Ghost, according to his own will?"

Had the Scriptures been wrought up into an artificial, exact, and methodical system of doctrines, precepts, threatenings, promises, and encouragements, without respect to some particular occasions and circumstances, it would have looked with an air of human contrivance and management, and been much more liable to suspicions of forgery, than it now is, in the form in which it is delivered to us. There is a noble and genuine simplicity in this way of writing it, which shows that

it owes its birth and efficacy to the wisdom and power of God, and not to the art or policy of men. And we may say of the Scripture in general, what the apostle said of his preaching in particular, that it was "not with enticing words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God."

And there is this further remarkable evidence of the divine authority of the Scriptures, from this way of their being written, that they record in latter ages the manifest accomplishment of many of those prophecies, which made a part of the sacred volume in former ages; as any unprejudiced mind may easily observe, in comparing one part of the Old Testament with another, and the Old Testament with the New. So that it might have been said, and was truly said in effect of many Scriptures of the Old Testament, when Christ appeared in the flesh, and soon afterwards, as he said of one of them, "This day is this Scripture fulfilled in your ears."

2. Nor is this manner, in which the Scriptures were written, a just objection against their standing usefulness. This the apostle intimates when he says, "Whatsoever things were written aforetime, were written for our learning."

It is indeed, as I apprehend, morally impossible, that a set of even inspired writings, so full and particular as the Scriptures are, whether written on special occasions or not, should be in every passage of equal use to every age; for that would necessarily suppose, either that all the circumstances of every age must be invariably the same, or that the provision made for them in those writings must be confined to general rules and topics. To suppose the first, is to forget the fluctuating state of human nature, and the vicissitudes of this world; and to suppose the second, is to suppose a set of writings much less useful than the Scriptures are, in a multitude of particular cases, to which they are peculiarly adapted.

It may therefore be allowed, that some things in the Scriptures might be more remarkably useful to those, to whom they were immediately directed, than to us; and that other things may be more useful to the present, and some past ages, than to them, as they relate to prophesied events, that have come to pass since the sacred canon was finished; and to some corruptions in doctrine, worship, and manners, which the all-wise God foresaw would spring up and trouble the church in after ages. Thus in the institution of the Lord's Supper, the universal particle All, used of the cup, and not of the bread,

it may

"Drink ye all of it," is of greater use since the church of Rome have deprived the laity of the cup, thereby to countenance the abominable figment of transubstantiation, and idolatrous adoration of the host, than it was of before. And for like reasons be supposed, that some other passages may be of more use to ages yet unborn, than either to us, or to any that are gone before us. And yet we may not be excluded from reaping considerable benefit even from such passages as are more peculiarly suited to other times and circumstances. And as the principal concerns of mankind, as to all the main purposes of a divine revelation, are in every age the same; so it is no hard matter to conceive that revelation to be formed in such a manner, though mostly written on special occasions, as should be best adapted for common use, especially in its principal and most momentous points, to every age of the world.

It is no uncustomary practice among men, to write such things to particular persons, and on particular occasions, as they design for common usefulness, and as really are of great service to others. It is not unusual for human legislators to make laws on particular occasions, for universal and future obligation on the subjects of their state; or for physicians to publish rules and prescriptions of medicines on particular occasions, and in particular cases, which they design for general use, and may be of great advantage to others. How much more may we suppose, that the all-knowing God, who always had, in one comprehensive view, all the possible circumstances of all that ever should be in the world, might take the particular occasions, which his infinite wisdom saw most proper, to deliver his mind and will in such a manner, as should make it of standing use to all succeeding generations? Accordingly, it has been already observed, that there is abundant evidence from the Scripture itself, and from the reason of things, that it was designed for such use.

The designs of men in this, as well as in every other method of management, may often fail, because they can see but a little way before them, and have but a very narrow and uncertain view of what may fall out, or of what alterations may arise in the state of things, which may require new directions, rules, and laws, for the management of them; and therefore they often find themselves obliged to alter and mend, to annul, or add to their former plans, that they may accommodate them to new occurrences, which they never thought of before. as the infinitely perfect God can be liable to no mistakes, and as he comprehensively knows the make and turn of human

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