Now it is certain that what we are in the first place concern’d to know, is that which is necessary to our Salvation; and it is as certain that whatever God has made necessary to our Salvation, we are at the same time capable of knowing.  All Instruction therefore which obtrudes upon any one as necessary to their Salvation, what they cannot understand or see the evidence of, is to that Person, wrong Instruction; and when any such unintelligible, or unevident Propositions are delivered to Children as if they were so visible Truths that a reason, or proof of them was not to be demanded by them, what effect can this produce in their Minds but to teach them betimes to silence and suppress their Reason; from whence they have afterwards no Principle of Vertue left; and their practices, as well as opinions, must needs (as is the usual consequence hereof) become expos’d to the Conduct of their own, or other Men’s Fancies?

The existence of God being acknowledg’d a Truth so early receiv’d by us, and so evident to our Reason, that it looks like Natural Inscription; the Authority of that Revelation by which God has made known his Will to Men, is to be firmly establish’d in People’s Minds upon its clearest, and most rational evidence; and consequentially They are then to be refer’d to the Scriptures themselves, to see therein what it is that God requires of them to believe and to do; the great Obligation they are under diligently to study these Divine Oracles being duly represented to them.  But to exhort any one to search the Scriptures to the end of seeing therein what God requires of him, before he is satisfy’d that the Scriptures are a Revelation from God, cannot be rational:  since any ones saying that the Scriptures are God’s Word, cannot satisfy a rational and inquisitive Mind that they are so:  and that the Books of the Old and New Testament were dictated by the Spirit of God, is not a self evident Proposition, but a Truth that demands to be made out, before it can be rationally assented to.

It should also be effectually Taught, and not in Words alone, That it is our Duty to study and examine the Scriptures, to the end of seeing therein what God requires of us to believe, and to do.  But none are effectually, or sincerely taught this, if notwithstanding that this is sometimes told them, they are yet not left at liberty to believe, or not believe, according to what, upon examination, appears to them to be the sense of the Scriptures:  for if we must not receive them in that sense, which, after our best inquiry, appears to us to be their meaning, it is visible that it signifies nothing to bid us search, and examine them.