SEAM. XVr.] A RATIONAL DEFENCE OF THE GOSPEL, 2$1 communication with persons who have been favoured with divine revelation. It is only the scripture that has established and ascertained the doctrines of natural reli- gion : And it is to the scripture that the deists of our age are obliged for their greater acquaintance with natural religion than ever their fore-fathers, the heathen philo- sophers, arrived at, though they are too proud to ac- knowledge it. If they agree better, and are more uni- form in their principles now than the old epicureans, the stoics, and the platonists were, it is all owing to a more intimate acquaintance with the writings ofMoses and the prophets, the evangelists, and the apostles, so that it is with a very ill grace that our present infidels can object to christians their difference of opinions, and pretend that this is a ground ofshame to the gospel of Christ, and a reason why they do not believe or profess it. But I come now to give some account of the true rea- sons of such divisions of sect and party among christians. There are two great causes of these divisions, and the charge is not to be laid. upon the gospel of Christ, nor upon the books that contain it. 1. The first cause is, that the papist does not pre- tend to derive his religion merely from the bible ; but he brings in the Jewish apocryphal writers of ancient ages, and lays them also for a foundation ofhis faith; and he makes the traditions of the christian church, which he pretends to have been delivered down from age to age, of almost the same authority as the scripture itself: anti,, some of their authors have raised these traditions to equal dignitywith the scripture, as being built upon the same foundation, viz. the authority of the church. As they have many things in their religion which they cannot find in the word of God; so they think it is sufficient if they can support them by these pretended traditions of the church. Whereas the protestant takes nothing for the ground of his faith but the books of the Old and New Testament; and what he cannot find written there,. nor derived thence by most obvious and evident con- sequences, he does not profess it as any necessary part ofhis christianity. The religion of the protestant there- fore is abundantly more conformable to the gospel of Christ, both in the doctrines and the worship of it, be- cause it derives the whole from the word of God ; But it is no wonder at all that there should be such
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