Animadversions on a treatise entitled Fiat lux, or, A guide in differences of religion,…Animadversions on a treatise intituled Fiat lux, or, A guide in differences of religion,…

4. But yet they say, Scripture is not so clear, but that it needs interpretation; and Protestants have none to interpret it, so as to make it a means of ending differences, I confess, the interpretation of Scripture is a good and necessary work; and I know, that he who was dead, and is alive for ever, continues to give gifts unto men, according to his Promise, to enable them to interpret the Scripture, for the edification of his Body the Church. If there were none of these Interpreters among the Protestants, I wonder whence it is come to pass, that his Comments on, and interpretations of Scripture, who is most ⟨p. 99⟩hated by Romanists of all the Protestants that ever were in the World, are so borrowed, and used (that I say not stolen) by so many of them: And that indeed what is praise-worthy in any of their Church, in the way of Exposition of Scripture, is either borrowed from Protestants, or done in imitation of them. If I am called on for instances in this kind, I shall give them, I am persuaded, to some mens amazement, who are less conversant in these things. But we are besides the matter: It is of an infallible Interpreter, in whose Expositions and Determinations of Scripture-sense, all Christians are obliged to acquiesce, and such an one you have none. I confess we have not, if it be such an one as you intend; whose Expositions and Interpretations we must acquiesce in: not because they are true, but because they are his. We have infallible Expositions of the Scripture in all necessary Truths, as we are assured from the Scripture it self: But an infallible Expositor, into whose Authority our faith should be resolved, besides the Scripture it self, we have none: Nor do I think they have any at Rome, what-ever they ⟨p. 100⟩talk of to men that were never there; nor (I suppose) do they believe it themselves: for indeed if they do, I know not how they can be freed, from being thought to be strangely distempered, if not stark mad: For not to talk of the Tower of London, this I am sure of, That we have whole Cart loads of Comments and Expositions on the Scripture, written by Members of the Church, men of all Orders and Degrees; and he that has cast an eye upon them, knows, that a great part of their large Volumes, are spent in confuting the Expositions of one another, and those that went before them.

4. But yet they say, Scripture is not so clear, but that it needs interpretation; and Protestants have none to interpret it, so as to make it a means of ending differences, I confess, the interpretation of Scripture is a good and necessary work; and I know, that he who was dead, and is alive for ever, continues to give gifts unto men, according to his Promise, to enable them to interpret the Scripture, for the edification of his Body the Church. If there were none of these Interpreters among the Protestants, I wonder whence it is come to pass, that his Comments on, and interpretations of Scripture, who is most