And this latter scheme, I assert, was brought into currency
by and in favour of those by whom the operation of grace, the aids of
the Spirit, the necessity of regeneration, the corruption of our
nature, in short, all the peculiar and spiritual mysteries of the
Gospel were explained and diluted away.
And how have these men treated this very Bible? I, who indeed prize
and reverence this sacred library, as of all outward means and
conservatives of Christian faith and practice the surest and the most
reflective of the inward Word; I, who hold that the Bible contains
the religion of Christians, but who dare not say that whatever is
contained in the Bible is the Christian religion, and who shrink from
all question respecting the comparative worth and efficacy of the
written Word as weighed against the preaching of the Gospel, the
discipline of the Churches, the continued succession of the Ministry,
and the communion of Saints, lest by comparing them I should seem to
detach them; I tremble at the processes which the Grotian divines
without scruple carry on in their treatment of the sacred writers, as
soon as any texts declaring the peculiar tenets of our Faith are
cited against them--even tenets and mysteries which the believer at
his baptism receives as the title-writ and bosom-roll of his
adoption; and which, according to my scheme, every Christian born in
Church-membership ought to bring with him to the study of the sacred
Scriptures as the master-key of interpretation.
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