Exercitations on the Epistle to the Hebrews

By this means principally have they for many generations both shut out the § 15 Truth, and secured themselves from Conviction. For what ever is taught and revealed in the Scripture concerning the Person, Office, and Work of the Messiah, seeing they have that which they esteem a Revelation of equal Authority herewithall, teaching them a Doctrine quite of another nature, and more suited unto their carnal Principles and Expectations, they will rather rest in any evasions, than give way to the Testimony thereof. And whilst they have a firm persuasion, as they have, received by the Tradition of many Generations, that the written Word is imperfect, but an half Revelation of the mind of God, in its self unintelligible, and not to be received or understood but according to the sense of their Oral Law now recorded in their Talmuds, what can the most plain and cogent Testimonies of it avail unto their Conviction? And this hath been the fatal way and means of the grand Apostasy of both Churches, Judaical and Christian. How far that of the Jews was overtaken with it, in the days of our Lords Conversation on the Earth, the Gospel doth abundantly declare; and how they have brought it unto its height, we have given now some brief account. That of the Roman Church hath been the very same, and hath at length arrived unto almost the same issue, by the same degrees. This some of them perceiving, do not only defend the Pharisaical Opinion among the Jews, about the Oral Law and Succession of their Traditions, as consonant to the pretensions of their own Church, but also openly avow that a very great number of their several respective Traditions are either the same, or that they nearly resemble one another; as doth expresly Josephus de Voysin in his Proaemium to the Pugio fidei of Raimundus Martini. And because it is evident, that the same have been the way and means, whereby both the Judaical and Roman Church have apostatized and departed from the Truth, and that they are the same also whereby they maintain and defend themselves in their Apostasy and refusal to return unto the Truth, I shall [Greek or Hebrew], manifest their Consent and Agreement in this Principle, about their Traditions and Authority of them, which have been the Ruin of them both.

By this means principally have they for many generations both shut out the § 15 Truth, and secured themselves from Conviction. For what ever is taught and revealed in the Scripture concerning the Person, Office, and Work of the Messiah, seeing they have that which they esteem a Revelation of equall Authority herewithall, teaching them a Doctrine quite of another nature, and more suited unto their carnal Principles and Expectations, they will rather rest in any evasions, than give way to the Testimony thereof. And whilest they have a firm perswasion, as they have, received by the Tradition of many Generations, that the written Word is imperfect, but an half Revelation of the mind of God, in its self unintelligible, and not to be received or understood but according to the sense of their Orall Law now recorded in their Talmuds, what can the most plain and cogent Testimonies of it avail unto their Conviction? And this hath been the fatall way and means of the grand Apostacy of both Churches, Judaical and Christian. How far that of the Jews was overtaken with it, in the dayes of our Lords Conversation on the Earth, the Gospel doth abundantly declare; and how they have brought it unto its height, we have given now some brief account. That of the Roman Church hath been the very same, and hath at length arrived unto almost the same issue, by the same degrees. This some of them perceiving, do not only defend the Pharisaical Opinion among the Jews, about the Orall Law and Succession of their Traditions, as consonant to the pretensions of their own Church, but also openly avow that a very great number of their several respective Traditions are either the same, or that they nearly resemble one another; as doth expresly Josephus de Voysin in his Proaemium to the Pugio fidei of Raimundus Martini. And because it is evident, that the same have been the way and means, whereby both the Judaical and Roman Church have apostatized and departed from the Truth, and that they are the same also whereby they maintain and defend themselves in their Apostacy and refusal to return unto the Truth, I shall , manifest their Consent and Agreement in this Principle, about their Traditions and Authority of them, which have been the Ruine of them both.