faith he endeavoured to bring them into; which as soon as they had received with repentance, they were by baptism admitted into the church, and three thousand at once were made Christians.

Here St. Luke's own confession, without that "of intelligent and observing men," which the unmasker has recourse to, might have satisfied him again, “ that in relating matters of fact, many passages were omitted by the sacred penmen. For, says St. Luke here, ver. 40," And with many other words," which are not set down.

One would, at first sight, wonder why the unmasker neglects these demonstrative authorities of the holy penmen themselves, where they own their omissions, to tell us, that it is "confessed by all intelligent and observing men, that in relating matters of fact, many passages are omitted by the sacred penmen." St. John, in what he says of his Gospel, directly professes large omissions, and so does St. Luke here. But these omissions would not serve the unmasker's turn; for they are directly against him, and what he would have: and therefore he had reason to pass them by. For St. John, in that passage above-cited, chap. xx. 30, 31, tells us, that how much soever he had left out of his history, he had inserted that which was enough to be believed to eternal life : "but these are written, that ye might believe, and, believing, ye might have life." But this is not all he assures us of, viz. that he had recorded all that was necessary to be believed to eternal life: but he, in express words, tells us what is that all, that is necessary to be believed to eternal life; and for the proof of which proposition alone he writ all the rest of his Gospel, viz. that we might believe. What? even this: "That Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God," and that, believing this, we" might have life through his name."

This may serve for a key to us, in reading the history of the New Testament; and show us why this article, that Jesus was the Messiah, is nowhere omitted, though a great part of the arguments used to convince men of it, nay, very often the whole discourse, made to lead men into the belief of it, be entirely omitted. The

Spirit of God directed them every where to set down the article, which was absolutely necessary to be be lieved to make men Christians; so that that could no ways be doubted of, nor mistaken: but the arguments and evidences, which were to lead men into this faith, would be sufficient, if they were once found any where, though scattered here and there, in those writings, whereof that infallible Spirit was the author. This preserved the decorum used in all histories, and avoided those continual, large, and unnecessary repetitions, which our critical unmasker might have called tedious, with juster reason than he does the repetition of this short proposition, that Jesus is the Messiah; which I set down no oftener in my book than the Holy Ghost thought fit to insert it in the history of the New Testament, as concise as it is. But this, it seems to our nice unmasker, is "tedious, tedious and offensive." And if a Christian, and a successor of the apostles, cannot bear the being so often told, what it was that our Saviour and his apostles every where preached to the believers of one God, though it be contained in one short proposition; what cause of exception and disgust would it have been to heathen readers, some whereof might, perhaps, have been as critical as the unmasker, if this sacred history had, in every page, been filled with the repeated discourses of the apostles, all of them every where to the same purpose, viz. to persuade men to believe, that Jesus was the Messiah! It was necessary, even by the laws of history, as often as their preaching any where was mentioned, to tell to what purpose they spoke; which being always to convince men of this one fundamental truth, it is no wonder we find it so often repeated. But the arguments and reasonings with which this one point is urged, are, as they ought to be, in most places, left out. A constant repetition of them had been superfluous, and consequently might justly have been blamed as " tedious." But there is enough recorded abundantly to convince any rational: man, any one not wilfully blind, that he is that promised Saviour. And, in this, we have a reason of the omissions in the history of the New Testament; which

were no other than such as became prudent, as well as faithful writers. Much less did that conciseness (with which the unmasker would cover his bold censure of the Gospels and the Acts, and, as it seems, lay them by with contempt) make the holy writers omit any thing, in the preaching of our Saviour and his apostles, absolutely necessary to be known and believed to make men Christians.

Conformable hereunto, we shall find St. Luke writes his history of the Acts of the Apostles. In the beginning of it, he sets down at large some of the discourses made to the unbelieving Jews. But in most other places, unless it be where there was something particular in the circumstances of the matter, he contents himself to tell to what purpose they spoke; which was every where only this, that Jesus was the Messiah. Nay, St. Luke, in the first speech of St. Peter, Acts ii. which he thought fit to give us a great part of, yet owns the omission of several things that the apostle said. For, having expressed this fundamental doctrine, that Jesus was the Messiah, and recorded several of the arguments wherewith St. Peter urged it, for the conversion of the unbelieving Jews, his auditors, he adds, ver. 40, " And with many other words did he testify and exhort, saying, Save yourselves from this untoward generation." Here he confesses, that he omitted a great deal which St. Peter had said to persuade them, To what? To that which, in other words, he had just said before, ver. 38, "Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ," i. e. Believe Jesus to be the Messiah, take him as such for your Lord and King, and reform your lives by a sincere resolution of obedience to his laws.

Thus we have an account of the omissions in the records of matters of fact in the New Testament. But will the unmasker say, That the preaching of those articles that he has given us, as necessary to be believed to make a man a Christian, was part of those matters of fact, which have been omitted in the history of the New Testament? Can any one think, that "the corruption and degeneracy of human nature, with the true original of it, (the defection of our first parents) the

propagation of sin and mortality, our restoration and reconciliation by Christ's blood, the eminency and excellency of his priesthood, the efficacy of his death, the full satisfaction thereby made to divine justice, and his being made an all-sufficient sacrifice for sin, our justification by Christ's righteousness, election, adoption," &c. were all proposed, and that too, in the sense of our author's system, by our Saviour and his apostles, as fundamental articles of faith, necessary to be explicitly believed by every man, to make him a Christian, in all their discourses to unbelievers; and yet that the inspired penmen of those histories every where left the mention of these fundamental articles wholly out? This would have been to have writ, not a concise, but an imperfect history of all that Jesus and his apostles taught.

What an account would it have been of the Gospel, as it was first preached and propagated, if the greatest part of the necessary doctrines of it were wholly left out, and a man could not find, from one end to the other of this whole history, that religion which is necessary to be believed to make a man a Christian? And yet this is that, which, under the notion of their being concise, the unmasker would persuade us to have been done by St. Luke and the other evangelists, in their histories. And it is no less than what he plainly says, in his Thoughts concerning the Causes of Atheism, p. 109, where, to aggravate my fault, in passing by the epistles, and to show the necessity of searching in them for fundamentals, he in words blames me, but in effect condemns the sacred history contained in the Gospels and the Acts. "It is most evident," says he, " to any thinking man, that the author of the Reasonableness of Christianity, purposely omits the epistolary writings of the apostles, because they are fraught with other fundamental doctrines, besides that one which he mentions. There we are instructed concerning these grand heads of Christian divinity." Here, i. e. in the epistles, says he, "there are discoveries concerning satisfaction,' &c. And, in the close of his list of grand heads, as he calls them, some whereof I have above set down out

of him, he adds, "These are the matters of faith contained in the epistles." By all which expressions he plainly signifies, that these, which he calls fundamental doctrines, are none of those we are instructed in, in the Gospels and the Acts; that they are not discovered nor contained in the historical writings of the evangelists: whereby he confesses, that either our Saviour and his apostles did not propose them in their preachings to their unbelieving hearers; or else, that the several faithful writers of their history, wilfully, i. e. unfaithfully, every where omitted them in the account they have left us of those preachings; which could scarce possibly be done by them all, and every where, without an actual combination amongst them, to smother the greatest and most material parts of our Saviour's and his apostles' discourses. For what else did they, if all that the unmasker has set down in his list be fundamental doctrines; every one of them absolutely necessary to be believed to make a man a Christian, which our Saviour and his apostles every where preached, to make men Christians? but yet St. Luke, and the other evangelists, by a very guilty and unpardonable conciseness, every where omitted them, and throughout their whole history never once tell us they were so much as proposed, much less that they were those articles which the apostles laboured to establish and convince men of every where, before they admitted them to baptism? Nay the far greatest part of them, the history they writ does not any where so much as once mention? How, after such an imputation as this, the unmasker will clear himself from laying by the four Gospels and the Acts with contempt, let him look; if my not collecting fundamentals out of the epistles had that guilt in it. For I never denied all the fundamental doctrines to be there, but only said that there they were not easy to be found out, and distinguished from doctrines not fundamental. Whereas our good unmasker charges the historical books of the New Testament with a total omission of the far greatest part of those fundamental doctrines of Christianity, which he says are absolutely necessary to be believed to make a man a Christian.