The life of faith in three parts, the first is a sermon on Heb.…

7. Mistake not the true Use and End of the holy Scriptures.

7. Mistake not the true Ʋse and End of the holy Scriptures.

1. Think not that the Gospel as written was the first Constitutive or Governing Law of Christ, for the Christian Churches. The Churches were constituted, and the Orders, and Offices, and Government of it settled, and exercised very many years together, before any part of the New Testament was written to them; much more before the writing of the whole. The Apostles had long before taught them what was commanded them by Christ; and had settled them in the order appointed by the Holy Ghost: And therefore you are not to look for the first determination of such doctrines or orders in the Scripture as made thereby; but only for the Records of what was done and established before: For the Apostles being to leave the world, did know the slipperiness of the memory of man, and the danger of changing and corrupting the Christian Doctrine and Orders, if there were not left a sure record of it: And therefore they did that for the sake of posterity.

2. You must not think that all is essential to the Christian Religion, which is contained in the holy Scriptures: Nor that they are only the adequate form or record of that which is strictly and primarily called our Religion, or Christianity. For there are divers particular Books of the New Testament, which contain much more than is essential to Christianity: And many appurtenances, and histories, and genealogies, and circumstances are there recorded, which are indeed subservient helps to our Religion; but are not strictly our Religion it self.