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

10. Distinguish therefore between the Method of the Christian Religion, and the Method of the particular Books of Scriptures. The Books were written on several occasions, and in ⟨p. 91⟩several Methods; and though that method of them all, be perfect, in order to their proper end; yet is it not necessary that there be in the Method no humane imperfection, or that one or all of them, be written in that method which is usually most logical, and best. But the frame of Religion contained in those Books, is composed in the most perfect method in the world. And those systems of Theology which endeavour to open this method to you, do not feign it, or make it of themselves; but only attempt the explication of what they find in the holy Scriptures, Synthetically or Analytically: (Though indeed all attempts have yet fallen short of any full explication of this divine and perfect harmony.)

10. Distinguish therefore between the Method of the Christian Religion, and the Method of the particular Books of Scriptures. The Books were written on several occasions, and in ⟨p. 91⟩several Methods; and though that method of them all, be perfect, in order to their proper end; yet is it not necessary that there be in the Method no humane imperfection, or that one or all of them, be written in that method which is usually most logical, and best. But the frame of Religion contained in those Books, is composed in the most perfect method in the world. And those systemes of Theology which endeavour to open this method to you, do not feign it, or make it of themselves; but only attempt the explication of what they find in the holy Scriptures, Synthetically or Analytically: (Though indeed all attempts have yet fallen short of any full explication of this divine and perfect harmony.)

11. Therefore the true Order of settling your faith, is not first to require a proof that all the Scriptures is the Word of God; but first to prove the marrow of them, which is properly called the Christian Religion, and then to proceed to strengthen your particular belief of the rest. The contrary opinion, which hath obtained with many in this Age, hath greatly hindered the faith of the unskilful: And it came from a preposterous care of the honour of the Scriptures, through an excessive opposition to the Papists who undervalue them. For hence it comes to pass, that every seeming contradiction, or inconsistency in any Book of Scripture, in Chronology or any other respect, is thought to be a sufficient cause, to make the whole cause of Christianity as difficult as that particular text is: And so all those Readers, who meet with great or inseparable difficulties, in their daily reading of the Scriptures, are thereby exposed to equal temptations, to damning infidelity it self: So that if the Tempter draw any man to doubt of the standing still of the Sun in the time of Joshua; of the life of Jonah in the belly of the Whale; or any other such passage in any one Book of the Scriptures, he must equally doubt of all his Religion.