The marks of a prophet in the old law, miracles, and doctrine comformable to the law.
And as miracles, without preaching that doctrine which God hath established; so preaching the true doctrine, without the doing of miracles, is an insufficient argument of immediate revelation. For if a man that teacheth not false doctrine, should pretend to be a prophet without showing any miracle, he is never the more to be regarded for his pretence, as is evident by Deut. xviii. v. 21, 22, If thou say in thy heart, How shall we know that the word (of the prophet) is not that which the Lord hath spoken? when the prophet shall have spoken in the name of the Lord, that which shall not come to pass, that is the word which the Lord hath not spoken, but the prophet has spoken it out of the pride of his own heart, fear him not. But a man may here again ask, when the prophet hath foretold a thing, how shall we know whether it will come to pass or not? For he may foretell it as a thing to arrive after a certain long time, longer than the time of man’s life; or indefinitely, that it will come to pass one time or other: in which case this mark of a prophet is unuseful; and therefore the miracles that oblige us to believe a prophet, ought to be confirmed by an immediate, or a not long deferred event. So that it is manifest, that the teaching of the religion which God hath established, and the showing of a present miracle, joined together, were the only marks whereby the Scripture would have a true prophet, that is to say, immediate revelation, to be acknowledged; neither of them being singly sufficient to oblige any other man to regard what he saith.
Miracles ceasing, prophets cease, and the Scripture supplies their place.
Seeing therefore miracles now cease, we have no sign left, whereby to acknowledge the pretended revelations or inspirations of any private man; nor obligation to give ear to any doctrine, farther than it is conformable to the Holy Scriptures, which since the time of our Saviour, supply the place, and sufficiently recompense the want of all other prophecy; and from which, by wise and learned interpretation, and careful ratiocination, all rules and precepts necessary to the knowledge of our duty both to God and man, without enthusiasm or supernatural inspiration, may easily be deduced. And this Scripture is it, out of which I am to take the principles of my discourse, concerning the rights of those that are the supreme governors on earth of Christian commonwealths; and of the duty of Christian subjects towards their sovereigns. And to that end, I shall speak in the next chapter, of the books, writers, scope and authority of the Bible.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
OF THE NUMBER, ANTIQUITY, SCOPE, AUTHORITY
AND INTERPRETERS OF THE BOOKS OF
HOLY SCRIPTURE.
Of the books of Holy Scripture.
By the Books of Holy Scripture, are understood those, which ought to be the canon, that is to say, the rules of Christian life.
And because all rules of life, which men are in conscience bound to observe, are laws; the question of the Scripture, is the question of what is law throughout all Christendom, both natural and civil. For though it be not determined in Scripture, what laws every Christian king shall constitute in his own dominions; yet it is determined what laws he shall not constitute. Seeing therefore I have already proved, that sovereigns in their own dominions are the sole legislators; those books only are canonical, that is, law, in every nation, which are established for such by the sovereign authority. It is true, that God is the sovereign of all sovereigns; and therefore, when he speaks to any subject, he ought to be obeyed, whatsoever any earthly potentate command to the contrary. But the question is not of obedience to God, but of when and what God hath said; which to subjects that have no supernatural revelation, cannot be known, but by that natural reason, which guideth them, for the obtaining of peace and justice, to obey the authority of their several commonwealths, that is to say, of their lawful sovereigns. According to this obligation, I can acknowledge no other books of the Old Testament, to be Holy Scripture, but those which have been commanded to be acknowledged for such, by the authority of the Church of England. What books these are, is sufficiently known, without a catalogue of them here; and they are the same that are acknowledged by St. Jerome, who holdeth the rest, namely, the Wisdom of Solomon, Ecclesiasticus, Judith, Tobias, the first and the second of Maccabees, (though he had seen the first in Hebrew,) and the third and fourth of Esdras, for Apocrypha. Of the canonical, Josephus, a learned Jew, that wrote in the time of the emperor Domitian, reckoneth twenty-two, making the number agree with the Hebrew alphabet. St. Jerome does the same, though they reckon them in different manner. For Josephus numbers five Books of Moses, thirteen of Prophets that writ the history of their own times, (which how it agrees with the prophets’ writings contained in the Bible we shall see hereafter,) and four of hymns and moral precepts. But St. Jerome reckons five books of Moses, eight of Prophets, and nine of other Holy Writ, which he calls of ἁγιόγραφα. The Septuagint, who were seventy learned men of the Jews, sent for by Ptolemy, king of Egypt, to translate the Jewish law out of the Hebrew into the Greek, have left us no other for Holy Scripture in the Greek tongue, but the same that are received in the Church of England.
Their antiquity.