From the (not long since mentioned) frequent repetitions to be met with in the Scripture, and from the unusual method wherein the Author of it has thought fit that the divine truths and precepts should be extant there, divers have been pleased to take occasion to criminate the Bible, as if, its bulk considered, it were but a barren book, wherein instructions are but sparingly scattered in comparison of what is to be met with in divers other writings, where repetitions are avoided, and more of useful matter is delivered in fewer words. And hence it is (say these objectors) that many persons unquestionably religious, choose rather to study other books of devotion and morality, as containing more full and instructive precepts of good life.
I might answer this allegation by representing, that the several particulars whereon the accusation is grounded, having been already examined by me, I need not say any thing distinctly to this accumulative charge. But because I would not only defend my veneration for the Scripture, but persuade it, I shall on this occasion offer two or three things to consideration.
Although then the Scripture were less replenished with excellent doctrines, and were but, as well as the best of other books, like mines, in the richest of which the golden ore is mingled with store of less precious materials, (and needs a laborious separation from them,) yet sure it would, like those mines, deserve to be carefully digged in: and it will become the grateful Christian’s zeal to imitate him in the parable, who having found ‘a treasure hid in a field,’1 stuck at no price within his power, to purchase the whole field for the treasure’s sake.
But God be praised, this is not the case, for it is only our ignorance, our laziness, or our indevotion, that keeps us from discovering, that the Scripture is so far from being, as the objectors would have it, a wilderness or a barren soil, that it may be much more fitly compared to that blessed land of promise, which is so often said in Scripture to be ‘flowing with milk and honey,’ things useful and delightful; if not to paradise itself, of which it is said, that there ‘the Lord God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden.’2 And indeed, as the author of it was omniscient, so experience has taught that he has so much expressed himself to be so in the Scripture, that the more knowing its pious studiers have been, the greater store of excellent truths they have met with in it; the Scripture being indeed like heaven, where the better our eyes and telescopes are, the more lights we discover. And that this may not appear to be said gratis, let us consider, that a book may be instructive as well by teaching its readers speculative truths as practical ones, and that Christians ought as well to know what God would have us think of him and of his works, as what he would have them do. Now as it is past question that there are no speculative truths of so noble and elevated a nature as those that have God himself for their object, so there is no book from whence there is so much to be learned, as there is from the Bible, of the nature, and even the thoughts of God, and of those deep mysteries into which, as I formerly noted from St. Peter, the angels themselves are greedy of prying.3 Nay, there is no other book whatsoever that teaches us any thing at all, concerning divers of these sublime subjects, that may be safely relied on, save in what it is beholden to the Scripture for. So that we cannot, without an extreme injury, look upon that book as barren, which alone contains all those revealed truths, which are of so noble and precious a nature, that we justly prize the composures of heathen philosophers, and other authors, for being enriched with guesses at some few of them, though much embased by the alloy whereto the truths conjecturally delivered are made liable, from the imperfections of writers always fallible, and for the most part, in some degree or other, actually erroneous. But of this more perchance elsewhere. Wherefore I shall now add, that whereas those we reason with are pleased to prefer other books of morality and devotion before the Scripture, in reference to good life; they would probably be of another mind, if they duly considered, that to engage men to live well and holily there is much more requisite than barely to tell them that they ought to do so, and how they should do it. For since to lead a life truly virtuous requires, in many cases, that we deny and overcome our natural appetites and inclinations, and requires also constancy in a course that is confessedly wont to be attended with many hardships and dangers, it is not sufficient to engage a man to a good life to give him precepts of it; which do not so much (what is yet the main thing in this case) make men willing to conform to such precepts, as suppose them so. And he that can do no more, does far less than him who, besides the rules of good life, presents men the highest and the most prevalent motives to embrace piety and virtue, and the most powerful dissuasives from all that is wicked, by proposing to us such rewards and punishments, and satisfying us that we ought, according as we behave ourselves, to expect either the one or the other; as to convince us that we cannot be either wise or happy but by being good, nor avoid the greatest of miseries but by avoiding vice. Now as we shall see anon, that as to the precepts of good life, the Bible is not unfurnished with them, so as to that most operative part of the way of teaching good life, the proposing of the most prevalent motives to good, and the most powerful dissuasives from evil; not only no other book does, but no book not inspired can perform in that kind any thing near so much as the Scripture alone; since we have not the same reason to believe any mere man as we have to believe God, touching those rewards and punishments which he reserves after death for those that conform to, or disobey his laws; these being matters which (whatever philosophers and other learned men may have thought to the contrary) depend upon his free will, and consequently are not to be explicitly known, but by his revelation; which he has not, that appears, vouchsafed us in any other book than the Scripture. And therefore it is not to be wondered at, that St. Paul should ascribe it to our Saviour, Christ, ‘that he had brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.’4 And whereas hope is that spur without which men do scarce ever cheerfully undertake and resolutely go through things, much less difficult and dangerous than those which a virtuous course of life is wont to expose men to, St. Peter makes a Christian’s highest hope to depend upon a revealed truth, where he gives thanks to God for having, ‘according to his abundant mercy, begot us to a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.’5 And what influence such a knowledge of God and Christ, as, if we have it at all, we must owe to the Scripture, and such hopes and promises as none but God himself, or those he sends, can give a wary and intelligent person, may have upon good life, you may guess by that other passage of the same apostle, where not only he mentions God’s having, ‘according to his divine power, (or efficacy,) given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and virtue,’6 but also immediately after speaks of our being made ‘partakers of the divine nature,’ and ‘escaping the corruption that is in the world through lust,’ by those exceeding great and precious promises that are given of God unto us. So that although the Scripture did not expressly give us such moral documents as ethical writers do, and taught us good life but by acquainting us with what God has revealed in those writings concerning himself, and by convincingly proposing to us those highest inducements to embrace a good, and shun an evil life, which (though reason may perchance make some weak and confused guesses at them) revelation only can make examining men confidently depend upon; if, I say, the Scripture did no more than thus engage us to resolve upon a good life, leaving us to derive the particular precepts of virtue from the inward dictates of the law of nature, and the exercise of our own reason, (which two together may well teach us almost as much as ethical books are wont to teach, of really and considerably useful,) the Scripture ought yet to be esteemed a most instructive book in reference to good life! As in effect we see, that the writings of no philosopher or orator ever made any thing near so many persons virtuous as the New Testament, though but a pocket-book, has been able to do; especially in those primitive ages of the church, when those that received that book were less diverted from it than since they have been by the reading of others. The moon may, in clear weather, lend a gardener light enough to dig and manure his orchard, and perhaps to prune his trees, but none will say that the moon does as much contribute to his labouring to produce fruit as the sun; since this nobler planet not only affords him light to work by, and a comfortable warmth whilst he is working, but animates him by the hopes he cherishes upon the sun’s account, that in due season his diligence and toils shall be rewarded. The application is too obvious to need to be insisted on.