Precious faith considered in its nature, working, and growth

Divine Helps and Salvations come down and call for Eben-Ezers to be set up for them; and Discoveries of heavenly things in their certainty and excellency are in a manner made, as if a Man could look into the Holy of Holies, and see God Face to Face. Some such Experiences I suppose the learned Rivet had in his last Sickness, in which he said of himself, In these ten days I have made a greater progress in Divinity, than in all my Life; but leaving Generals I shall come to Particulars.

One great Experiment of Faith is touching the Truths of God, a Believer in his holy Progress comes [Greek or Hebrew], unto all riches of the full assurance of understanding, as the Apostle speaks, Call. 2.2. At the first he hath a Stock of Divine Knowledge, but after Experience Riches, and all Riches of it; at the first he hath a true persuasion of the things of God, but after Experience a Plerophory or full persuasion thereof. Here I shall Instance in that one Fundamental Comprehensive Truth, which is pregnant with all other, viz. that the holy Scriptures are the very Word of God, and so to be embraced by all Christians: The Papists say, That the Authority of the Scriptures depends, at least quoad nos, on the Definition of the Church, and that upon that account chiefly it is to be beloved by us. By the Church they mean the ⟨p. 328⟩Church of Pastors, and those gathered in a Council to define the Canon of Scripture. Saint Paul speaks of a Church which is The Pillar and Ground of the Truth, 1 Tim. 3.15. But, as our learned Whitaker hath observed, That is not the Church of Pastors but of Believers; and in truth the Word of Life is more purely held forth in the Lives and Experiences of Believers, than in the Gifts of Pastors. This Thesis some of their Grandees have prosecuted even to Blasphemy, saying, That without the Judgment of the Church they would give no more credit to Matthew than to Livy, and value the Scriptures much as they do Aesop's Fables. That this Opinion is false is as clear as the Light: true Faith is a pure infusion, which hangs on the irradiating Spirit as a Beam on the Sun, and in Scripture sees, with the credenda, the reason of believing in the Divine Authority stamped thereon. The Ministry used about it may be Mans, but the Authority on which it leans must be Gods,