Quest. CXLVI. Is the Scripture fit for all christians to read, being so obscure?

Answ. 1. The essentials and points necessary to salvation are plain.

2. We are frequently and vehemently commanded to delight in it, and meditate in it day and night; to search it; to teach it our very children, speaking of it at home and abroad, lying down and rising up, and to write it on the posts of our houses, and on our doors, &c.

3. It is suited to the necessity and understanding of the meanest, to give light to the simple, and to make the very foolish wise.

4. The ancient fathers and christians were all of this mind.

5. All the christian churches of the world have been used to read it openly to all, even to the simplest; and if they may hear it, they may read the same words which they hear.

6. God blessed the ignorant Ethiopian eunuch when he found him reading the Scriptures, though he knew not the sense of what he read, and sent him Philip to instruct him and convert him.

7. Timothy was educated in the knowledge of the Scriptures in his childhood.

8. That which is written to and for all men, may be read by all that can; but the Scripture was written to and for all, — — &c.

Object. But there are many things in it hard to be understood.

Answ. 1. And there are many things easy to be understood. 2. We never said that men should not use the help of their teachers, and all that they can to understand it. 3. Were not those teachers once ignorant? And yet they did read it by the help of teachers; and so may others. 4. As the king for concord commandeth all the schoolmasters to teach one grammar; so God maketh it the minister’s office to instruct people in the Scriptures. And were it not a question unworthy of a schoolmaster, to dispute, Whether the scholars must learn by their book, or by their master? Yea, to conclude that it must be by their master, and not by their book: or that they must never open their book, but when their master is just at hand to teach them. The doctrine of the papists, who tell us that the Scriptures should not be read by the vulgar, it being the rise of all heresies, is so inhuman and impious, as savouring of gross enmity to Scriptures, and to knowledge, that were there no other, it would make the lovers of religion and men’s souls to pray earnestly to Christ to save his flocks from such seducers, who so Jewishly use the key of knowledge.

Object. But many wrest the Scriptures to their own destruction, and what heresy is not defended as by their authority?

Answ. 1. And many thousands receive saving knowledge and grace by them. The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul. All Scripture is profitable to instruction, &c. to make the man of God perfect. It is the incorruptible seed by which we are born again, and the sincere milk, by which we are nourished.

2. And is it not as true, 1. That the law of the land is abused by every false pretender, lawyer, and corrupt judge? What title so bad, that is not defended in Westminster Hall sometimes, under pretence of law? And what action so bad, that some pretend not law for? What then? Must the law be forbidden the common people for this?

2. Nay, what is so much abused to unrighteousness and sin as reason itself? What heresy or crime do not men plead reason for? Must reason therefore be forbidden the vulgar?

3. Yea, contrarily, this signifieth that law and reason are so far from being things to be forbidden men, that they are indeed those things by which nature and necessity have taught all the world to try and discern right from wrong, good from bad; otherwise good and bad men would not all thus agree in pretending to them, and appealing to their decisions.

4. If many men are poisoned or killed in eating or drinking, if many men’s eye-sight is abused to mislead them unto sin, &c. the way is not, to eat nothing but what is put into our mouths; nor to put out our eyes, or wink, and be led only by a priest; but to use both the more cautiously, with the best advice and help that we can get.

5. And do not these deceivers see, that their reason pleadeth as strongly that priests and prelates themselves should never read the Scripture (and consequently that it should be banished out of the world)? For who that is awake in the world can be ignorant, that it is priests and prelates, who have been the leaders of almost all heresies and sects; who differ in their expositions and opinions, and lead the vulgar into all the heresies which they fall into? Who then should be forbidden to read the Scripture, but priests and prelates, who wrest them to their own and other men’s destruction?

John v. 39; Psal. i. 2; Deut. vi.; xi.; Psal. xix. 7-11; 2 Tim. iii. 15; Psal. cxix. 98, 105, 133, 148; Acts xvii. 11; viii.

2 Tim. iii. 15; Rom. xv. 4; Matt. xii. 24.

2 Pet. iii. 16; Psal. xix. 3, 8-10; 3 Tim. iii. 16;
1 Pet. i. 23.