stinacy, and change without levity; and therefore I shall think it no trouble to resume the subject, and lay before you, in the best manner I can, the reasons that seem to make against the Study of the Scriptures in the way of Private Judgment; which I hope will not, upon cooler thoughts, appear so strange to you. You will consider they come from one who is not more a friend to you than he is to the Church; and, if examples be of any weight, I can assure you this side of the question is by no means destitute of proselytes; and that when you come to know the world more, you will find this study neglected to a degree you little imagined. But it is reasons, not examples, will determine you. To come, therefore, to them: let me in the

I. First place, observe to you, that the study of the Scriptures, such a thorough study of them, I mean, as you aim at, is extremely difficult, and not to be successfully pursued without a very great and constant application, and a previous knowledge of many other parts of useful learning. The New Testament cannot be understood without the Old; the truths revealed in one are grounded on the prophecies contained in the other; which makes the study of the whole Scriptures necessary to him that would understand thoroughly a part of them. Nor can the Apocryphal books, how much soever they are generally slighted, be safely neglected, there being a great chasm of five hundred years between the end of the Prophets and the beginning of the Gospel; which period is of the greatest use for the understanding of the New Testament, and yet is the least known. But now, if the Old Testament must be well studied, a good knowledge of the Oriental tongues is absolutely necessary. No man can be ignorant, who knows any thing of letters, that no versions of old books can be thoroughly depended on, the mistakes are so many and sometimes of great moment; especially the versions of books writ in a language little understood, and many parts of it in a style extremely figurative, and those figures such as these parts of the world are almost wholly strangers to. But, put the case these difficulties were less than they are, is it no easy matter to add to Greek and Latin the knowledge of so many other languages? Do not they two alone find work enough for most scholars? What pains then must a man take, if he will study so many others besides! And if the knowledge of

the Old Testament could be dispensed with, give me leave to tell you that the language even of the New Testament is not to be understood with so little pains as is commonly imagined. It is learnt, indeed, in schools, and from hence thought to be the easiest Greek that can be read; but they who have read it in another manner than school-boys, know it to be quite otherwise. Not to mention the difficulties peculiar to St. Paul, whose Epistles are a very great part of the New Testament; Plato and Demosthenes are in many respects not so hard as even the easier books. The style, indeed, in the historical books, is plain and simple; but, for all that, even those parts have their difficulty, and the whole is writ in a language peculiar to the Jews. The idiom is Hebrew or Syriac, though the words be Greek, which makes some knowledge of those languages still necessary.

Again, though it were not necessary to read the Old Testament in the original, yet the Greek version of it must be read, and that carefully; it being oftentimes the best, if not the only, help to explain the language of the New; besides that all citations in the New are generally made from it. But now, how laborious a thing must it be to study an ill version of a very hard book which we cannot read in the original! I call it an ill version; for though it be indeed a very good one, considering the time it was writ in, yet, as a version, it must be allowed by those who can judge of it, to be far from being exact or true. A man need only consult it on some hard places in the Pentateuch, as well as in the poetic or prophetic books, to be convinced of this. It was certainly far from perfect at first, and is made much worse by the corruptions it has suffered in handing down to us; so that I may venture to affirm that, should anybody now-a-days make a version so imperfect, instead of admiration and esteem, his work would be much despised by most of our modern critics.

I might to these add many other difficulties that attend a serious study of the New Testament. It requires a good knowledge of the Jewish state at the time of our Saviour's coming; a knowledge of their government, Sanhedrim, synagogues, customs, traditions, opinions, sects; the kinds of learning received among them; what they borrowed from the Greeks; when their mystical and allegorical manner of expounding the Scriptures began,

and on what grounds; what their particular expectations were in relation to the Messiah, and what they taught, and on what grounds, in relation to angels, dæmons, possessions, oracles, miracles, &c.

But it is in vain, you say, to tell you of difficulties. You are resolved not to be deterred; you have time before you, good eyes, a strong constitution, a mind prepared for fatigue, a reasonable degree of skill in the languages, and are furnished with a competent knowledge in all the parts of useful learning that are preparatory to this study; so that difficulties animate rather than dishearten you; and I am not unwilling so far to agree with you, that were there no objection against this study but the difficulty, this alone should not deter one who is so well prepared for it. But if you are able to go through so laborious a study, I presume you are not fond of difficulties for difficulties' sake. You cannot think it reasonable to take so much pains, unless it will turn to some good account. I shall therefore in the

II. Second place, take leave to ask, Cui bono? What good can come of so much pains? For it may seem that a free, serious, impartial and laborious study of the Scriptures will be of no great service, for the following

reasons:

1st, Because it is plain the orthodox faith is not founded on a nice and critical knowledge of the Scriptures. Many of the ancient Christians, it will be allowed, were not great critics, but argued very much in a mystical way. Origen in particular, who was the greatest scholar Christianity had bred to that time, perpetually turns the letter of Scripture into allegory; from whence we may reasonably conclude, that the knowledge of the bare literal sense was, in the judgment of many even in those times, thought to be of little use.

But, 2ndly, it is certain that the original language of the Old Testament was known to very few for the first six centuries, in which those general councils were held wherein all the articles of the orthodox faith were settled. They governed themselves and determined all their controverted points by the Greek version; and those who knew Hebrew best, whether they took to the mystical or literal way, had the misfortune to be least orthodox. So it was with Origen, who knew the Scriptures so well that he had them all by heart, And Eusebius and others,

who studied and understood the literal sense of the Scriptures best in the next ages, succeeded little better; so that this study seems to have been of little use to the establishment of the orthodox faith. Now, if an exact and critical knowledge of the Scriptures was not necessary to the settling of the faith, it cannot be necessary to the understanding of it, or to the understanding those who have writ best in the explication and defence of it. On the contrary, such a knowledge tends to lessen our esteem for the fathers of the Church, by discovering their mistakes, and may weaken our regard to the decisions of councils, by exposing the falseness of the ground they seem to be built on. A man well skilled in the literal sense of the Scriptures will often find, in the fathers and councils, texts of Scripture urged very insufficiently, and great stress laid upon passages which, when critically explained, prove nothing, or perhaps make against them; which suggests to me a third reason why it may seem that such a study can do no good. And that is,

3rdly, Because the orthodox faith does not depend upon the Scriptures, considered absolutely in themselves, but as explained by Catholic tradition. The faith was preserved in creeds, and handed down from one orthodox bishop to another, whose business it was to keep this sacred depositum pure and undefiled, and to deliver it to his successor entire as he received it. It was by this tradition the main articles of faith were preserved in the Church, and not from any particular study of the Scriptures. The ground, therefore, of these articles must carefully be distinguished from the Scriptures that have been brought in proof of them: these proofs may be weak and inconclusive, but the truth stands independent of them. It is the faith they have received; and if at any time they argue weakly for it from the Scriptures, it is an argument indeed against their learning, but none against their orthodoxy.

This, therefore, may seem another good argument to prove that an exact and careful study of the Scriptures is not a safe and profitable study. It is a much safer, as well as a more compendious way to make a man orthodox, to study the tradition of the Church.

But you will say, that to send you from Scripture to Tradition is to turn you out of Paradise, the Garden of God, into a vast confused, bewildered wood; and that

The

this is so far from mending the matter, that it is ten times more laborious than the study I would dissuade you from; and So, I confess, it is, if all the ecclesiastical writers were to be carefully read in order to know the Catholic tradition. But that is not my meaning. substance of Catholic tradition lies in much less compass: the Established Church, you will allow, is orthodox in all necessary points. If, therefore, you know the sense of the Established Church, you have in epitome the Church Catholic, and therefore you need only study her opinions to make you orthodox; and this the most illiterate man may find in the Liturgy and Articles. This, I trust you will allow, is as short a way as could be wished of knowing all that is necessary to be known. A very little time will serve a man to read, in his mother-tongue, things which all together would not fill a moderate volume; and he will be orthodox enough, and have a great deal of time to spare for other studies that will turn to more account. Besides that it is of great advantage to go in a way that is safe as well as short, and will lead you into the knowledge of all useful truths without the hazard of falling into any dangerous opinion.

4thly, But if you will insist that it is Scripture and not Tradition that the faith is founded on, there is one thing farther I must put you in mind of, which may seem to prove that a profound and laborious study of the Scriptures will not make you at all more orthodox. It is a fundamental principle amongst Protestants, that whatever is necessary to be believed, is plainly and clearly revealed in the Scriptures; and consequently, what is not plainly and clearly revealed in them, cannot be necessary. Now if what is plain and clear in Scripture is the only part that is necessary to be known, then a laborious search into the obscurer parts may seem unnecessary to the obtaining a true orthodox faith. You will say, perhaps, that notwithstanding this declaration of Protestants, it may and has been urged against them by their adversaries, that they do believe, and maintain as necessary, articles that cannot be proved by plain and clear passages of Scripture. This, I confess, has been urged, and may possibly be true of all parties of them except the Established Church; but, if it be, it proves only that they are not true to their principlenot that the principle is not in itself true and good. And he surely must be allowed to be the best Protestant, who