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But to leave these eager disputants to their animosities, we shall again repeat, that the Bible loses much by not being considered as a system. For though many other books are comparable to cloth, in which by a small pattern we may safely judge of the whole piece, yet the Bible is like a fair suit of arras, of which though a shred may assure you of the fineness of the colours and richness of the stuff, yet the hangings never appear to their true advantage, but when they are displayed to their full dimensions, and seen together.
These things, Theophilus, among many others, may be represented on the behalf of the Scripture, against those who will needs censure it as a collection, not to say a heap, of immethodical and incoherent passages. But lest you should suspect me of partiality, I shall ingenuously confess to you, that there are some things in the economy of Scripture, that do somewhat distress my reason to find a satisfactory account of; and that there are very few things wherein my curiosity is more concerned, and would more welcome a resolution in. But when I remember how many things I once thought incoherent, in which I now think I discern a close, though mystic, connexion; when I reflect on the Author and the ends of the Scrip-ture, and when I allow myself to imagine how exquisite a symmetry, though as yet undiscerned by me, Omniscience doth, and after ages probably will discover in the Scriptures’ method, in spite of those seeming discomposures that now puzzle me; when I think upon all this, I say, I think it just to check my forward thoughts, that would either presume to know all the recluse ends of Omniscience, or peremptorily judge of the fitness of means to ends unknown; and am reduced to think that economy the wisest, that is chosen by a wisdom so boundless that it can at once survey all expedients, and so unbiassed that it hath no interest to choose any but for its being fittest. I shall annex, that I think those must derogate hugely from the Scripture, who only consider the sense of the particular sections, or even books of it: for, I conceive that, as in a lovely face, though the eye, the nose, the lips, and the other parts singly looked on may beget delight and deserve praise, yet the whole face must necessarily lose much by not being seen all together; so, though the severed leaves and portions of Scripture do irrelatively and in themselves sufficiently betray and evidence their own heavenly extraction, yet he that shall attentively survey that whole body of canonical writings we now call the Bible, and shall judiciously in their system compare and confer them to each other, may discern upon the whole matter so admirable a contexture and disposition, as may manifest that book to be ἐ the work of the same wisdom that so accurately composed the book of nature, and so divinely contrived this vast fabric of the world. The books of Scripture illustrate and expound each other; Ge-nesis and the Apocalypse are in some things reciprocal commentaries; as in trigonometry the distantest side and angle use best to help us to the knowledge one of the other; and as in the mariners compass, the needles extremity, though it seem to point purposely but at the north, doth yet at the same time discover both east and west, as distant as they are from it, and from each other: so do some texts of Scripture guide us to the intelligence of others, from which they are widely distant in the Bible, and seem so in the sense. It is as high as pious a satisfaction to observe how the sacred penmen supply each other’s omissions, (as is very observable in the four Evangelist’s mention of the genealogy of Christ,) according to God’s degrees and seasons in dispensing the knowledge of his truths and mysteries in the several ages of the church; (to which he at first vouchsafed ‘but a light shining in a dark place until the day dawn,’3 and to which these mutual irradiations and secret references persuade, that all these reputed authors had their pens guided by an omniscient hand, and were but the several secretaries of the same enditer,) and to find in writers severed by so many ages and regions, a harmony whose dissonances serve but to manifest the sincerity and unconspiringness of the writers. And truly for my part I am professedly enough an impartialist, not to stick to confess to you, Theophilus, that I read the Bible and the learnedest expositors on it, with somewhat particular aims and dispositions. For besides that I come not to them with a crowd of articles which I am there resolved to find or make arguments to defend, with the overthrow of all antagonists, esteeming it less safe to carry my opinions to the Scriptures than to take them up there: besides this, I say, though I neglect not those clear passages or arguments that may establish the doctrine of that church I most adhere to, yet I am much less busied and concerned to collect those subtle glosses or inferences that can but enable me to serve one subdivision of Christians against another, than heedfully to make such observations, as may solidly justify to my own thoughts, and improve in them, a reverence for the Scripture itself, and Christianity in general: such observations as may disclose to me in the Bible, and the grand articles clearly delivered in it, a majesty and an excellency becoming God himself, and transcending any other author; and such observations, (to dispatch,) as may unveil to me in the Scripture, and what it treats of, that πολυποίκιλος σοφία τοῦ Θεοῦ, ‘manifold wisdom of God,’4 which even the angels learn by the church. These are, I confess, the things, as to speculative divinity, that I gladliest meet with, and take the heedfullest notice of, in the writings of divines, of whatsoever religion, that owns the Scripture, —for in this I am almost equally gratified by the abler expositors of all dissenting sects;—for I can scarce think any pains mispent that brings me in solid evidences of that great truth, that the Scripture is the Word of God, which is, indeed, the grand fundamental; all other articles generally thought so, being, if truths, better deducible from this one, than this from any of them. And I use the Scripture, not as an arsenal, to be resorted to only for arms and weapons to defend this party, or defeat its enemies, but as a matchless temple, where I delight to be, to contemplate the beauty, the symmetry, and the magnificence of the structure, and to increase my awe and excite my devotion to the Deity there preached and adored.
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