2. Nor do I acquiesce in their answer who say that, Those that have the same spirit, know the style of the spirit in the prophets. For, 1. This would suppose none capable of believing them groundedly that had not the same spirit; 2. And the spirit of sanctification is not enough to our discerning prophetical inspirations, as reason and experience fully prove. The gift of discerning spirits, 1 Cor. xii. 10, was not common to all the sanctified.
3. It is much to be observed that God never sent any prophet to make a law or covenant on which the salvation of the people did depend, without the attestation of unquestionable miracles. Moses wrought numerous open miracles, and such as controlled and confuted the contradicters' seeming miracles in Egypt; and Christ and his apostles wrought more than Moses. So that the laws and covenants by which God would rule and judge the people were all confirmed beyond all such exception.
4. It must be noted that many other prophets also wrought miracles to confirm their doctrine, and prove that they were sent of God, as did Elias and Elisha.
5. It must be noted, that there were schools of prophets, or societies of them, in those times, 1 Sam. x. 10; xix. 20; 1 Kings xx. 35, 41; xxii. 13; 2 Kings ii. 3, 5, 7, 15; iv. 1, 38; v. 22; vi. 1; ix. 1; 1 Cor. xiv. 32; who were educated in such a way as fitted them to the reception of prophetical inspirations, when it pleased God to give them. Not that mere education made any one a prophet, nor that the prophets had at all times the present, actual gift of prophecy; but God was pleased so far to own men's commanded diligence, as to join his blessing to a meet education, and at such times as he thought meet, to illuminate such by visions and revelations above all others: and therefore it is spoken of Amos as a thing extraordinary, that he was made a prophet of a herdsman.
6. Therefore a prophet among the Jews was known to be such, usually, before these recorded prophecies of theirs, which we have now in the holy Scriptures: 1. The spirits of the prophets which are subject to the prophets, were judged of by those prophets that had indeed the Spirit, and so the people had the testimony of the other prophets concerning them. 2. The Lord's own direction to know a true prophet by, Deut. xviii. 22, is the coming to pass of that which he foretelleth. Now it is like that before they were received into the number of prophets, they had given satisfaction to the societies of the prophets, by the events of things before foretold by them. 3. Or they might have wrought miracles before to have satisfied the members of the college of their calling, though these miracles are not all mentioned in the Scripture. 4. Or the other prophets might have some divine testimony concerning them, by visions, revelations, or inspirations of their own. So that the people were not left to the credulity of naked, unproved assertions, of any one that would say that he was sent of God.
7. There were some signs given by some of the prophets to confirm their word. As Isaiah's predictions of Hezekiah's danger, and remedy, and recovery, and of the going back of the shadow on Ahaz's dial ten degrees, &c.; and more such there might be, which we know not of.
8. All prophecies were not of equal obligation. The first prophecies of any prophet who brought no attestation by miracles, nor had yet spoken any prophecy that had been fulfilled, might be a merciful revelation from God, which might oblige the hearers to a reverent regard, and an inquiry into the authority of the prophet, and a waiting in suspense till they saw whether it would come to pass; and the fulfilling of it increaseth their obligation. Some prophecies that foretold but temporal things (captivities or deliverances) might at first (before the prophets produced a divine attestation) be rather a bare prediction than a law; and if men believed them not, it might not make them guilty of any damning sin at all, but only they refused that warning of a temporal judgment, which might have been of use to them had they received it.
9. But our obligation now to believe the same Scripture prophecies is greater; because we live in the age when most of them are fulfilled, and the rest are attested by Christ and his apostles, who proved their attestations by manifold miracles.
10. When the prophets reproved the known sins of the people, and called men to such duties as the law required, no man could speed ill by obeying such a prophet, because the matter of his prophecies was found in God's own law, which must of necessity be obeyed. And this is the chief part of the recorded prophecies.
11. And any man that spake against any part of God's law (of natural or supernatural revelation) was not to be believed, Deut. xiii.; xviii.; because God cannot speak contrary to himself.