The Dedicatory Epistle

To My Reverend and Worthy Friends
The Prebends of Christ Church College in Oxford
With All the Students in Divinity in That Society

The reason of my inscribing the ensuing pleas for the authority, purity, and perfection of the Scripture, against the pretenses of some to the contrary, in these days, unto you, is because some of you value and study the Scripture as much as any I know, and it is the earnest desire of my heart, that all of you would so do. Now whereas two things offer themselves unto me, to discourse with you by the way of preface, namely the commendation of the Scripture, and an exhortation to the study of it on the one hand, and a discovery of the reproach that is cast upon it, with the various ways and means that are used by some for the lessening and depressing of its authority and excellency on the other; the former being to good purpose, by one or other almost every day performed; I shall insist at present on the latter only; which also is more suited to discover my aim and intention in the ensuing discourses. Now herein as I shall, it may be, seem to exceed that proportion which is due unto a preface to such short discourses as these following; yet I know, I shall be more brief than the nature of so great a matter as that proposed to consideration does require. And thereforeἄνευ προοιμίων καὶ παθῶν,1 I shall fall upon the subject that now lies before me.

Many there have been and are, who, through the craft of Satan, and the prejudice of their own hearts, lying under the power of corrupt and carnal interest, have engaged themselves to decry, and disparage, that excellency of the Scripture which is proper and peculiar unto it. The several sorts of them are too many particularly to be considered, I shall only pass through them in general, and fix upon such instances by the way as may give evidence to the things insisted on.

Those who in this business are first to be called to an account, whose filth and abominations given out in gross, others have but parceled among themselves, are they of the synagogue of Rome. These pretend themselves to be the only keepers and preservers of the word of God in the world; the only “ground and pillar of truth.”2 Let us then a little consider in the first place, how it has discharged this trust; for it is but equal that men should be called to an account upon their own principles; and those who supposing themselves to have a trust reposed in them, do manifest a treacherous mind, would not be one whit3 better if they had so indeed.

What then have these men done in the discharge of their pretended trust? Nay what has that synagogue left unattempted? Yea what has it left unfinished, that may be needful to convince it of perfidiousness?4 that says the Scripture was committed to it alone, and would, if it were able, deprive all others of the possession of it or of their lives; what Scripture then was this, or when was this deed of trust made unto them? The oracles of God, they tell us, committed to the Jews under the Old Testament, and all the writings of the New; and that this was done from the first foundation of the church by Peter, and so on to the finishing of the whole canon. What now have they not done in adding, detracting, corrupting, forging, aspersing those Scriptures to falsify their pretended trust? They add more books to them, never indited by the Holy Ghost, as remote from beingθεόπνευστα, ὡς οὐρανὸς ἐστʼ ἀπὸ γαίης:5 so denying the self-evidencing power of that word, which is trulyἐξ οὐρανοῦ,6 by mixing it with thingsἐξ ἀνθρώπων,7 of a human rise and spring; manifesting themselves to have lost the Spirit of discerning, promised with the word, to abide with the true church of God forever (Isa. 59:21). They have taken from its fullness and perfection, its sufficiency and excellency, by their Masora,8 their oral law orverbumἄγραφον,<