but after that he knew him, and was assured that it was he which spake unto him, the scripture teaching us that the ears of Samuel were revealed, and the word of God revealed, and God himself revealed to him. By all which we can understand no less, than that Samuel was so illuminated in his prophecies, that he fully understood the words or things themselves which were delivered, and as certainly knew that the deliverer was God. So Samuel the seer, so the rest of those prophets, believed those truths revealed to them by such a faith as was a firm assent unto an object credible upon the immediate testimony of God.

But those faithful people to whom the prophets spake, believed. the same truths and upon the testimony of the same God, delivered unto them not by God, but by those prophets, whose words they therefore assented unto as certain truths, because they were assured that what the prophets spake was immediately revealed to them by God himself, without which assurance no faith could be expected from them. When God appeared unto Moses in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush, and there immediately revealed to him first himself, saying, "I am the God of thy fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob," and then his will to bring the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt, Moses clearly believed God both in the revelation of himself and of his will, and was fully satisfied that the Israelites should be delivered, because he was assured it was God who pro mised their deliverance: yet notwithstanding still he doubted whether the Israelites would believe the same truth, when it should be delivered to them, not immediately by God, but by Moses; " And Moses answered and said, But behold they will not believe me, nor hearken unto my voice; for they will say, The Lord hath not appeared unto thee," Exod. iv. 1; which words of his first suppose, that if they had heard the voice of God, as he had, they would have assented to the truth upon a testimony divine; and then as rationally affirm, that it was improbable they should believe, except they were assured it was God who promised, or think that God had promised by Moses, only because Moses said so; which ra

tional objection was clearly taken away, when God endued Moses with power of evident and undoubted miracles for then the rod which he carried in his hand was as infallible a sign to the Israelites that God had appeared unto him, as the flaming bush was to himself; and therefore they which saw in his hand God's omnipotency, could not suspect in his tongue God's veracity; insomuch as when Aaron became to Moses "instead of a mouth," and Moses to Aaron "instead of God, Aaron spake all the words which the Lord had spoken unto Moses, and did the signs in the sight of the people, and the people believed, Exod. iv. 30, 31. For being persuaded by a lively and active presence of omnipotency that God had appeared unto Moses, and what was delivered to them by him came to him from God, and being sufficiently assured out of the very sense and notion of a Deity, that whatsoever God should speak, must of necessity be true, they presently assented, "and believed the Lord, and his servant Moses;" Moses, as the immediate propounder; God, as the original revealer. They believed Moses that God had revealed it, and they believed the promise, because God had revealed it. So that the faith both of Moses and the Israelites was grounded upon the same testimony or revelation of God, and differed only in the proposition or application of the testimony; Moses receiving it immediately from God himself, the Israelites mediately by the ministry of Moses.

In the like manner the succeeding prophets were the instruments of divine revelation, which they first believed as revealed to them, and then the people as revealed by them for what they delivered was not the testimony of man, but the testimony of God delivered by man. It was he who "spake by the mouth of his holy prophets which have been since the world began," Luke i. 10; the mouth, the instrument, the articulation was theirs; but the words were God's. "The Spirit of the Lord spake by me," saith David, "and his word was in my tongue," 2 Sam. xxiii. 2. It was the word of the Lord, which he "spake by the hand of Moses, and by the hand of his servant Ahijah the prophet;" the hand the general instrument of man, the mouth the particular instrument of speech, both attributed to the proDiv. No. XIII.

C

phets as merely instrumental in their prophecies. The words which Balaam's ass spake were as much the ass's words, as those which Balaam spake were his; for "the Lord opened the mouth of the ass, and the Lord put a word in Balaam's mouth;" and not only so, but a bridle with that word, "Only the word that I shall speak unto thee, that thou shalt speak," Numb. xxii. 35. The prophets, as they did not frame the notions or conceptions themselves of those truths which they delivered from God, so did they not loosen their own tongues of their own instinct or upon their own motion, but as moved, impelled, and acted by God. So we may in correspondence to the antecedent and subsequent words interpret those words of St. Peter, that "no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation;" that is, that no prophecy which is written did so proceed from the prophet which spake or wrote it, that he of himself or by his own instinct did open his mouth to prophesy; but that all prophetical revelations came from God alone, and that whosoever first delivered them was antecedently inspired by him, as it followeth, "for the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man, but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost." That therefore which they delivered was the word, the revelation of God; which they assented unto as to a certain and infallible truth, credible upon the immediate testimony of God, and to which the rest of the believers assented upon the same testimony of God mediately delivered by the hands of the prophets.

Thus God, "who at sundry times, and in divers manners, spake in times past unto the fathers by the prophets," and by so speaking propounded the object of faith both to the prophets and the fathers, "hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son," and by so speaking hath enlarged the object of faith to us by him, by which means it comes to be the "faith of Jesus." Thus "the onlybegotten Son, who was in the bosom of the Father, the express image of his person," he "in whom it pleased the Father that all fulness should dwell," he "in whom dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily," revealed the will of God to the apostles, who being assured that he "knew all things," and convinced that he came "forth

from God," gave a full and clear assent unto those things which he delivered, and grounded their faith upon his words as upon the immediate testimony of God. "I have given unto them," saith Christ unto his Father," the words which thou gavest me, and they have received them, and have known surely that I came out from thee, and they have believed that thou didst send me," John xvii. 8. Besides this delivery of these words by Christ to the apostles, they received the promise of the Spirit of truth, which should "guide them into all truth," and "teach them all things, and bring all things into their remembrance whatsoever Christ had said unto them," John xiv. 26. So clearly, so fully, so constantly were they furnished with divine illuminations and revelations from God, upon which they grounded their own faith, that each of them might well make that profession of St. Paul, "I know whom I have believed," 2 Tim. i. 12. Thus the faith of the apostles, as of Moses and the prophets, was grounded upon the immediate revelations of God.

But those believers to whom the apostles preached, and whom they converted to the faith, believed the same truths which were revealed to the apostles, though they were not so revealed to them as they were unto the apostles, that is, immediately from God. But, as the Israelites believed those truths which Moses spake, to come from God, being convinced by the constant supply of miracles wrought by the rod which he carried in his hand; so the blessed apostles, being so plentifully endued from above with the power of miracles, gave sufficient testimony that it was God which spake by their mouths, who so evidently wrought by their hands. They which heard St. Peter call a lame man unto his legs, speak a dead man alive, and strike a living man to death with his tongue, as he did Ananias and Sapphira, might easily be persuaded that it was God who spake by his mouth, and conclude that where they found him in his omnipotency, they might well expect him in his veracity. These were the persons for whom our Saviour next to the apostles prayed, because by a way next to that of the apostles they believed. "Neither pray I for these alone,” saith Christ," but for them also which shall believe on

me through their word," John xvii. 20. Thus the apostles believed on Christ through his own word, and the primitive Christians believed on the same Christ through the apostles' word; and this distinction our Saviour himself hath clearly made; not that the word of the apostles was really distinct from the word of Christ, but only it was called theirs, because delivered by their ministry, otherwise it was the same word which they had heard from him, and upon which they themselves believed. "That which was from the beginning," saith St John, "which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled of the word of life, that which we have seen and heard, declare we unto you," John i. 1, 3. And this was the true foundation of faith in all them which believed, that they took not the words which they heard from the apostles to be the words of the men who spake them, no more than they did the power of healing the sick, or raising the dead, and the rest of the miracles, to be the power of them that wrought them; but as they attributed those miraculous works to God working_by them, so did they also that saving word to the same God speaking by them. When St. Paul preached at Antioch, "almost the whole city came together to hear the word of God," Acts xiii. 44; so they esteemed it, though they knew him to be a man whom they came to hear speak it. This the apostle commendeth in the Thessalonians, that when they received the word of God, which they heard of him, they received it not as the word of man, but, as it is in truth, the word of God," 1 Thess. ii. 13; and receiving it so, they embraced it as coming from him who could neither deceive nor be deceived, and consequently as infallibly true; and by so embracing it, they assented unto it; by so assenting to it, they believed it, ultimately upon the testimony of God, immediately upon the testimony of St. Paul, as he speaks himself; "because our testimony among you was believed," 2 Thess. i. 10. Thus the faith of those which were converted by the apostles was an assent unto the word as credible upon the testimony of God, delivered to them by a testimony apostolical;—which being thus clearly stated, we