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mony as cannot be pretended for any other writings 

 in tlie world, as the miracles of Christ and his 

 Apostles ; the concurrent completion of all the pro- 

 phecies, from the beginning of the world, in him 

 alone ; the scriptures being the only book in the 

 world, that gives us any account of the whole series 

 of God's dispensations toward man, from the crea- 

 tion, for four thousand years ; the great exaltation 

 of natural religion, visible in every part of it ; and, 

 lastly, the providential care, so manifest in every 

 age, for transmitting' down several books, written at 

 such great distances of time one from another, and 

 all of them from us ; there being at this day so void 

 of any material error, that in the infinite various 

 readings, which have been carefully collected, there 

 cannot be found one contrariety, in any fundamental 

 point, of faith or practice : if these things, I say, are 

 thoroughly considered, they give the scriptures such 

 a certainty, as no writing, merely human, can have, 

 and are the greatest evidence for the truth of them, 

 which they are capable of receiving, without a con- 

 tinued daily repetition of miracles. We may ob- 

 serve, 



Secondly, That, as God has made men the imme- 

 diate instruments of all his revelations, so he hath 

 condescended to make use of human language, as 

 well as of our natural ideas and conceptions, for the 

 clear and easy representation of things supernatural, 

 and otherwise incomprehensible. Indeed, the in- 

 trinsic nature of heavenly things could not otherwise 



