they have writ, and many whereof have been of equal credit, and opportunity of knowing the truth of what passed in their time, with any who have been before them, they shall find so much partiality and want of sincerity in some, who best un-' derstood the things of which they writ; so much presumption and ignorance in others, who neither did nor can be presumed to understand the matters which they writ; so great errors in point of time, and mistakes in the names of persons; that if the men were alive to whom many actions are imputed, they would neither remember the places, nor the time, nor know that they themselves are described, or mentioned to have been there; so great contradiction in the relation of actions themselves, and greater of the grounds and causes which produced those actions; such a mixture of oratory and rhetoric with history, to disguise and conceal things that were done, and in other cases to enlarge and amplify more than was done; to exalt this man, and to depress that; and artificially to work upon the affections, and even corrupt the judgment of the reader: I say, whosoever hath taken the pains to discover this, as every man hath discovered it who hath taken the pains, will not venture his faith upon the integrity of the reports in those dark times; which were neither more innocent than these, nor were the persons who lived

in those times generally better qualified for the examining the truth and ground of those reports, than they who live in the present age; who by the improvement of all kinds of learning, by the knowledge of languages, and by the communication of all that was known, or was thought to be known, by those who lived before, have many advantages towards the perfection of any science, above those times to which they would have us to resort for information. And if wisdom and understanding be to be found with the ancient, and in length of days, that time is the oldest from which men appeal to the infancy of the world; and this advances more the veneration that is always due to the grey hairs of the aged, who must be presumed to know more than young; who likewise shall have much to answer, if, when they come to be old, they do not know more, and judge better, than they could who were old before them. And this is the best way to preserve the reverence that is due to age, by hoping and believing that the next age may know more, and be better, than that in which we live; and not to rob that of the respect that will still be due to antiquity, by unreasonably imputing it to the time which we have outlived.

For the very age of the apostles, of which I say we know nothing but what they have left and given us notice of; and notwithstanding the complete di

any

rections and prescriptions which they have bequeathed to us, we all see, that no one controversy that is at present in the Christian church, can receive a determination, or procure a submission, by any thing contained in scripture; each party alleging the same, or some other part of scripture, for the support and defence of their different, and sometimes contradictory opinions: and we cannot but observe, that though there were as great errors, and as destructive to Christian religion, set on foot and discovered, whilst the apostles themselves lived, or so soon after that they could not but foresee; and which are of a greater magnitude, than which are at this day between Christians; they did not think fit to prevent the growth and improvement of them, by making plain commentaries upon those places of scripture which gave rise to those debates: nor did their plenary determination, that the law was entirely abolished, and that to them who should hereafter be circumcised, the gospel would profit them nothing, find that resignation and obedience, but that very many, who suc. cessively were bishops of Jerusalem after St James, were all circumcised: so far they thought it necessary to comply with many Christians who retained still that superstition to the law, rather than to submit to the rigour of the apostle: Though the heresy of Arius was not full blown till many

hundred years after the apostles, yet the seeds thereof appeared even in their times, or very quickly after: for Cerinthus, in the sixty-third year after the passion of our Saviour, publicly denied his divinity; which being improved (as all heresies used to be) by the Gnosticks and others who succeeded, was at last carried to that monstrous height by Arius and his complices; nor could the authority of the council of Nice extinguish it. The apostles thought it enough to cause the gospel to be published to all the world, and with them their own commentaries in their several epistles, upon occasion of several disputes which they found grown in their churches; and rather endeavoured to extinguish those disputes by introducing the severe practice of Christian duties, than by examining and explaining the matter of those disputes; foreseeing that the restlessness and curiosity of the nature of mankind, the pregnancy, and fancy, and invention of succeeding ages, would be always raising of doubts, and making new interpretations of whatsoever was or should be said; and therefore, having (as is said) composed the scriptures for the standard of Christian religion, and required submission and obedience to the sovereign powers as a vital part of it, they concluded that the propagation and advancement of it would be best provided for by the sovereign power of the several nations of the

world; which, observing the foundations laid and prescribed by them in the scriptures, would raise such superstructures for the exercise and practice of religion, as would be most agreeable to the nature, temper, and inclinations of the people, and for the peace of their several dominions; their own experience having sufficiently informed them, that though the substance must be the same in all, the forms and circumstances must be different in several climates and regions. And since the primitive times in which the apostles lived, will yield no other directions than what are contained in the scripture, and that we know no authentic account of any importance in some hundred of years after their time, (which is a very great hiatus in history) methinks we should not hope for any notable and exact information from any other primitive times which succeeded.

We shall not however avoid looking back again into those primitive times, to which we are so often sent for instruction, when we have a little viewed the appeal in the other sense, which no doubt is the more literal meaning of it, with reference to the persons who lived in those primitive times; and then we must restrain those primitive times to the age that was near three hundred years after our Saviour for till that time we have no other information, than from those who began not to live til