Use First. Is the word the sword of the Spirit whereby the Christian vanquisheth his enemies? Then we may justly charge the Church of Rome of cruelty to the souls of people, in disarming them of that weapon with which they alone can defend themselves against their enemies, that seek their eternal ruin. It is true, they have some fig-leaves with which they would fain hide this their shameful practice, making the world believe they do it in mercy to the people, lest they should cut their fingers and wound themselves with this weapon. ‘We see,’ say they, ‘how many errors and heresies the world swarms with, by the mistakes of the vulgar.’ Yea, Peter himself they dare subpœna as a witness on their side, who saith that there ‘are some things hard to be understood’ in Paul’s epistles, ‘which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction,’ II Peter 3:16. And therefore the Scripture, which is so dangerous for ordinary people to meddle with, they judge it safest to lay out of their reach, as we do a sword or edge tool from children, though they cry never so much for it. See what a fair glove they draw over so foul a hand. But did Peter, because some unlearned and unstable souls wrested the Scripture, forbid them, or any other, how weak soever, to read the Scripture? This had carried some weight with it indeed. But we find just the contrary. For in the following verses, the counsel he gives Christians, that they may not be led away with the error of the wicked, is to ‘grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ,’ ver. 18. Lumen est vehiculum influentiæ —light is the chariot that conveys the influences of the sun. So the knowledge of Christ brings with it the influences of his grace into the heart. And how did Peter mean they should grow in the knowledge of Christ, if he would not have them read the Scriptures, which is the only book where it is to be learned? But the Papists would have their people learn their knowledge of Christ from their preaching of him, and not from the Scriptures, which they cannot so safely converse with. But,
1. How shall they be assured that what they preach is true, except they have the Scripture, to which, as unto the true touch stone, they may bring their doctrine to be tried? Thus did the Bereans by Paul’s sermon, Acts 17:11—a preacher as good, I trow, as any of theirs. And,
2. Suppose they preach the truth, can they warrant that their words shall not be perverted and mistaken by their hearers? And if they cannot, why then are they suffered to preach in a vulgar tongue, when the word of God, for the same reason, is forbid¬den to be read by the people in a known tongue? Truly, I am of that learned man’s mind, who saith, ‘that, if God himself may not speak in a vulgar tongue, I see far less reason that a friar should, and so the people should know nothing at all of Christ’ (Mede on Jer. 10:11). No, the true reason why they forbid the Scripture to be read, is not to keep them from errors and heresies, but to keep them from discovering those which they themselves impose upon them. Such trash as they trade in would never go off their hand roundly, did they not keep their shop thus dark; which made one of their shavelings so bitterly com¬plain of that unlucky Luther for spoiling their market, saying, ‘But for him they might have persuaded the people of Germany to have ate hay.’ Anything indeed will go down a blind man’s throat. I do not wonder that their people thus nustled in ignorance, do so readily embrace their fopperies, and believe all their forgeries so confidently. The blind man must either sit still, or go whither he pleaseth that leads him. We read of a whole army, when once smitten with blindness, carried out of their way by one single man that had his eyes in his head, II Kings 6. But this we may well wonder at, that men who know the Scriptures —as many of their leaders do—and acknowledge their divinity, dare to be so impudent and audacious [as] to intercept this letter sent from the great God to the sons of men, and not suffer them—except a few whom they think fit—to look on it, though it be superscribed and directed by God himself not to any party or sort of men, but to every man where it comes, Rom. 1:17, II Cor. 1:1. This is such a piece of impudence as cannot be paralleled. Wherefore are laws made, but to be promulgated?—Scripture written, but to be read and known of all men? I am sure the apostle by the same authority with which he wrote his epistles, commands them to be read in the church, Col. 4:16. And did the ministers of those churches pocket them up, and conceal them from the people’s notice, lest they should, by perverting them, be made heretics?
It is too true some ‘wrest’ the Scriptures 'to their own destruction.’ And so do some, for want in care of eating, choke themselves with their bread. Must all therefore starve for fear of being choked? Some hurt themselves and friends with their weapons; must therefore the whole army be disarmed, and only a few chief officers be allowed to wear a sword by their sides? Truly, if this be argument enough to seal up the Bible from being read, we must not only deny it to the meaner and ore unlearned sort, but also to the great rabbis and doctors of the chair, for the grossest heresies have bred in the finest wits. Prodigious errors have been as much beholden to Arrius as the ignorance of Ætius: so that the upshot of all will be this—the unlearned must not read the Scripture, because they may pervert them through ignorance; nor the learned, because they may wrest them by their subtlety. Thus we see, when proud men will be wiser than God, their foolish minds will darken, till they lose the reason and understanding of men.
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