have not? Who was it that said to the Spirit of God, 'O, Spirit, blow no more,-inspire no more men,make no more Prophets from Ezra's days, and downwards till Christ; and from John's days downwards for ever? But cease,-be silent,-and subject thyself, as well as all evil spirits, to be tried by the standard that is made up of some of the writings of some of those men, thou hast moved to write already, and let such and such of them as are bound up in the Bibles, now used in England, be the only means of measuring all truth for ever.' Who was it, God or man ;—the Spirit in the Scripture itself, or the Scribes in their synods, councils, and consistories, that so authorized or canonized these, and expunged those?

Was it not mere men in their imaginations? Doth the Scriptures, or the Spirit and the Apostles therein, give any such command, or make mention even of any such matter? Is it not mere man in his imaginations, that hath taken upon him, according to the good or ill opinion he entertains of these or those respectively, to say he will give authority to the Scriptures? Is it not man in his proud mind, that comes in with his sic volo, sic jubeo, so I'll have it-thus it shall be? Saying to the books of the Scripture, as God says to the waves of the ocean, "hitherto shall ye come, but no farther." So many of the Prophets' and Apostles' writings shall be in the authority, nature, and office of the Supreme Determiner of all truth for ever; and that all others, even such as are written by the same men, in the motion of the same Spirit, shall be but as common men's writings, and be looked on afar off as apocryphal,

i.e. hidden or unknown writings, that no such notice shall be taken of, as of the other.

And as for the books, which ye sprinkle with that name of apocryphal, and give leave to have a standing with it, but not so as to make any part of your standard, what think ye of them upon second thoughts? Are they fit for nothing but to be cashiered and cast out of your canon by wholesale, by mere tradition from one to another, without trying them? Is there nothing among them that may be judiciously judged of to be of equally divine original and authority as some of those particular letters to private men, as that of Paul to Philemon about private or domestic matters, which ye own in such a transcendant manner as ye do?Surely, if some of them are fictitious, or but merely human, so that ye will say no better of them but vor hominem sonat, yet are there none to be acknowledged as of divine authority, and of as self-evidencing efficacy as some of those ye own? None that ye can see cause to sign meliore lapillo, with some better name than ye vouchsafe them, and standing in the church than ye allow them, as if they were a mongrel seed between that of Canaan and Ashdod, that ye know not well what to make of, nor how to entreat altogether so ill, as not to afford them a middle place in some of your Bibles, between the Old Testament writings, and those ye call the new, and yet not think so highly of them either, as to include them in your canon? Surely, there are some of them, which, when ye look over them again, ye may find ground to receive as having as fair a stamp of the beaming majesty, truth, holiness, and authority of God, and his Spirit, as some at least (not

to say the most), of those ye ascribe to God as their chief or only author; and that do savour as much of J. Owen's so much insisted on Theo-pneusty, as some other doctrinal, historical, and prophetical parts of your acknowledged divinely-derived Scripture, of which, what infidels soever you are as concerning them, yet I, together with many others, whereof some are as booklearned as yourselves, can say, Credo equidem, nec vana Fides, genus esse Deorum?

It is indeed the faith, or rather infidelity, of such as call themselves REFORMED CHURCHES, that all those books called APOCRYPHA are, without exception, of no such divine original, as those ye call canonical; but who first set the one upon the bench, and the other at the bar, I am yet to learn; but this I know, that howbeit, ye second the depression and degradation of the one so far below the other, yet as neither were ever canonized by God himself (if we speak of the outward text only, about which my business with J. Owen is) into that name of his Word—and into the authority of the foundation of faith-the infallible rule of interpretation of itself—of trial and examination-of the supreme judge also, by which all controversies of religion are to be determined the only pure and authentic standard unto which the church is finally to appeal, in whose sentence it is to rest, and into which all faith is finally to be resolved; so if such synods of men, either ancient or modern, as have thrust out all those at once from sharing with the other writings in what they can lay just claim to, had been as spiritually discerning, as they were spiritually blind, shallow, and undiscerning, they would have seen cause to have joined some, at

least, of those apocryphal Scriptures to an equal participation of that plea of divine original and inspiration with the rest, as they have without just cause excluded them from it by their joint consent.

And though it be the declared faith of that Assembly of DIVINES that both houses of Parliament advised with in 1648, and of the Congregational Churches in England, whose confession is put out this instant, 1659, as to that article about the Scriptures, word for word, in the same words with the other, viz.-That the books commonly called Apocrypha, not being of divine inspiration, are no part of the canon of the Scriptures, and therefore are of no authority in the church of God, nor to be any otherwise approved or made use of than other human writings;' yet this I declare to the whole world, as my faith concerning them, that though I own neither them, nor the best bare writings or outward text or letter of the other Scripture at so high a rate as J. Owen does, who makes the naked letter in all things equivalent to the holy matter; yet, whatever is truly to be predicated of the one, or can solidly be pleaded on behalf of the one, which ye call your canon, as to the divinity of their original, the same may be pleaded on behalf of not a few of the other.

And as all that in general are styled apocryphal, can plead their authority from long before the Apostles' days, and also the especial care and providence of God (which is an argument of such weight with J. Owen and T. D., as sways them not a little into their frivolous faith about the rest) in the preservation of them to this very day; so that all of them have been kept by the church, that kept the rest bound up and translated

into various languages, were as publicly read as the rest, and highly esteemed by Austin and other fathers; of which facts ye divines cannot be easily ignorant.

And as for sundry of them, ye are ignorant with a witness, if ye see them not to be of divine inspiration, or of as divine an original as some, or even any of the other which ye own so to be.

As for that fourth book of Esdras, which is but the second as it stands in the Apocrypha, besides that it is acknowledged by Clem. Alexandrinus, Faber, and many more men of renown among you, and by many holy men in these later times, as well learned as yourselves, at least in the wisdom of God's spirit, to be written by his immediate inspiration; so also, it is such a plain prophecy of things to be fulfilled in these last ages, as clearer is hardly to be found in the whole Scriptures besides; insomuch that he who reads it in the chapters 11, 12, 13, and 16, as well as in some other places, and sees not the beams of a divine majesty in it, nor the matters that are now managing upon the stage in the world, that are there foretold in it, reads not in the light of that Holy Spirit, that moved in the writing both of that and all other holy Scripture, and may come before he is well aware to feel the dint of that divine displeasure that is denounced against the sinners of the later ages.

And the same may be said as to the divine original of Jeremiah's epistle, which was written and sent to them that were to go captive into Babylon; and also of Ecclesiasticus, and the Wisdom of Solomon, which savours so much of the wisdom of the Spirit, that he is yet in that wisdom only which is from beneath,