And in discourses of religion, law, and morality, as they are
matters of the highest concernment, so there will be the greatest
difficulty.
23. Especially of the Old and New Testament Scriptures. The
volumes of interpreters and commentators on the Old and New
Testament are but too manifest proofs of this. Though everything
said in the text be infallibly true, yet the reader may be, nay,
cannot choose but be, very fallible in the understanding of it. Nor is
it to be wondered, that the will of God, when clothed in words, should
be liable to that doubt and uncertainty which unavoidably attends that
sort of conveyance, when even his Son, whilst clothed in flesh, was
subject to all the frailties and inconveniences of human nature, sin
excepted. And we ought to magnify his goodness, that he hath spread
before all the world such legible characters of his works and
providence, and given all mankind so sufficient a light of reason,
that they to whom this written word never came, could not (whenever
they set themselves to search) either doubt of the being of a God,
or of the obedience due to him. Since then the precepts of Natural
Religion are plain, and very intelligible to all mankind, and seldom
come to be controverted; and other revealed truths, which are conveyed
to us by books and languages, are liable to the common and natural
obscurities and difficulties incident to words; methinks it would
become us to be more careful and diligent in observing the former, and
less magisterial, positive, and imperious, in imposing our own sense
and interpretations of the latter.
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