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.
