5. It is a dangerous snare and sin to believe any one's prophecies or revelations merely because they are very holy persons, and do most confidently aver or swear it. For they may be deceived themselves. As also to take hysterical or melancholy delirations or conceptions for the revelations of the Spirit of God, and so to father falsehood upon God.
[440] Acts xvii. 11; 1 Cor. xv. 3, 4; John x. 35; xix. 24, 28, 36, 37.
[441] John iii. 2; xiii. 19; xiv. 20; Luke xxi. 7, 9, 28, 31, 36; Matt. v. 18; xxiv. 34; xxi. 4.
Quest. CLXV. May one be saved who believeth that the Scripture hath any mistake or error, and believeth it not all?
Answ. The chief part of the answer to this must be fetched from what is said before about fundamentals. 1. No man can be saved who believeth not that God is no liar, and that all his word is true; because indeed he believeth not that there is a God.[442]
2. No man can be saved who believeth not the points that are essential to true godliness; nor any man that heareth the word, who believeth not all essential to christianity, or the christian covenant and religion.
3. A man may be saved who believeth not some books of Scripture (as Jude, 2 Peter, 2 John, 3 John, Revelation) to be canonical, or the word of God; so he heartily believe the rest, or the essentials.
4. He that thinketh that the prophets, sacred historians, evangelists, and apostles, were guided to an infallible delivery and recording of all the great, substantial, necessary points of the gospel, but not to an infallibility in every by-expression, phrase, citation, or circumstance, doth disadvantage his own faith as to all the rest; but yet may be saved, if he believe the substance with a sound and practical belief.[443]
[442] Rev. vi. 10; xix. 9, 11; xxi. 5; xxii. 6; 1 John ii. 8; v. 20; 2 Cor. i. 18; 1 Cor. xv. 1-3, &c.
[443] Mark xvi. 16; Rom. x. 12, 13; John iii. 16, 18; 1 John iv. 2, 3.