for their Saviour, or become penitent Christians. And we consent to do so, and to accept it on these terms. And we believe that all are actually pardoned that thus consent.

By all this you may perceive, that those troubled Christians which doubt not of the truth of the Word of God, but only of their own sincerity, and consequently of their justification and salvation, do ignorantly complain that they have not faith, or that they cannot believe: for it is no act of unbelief at all, for me to doubt whether my own heart be sincere: this is my ignorance of myself, but it is not any degree of unbelief: for God's Word doth no where say that I am sincere; and therefore I may doubt of this, without doubting of God's Word at all. And let all troubled Christians know, that they have no more unbelief in them, than they have doubting or unbelief of the truth of the Word of God. Even that despair itself, which hath none of this in it, hath no unbelief in it, (if there be any such). I thought it needful thus far to tell you what unbelief is, before I come to give you Directions against it. And though the mere doubting of our own sincerity be no unbelief at all, yet real unbelief of the very truth of the Holy Scriptures, is so common and dangerous a sin, and some degree of it is latent in the best, that I think we can no way so much further the work of grace, as by destroying this. The weakness of our faith in the truth of Scriptures, and the remnant of our unbelief of it, is the principal cause of all the languishings of our love and obedience, and every grace; and to strengthen faith, is to strengthen all. What I have more fully written in my "Saints' Rest," Part 2., and my "Treatise against Infidelity," I here suppose.

Direct. 1. Consider well how much of religion nature itself teacheth, and reason, (without supernatural revelation,) must needs confess' (as, that there is another life which man was made for, and that he is obliged to the fullest love and obedience to God, and the rest before laid down in the Introduction.) And then observe how congruously the doctrine of Christ comes in, to help where nature is at a loss, and how exactly it suits with natural truths, and how clearly it explaineth them, and fully containeth so much of them as is necessary to salvation; and how suitable and proper a means it is to attain their ends; and how great a

testimony the doctrines of nature and grace do give unto each other d.

Direct. 11. Consider, that man's end being in the life to come, and God being the righteous and merciful Governor of man in order to that end, it must needs be that God will give him sufficient means to know his will in order to that

d I must profess that the nature and wonderful difference of the godly and ungodly, and their conversation in the world, are perpetual, visible evidences in my eyes, of the truth of the Holy Scriptures.

1. That there should be so universal and implacable a hatred against the godly, in the common sort of unrenewed men, in all ages and nations of the earth, when these men deserve so well of them, and do them no wrong, is a visible proof of Adam's fall, and the need of a Saviour and a Sanctifier.

2. That all those who are seriously Christians, should be so far renewed, and recovered from the common corruption, as their heavenly minds and lives, and their wonderful difference from other men sheweth, this is a visible proof that Christianity is of God.

3. That God doth so plainly shew a particular, special providence, in the converting and confirming souls, by differencing grace, and work on the soul as the sanctified feel, doth shew that indeed the work is his.

4. That God doth so plainly grant many of his servants' prayers, by special providences, doth prove his owning them and his promises.

5. That God suffereth his servants in all times and places ordinarily to suffer so much for his love and service, from the world and flesh, doth shew that there is a judgment, and rewards, and punishments hereafter. Or else our highest duty would be our greatest loss; and then how should his government of men be just?

6. That the renewed nature (which maketh men better, and therefore is of God,) doth wholly look at the life to corne, and lead us to it, and live upon it, this sheweth that such a life there is, or else this would be delusory and vain, and goodness itself would be a deceit.

7. When it is undeniable that de facto esse' the world is not governed without the hopes and fears of another life; almost all nations among the heathens believing it, and shewing by their very worshipping their dead heroes as gods, that they believed that their souls did live, and even the wicked generally being restrained by those hopes and fears in themselves. And also that' de posse' it is not possible the world should be governed agreeably to man's rational nature, without the hopes and fears of another life; but men would be worse than beasts, and all villanies would be the allowed practice of the world. As every man may feet in himself what he were like to be and do, if he had no such restraint. And there being no doctrine or life comparable to Christianity, in their tendency to the life to come. All these are visible, standing evidences, assisted so much by common sense and reason, and still apparent to all, that they leave infidelity without excuse; and are ever at hand to help our faith, and resist temptations to unbelief.

8. And if the world had not had a beginning according to the Scriptures, 1. We should have found monuments of antiquity above six thousand years old. 2. Arts and sciences would have come to more perfection, and printing, guns, &c., not have been of so late invention. 3. And so much of America and other parts of the world, would not have been yet uninhabited, unplanted, or undiscovered.

Of atheism I have spoken before in the Introduction; and nature so clearly revealeth a God, that I take it as almost needless to say much of it to sober men.

end; and that the clearest, fullest means must needs demonstrate most of the government and mercy of God.

Direct. 111. Consider, what full and sad experience the world hath of its pravity and great corruption;' and that the natural tendency of reason is to those high and excellent things, which corruption and brutishness do almost extinguish or cast out with the most; and that the prevalency of the lower faculties against right reason, is so lamentable and universal, to the confusion of the world, that it is enough to tell us, that this is not the state that God first made us in, and that certainly sin hath sullied and disordered his work. The wickedness of the world is a great confirmation of the Scripture.

Direct. IV. Consider, how exactly the doctrine of the Gospel, and covenant of grace, are suited to the lapsed state of man' even as the law of works was suited to his state of innocency: so that the Gospel may be called the law of lapsed nature, as suited to it, though not as revealed by it; as the other was the law of entire nature.

Direct. v. Compare the many prophecies of Christ, with the fulfilling of them in his person.' As that of Moses recited by Stephen, Acts vii. 37. Isa. liii. Dan. ix. 24-26. &c. And consider that those Jews which are the Christians' bitterest enemies, acknowledge and preserve those prophecies, and all the Old Testament, which giveth so full a testimony to the New.

Direct. VI. Consider, what an admirable suitableness there is in the doctrine of Christ, to the relish of a serious, heavenly mind:' and how all that is spiritual and truly good in us, doth close with it and embrace it from a certain congruity of natures, as the eye doth with the light, and the stomach with its proper food. Every good man in reading the Holy Scripture, feeleth something (even all that is good) within him, bear witness to it. And only our worse part is

quarrelling with it, and rebels against it.

Direct. VII. Consider, how all the first churches were planted by the success of all those miracles mentioned in the Scripture.' And that the apostles and thousands of others saw the miracles of Christ: and the churches saw the miracles of the apostles, and heard them speak in languages unlearned: and had the same extraordinary gifts

communicated to themselves. And these being openly and frequently manifested, convinced unbelievers: and were openly urged by the apostles to stop the mouths of opposers, and confirm believers; who would all have scorned their arguments, and the faith which they supported, if all these had been fictions, of which they themselves were said to be eye-witnesses and agents. So that the very existence of the churches, was a testimony to the matter of fact. And what testimony can be greater of God's interest and approbation, than Christ's resurrection, and all these miracles? Direct. VIII. Consider, how no one of all the heretics or apostates, did ever contradict the matters of fact, or hath left the world any kind of confutation of them,' which they wanted not malice, or encouragement, or opportunity to have done.

Direct. IX. Consider, how that no one of all those thousands that asserted these miracles, are ever mentioned in any history as repenting of it, either in their health, or at the hour of death :' whereas it had been so heinous a villany to have cheated the world in so great a cause, that some consciences of dying men, especially of men that placed all their hopes in the life to come, must needs have repented of.

Direct. x. Consider, that the witnesses of all these miracles, and all the churches that believed them, were taught by their own doctrine and experience, to forsake all that they had in the world, and to be reproached, hated, and persecuted of all men, and to be as lambs among wolves, in expectation of death; and all this for the hope of that blessedness promised them by a crucified, risen Christ.' So that no worldly end could move them to deceive, or willingly to be deceived.

Direct. XI. Consider, how impossible it is in itself, that so many men should agree together to deceive the world, and that for nothing, and at the rate of their own undoing and death and that they should all agree in the same narratives and doctrines so unanimously: and that none of these should ever confess the deceit, and disgrace the rest.' All things well considered, this will appear not only a moral, but a natural impossibility: especially considering their quality and distance, there being thousands in several

countries, that never saw the faces of the rest, much less could enter a confederacy with them, to deceive the world,

Direct. XII. Consider the certain way by which the doctrine and writings of the apostles, and other evangelical messengers, have been delivered down to us, without any possibility of material alteration.' Because the Holy Scriptures were not left only to the care of private men, or of the Christians of one country, who might have agreed upon corruptions and alterations: but it was made the office of the ordinary ministers to read, and expound, and apply them. And every congregation had one or more of these ministers: and the people received the Scriptures as the law of God, and that by which they must live and be judged, and as their charter for heaven. So that it was not possible for one minister to corrupt the Scripture text, but the rest, with the people, would have quickly reproved him: nor for those of one kingdom to bring all other Christians to it throughout the world, without a great deal of consultation and opposition (if at all): which never was recorded to us.

Direct. XIII. Be acquainted as fully as you can with the history of the church, that you may know how the Gospel hath been planted, and propagated, and assaulted, and preserved until now:' which will much better satisfy you, than general, uncertain talk of others.

Direct. XIV. Judge whether God, being the wise and merciful Governor of the world, would suffer the honestest and most obedient subjects that he hath upon earth, to be deceived in a matter of such importance, by pretence of doctrines and miracles proceeding from himself, and which none but himself (or God by his special grant) is able to do, without disowning them, or giving any sufficient means to the world to discover the deceit.' For certainly, he needeth not deceit to govern us. If you say that he permits Mahometanism, I answer, 1. The main, positive doctrine of the Mahometans, for the worshipping of one only God, against idolatry, is true: and the by-fancies of their pretended prophet, are not commended to the world upon the pretence of attesting miracles at all, but upon the affirmation of revelations, without any credible seal or Divine attestation, and

• Neque enim potest Deus qui summa veritas et bonitas est, humanum genus, prolem suam decipere. Marsil. Ficin. de Rel. Chris. c. 1.