Which is the true church? the whole Christian world, as headed only by Christ…

How plain and sure a way God hath prescribed us, I have told you in a small Tractate called The Certainty of Christianity without Popery. In short, it is possible if a man never hear but one Sermon (which mentioneth not the authority of the Church) or find a Bible on the high-way and read it, that he may see that evidence in it that may persuade him savingly to believe (through grace) that it truly affirmeth it self to be the word of God. But the ordinary method for most rational certainty is, To have first Historical ascertaining evidence of the matter of fact, viz. that This Book was indeed written, and these miracles and other things done as it affirmeth. Or first perhaps, That this Baptismal Covenant, Lords Prayer, Creed, and Decalogue, have been delivered down from the first witnesses of Christ, and Miracles wrought to confirm the Gospel, which is also written at large in that Book. This we have far greater Historical Certainty of, than the pretended authority of a judging-Church of Rome; even the infallible testimony of all the Churches in the world; and as to the essentials (Baptism, the Creed, &c.) of Heretics, Infidels, and Heathens, which I have opened at large in a Book called, The Reasons of Christian Religion, and another called The Unreasonableness of Infidelity, and in other writings. And the matter of fact with the Book being thus certainly brought down to us (as the Statutes of the Land are) we then know the Gospel and that Book to be of God, by all those evidences which in the foresaid Treatises I have opened at large (and more briefly in a Treatise called The Life of Faith) the sum of which is the Holy Spirit as Christs Agent, Advocate, and Witness, in his Works of Divine Power, Wisdom, and Goodness, or Love, printed first on Christ himself, his Life and Doctrine, and then on the Apostles their Works and Doctrine, and then on all sanctified believers in all ages, and especially on our selves (besides his antecedent prophesies).

How plain and sure a way God hath prescribed us, I have told you in a small Tractate called The Certainty of Christianity without Popery. In short, it is possible if a man never hear but one Sermon (which mentioneth not the authority of the Church) or find a Bible on the high-way and read it, that he may see that evidence in it that may perswade him savingly to believe (through grace) that it truly affirmeth it self to be the word of God. But the ordinary method for most rational certainty is, To have first Historical ascertaining evidence of the matter of fact, viz. that This Book was indeed written, and these miracles and other things done as it affirmeth. Or first perhaps, That this Baptismal Covenant, Lords Prayer, Creed, and Decalogue, have been delivered down from the first witnesses of Christ, and Miracles wrought to confirm the Gospel, which is also written at large in that Book. This we have far greater Historical Certainty of, than the pretended authority of a judging-Church of Rome; even the infallible testimony of all the Churches in the world; and as to the essentials (Baptism, the Creed, &c.) of Hereticks, Infidels, and Heathens, which I have opened at large in a Book called, The Reasons of Christian Religion, and another called The Unreasonableness of Infidelity, and in other writings. And the matter of fact with the Book being thus certainly brought down to us (as the Statutes of the Land are) we then know the Gospel and that Book to be of God, by all those evidences which in the foresaid Treatises I have opened at large (and more briefly in a Treatise called The Life of Faith) the sum of which is the Holy Spirit as Christs Agent, Advocate, and Witness, in his Works of Divine Power, Wisdom, and Goodness, or Love, printed first on Christ himself, his Life and Doctrine, and then on the Apostles their Works and Doctrine, and then on all sanctified believers in all ages, and especially on our selves (besides his antecedent prophesies).