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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
of
Moses
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
of
shame
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
of
his
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
dignity
with
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
of
his
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