A26951:416
The life of faith in three parts, the first is a sermon on Heb.…
The life of faith in three parts, the first is a sermon on Heb. 11, 1, formerly preached before His Majesty, and published by his command, with another added for the fuller application : the second is instructions for confirming believers in the Christian faith : the third is directions how to live by faith, or how to exercise it upon all occasions / by Richard Baxter.
London: printed by R.W. for Nevil Simmons, 1670
Part 2 › Chapter 7: The means of making known all this infallibly to us.
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
2. They had in their testimony the evidence of a natural certainty: It being naturally impossible, that so many persons should agree together to deceive the world, in such matters of fact, at so dear a rate, in the very place and age when the things were pretended to be done and said, when any one might have presently evinced the falsehood, if they had been liars, about the twice feeding of many thousands miraculously, and the raising of the dead, and many other public miracles, and the darkness at his death, and the rending of the Rocks and Veil of the Temple, and the Earth-quake, and the coming down of the Holy Ghost upon themselves; with many the like they would have been detected and confuted to their confusion: And we should have read what Apologies they made against such detections and confutations! And some of them (at least at their death) would have been forced by conscience, to confess the plot.
2. They had in their testimony the evidence of a natural certainty: It being naturally impossible, that so many persons should agree together to deceive the world, in such matters of fact, at so dear a rate, in the very place and age when the things were pretended to be done and said, when any one might have presently evinced the falshood, if they had been lyars, about the twice feeding of many thousands miraculously, and the raising of the dead, and many other publick miracles, and the darkness at his death, and the rending of the Rocks and Vail of the Temple, and the Earth-quake, and the coming down of the Holy Ghost upon themselves; with many the like they would have been detected and confuted to their confusion: And we should have read what Apologies they made against such detections and confutations! And some of them (at least at their death) would have been forced by conscience, to confess the plot.
3. But to leave no room for doubting, God gave those first Churches, the addition of his own supernatural attestation, by the same threefold impress of his Image before described: 1. In the holy Wisdom and Light which was in their doctrine. 2. In the holy Love, and Piety, and Purity, which was conspicuous in their doctrine, and in their lives. 3. And in the evidences