_III. It will be of singular use for us not only to know the doctrines that are contained in scripture; but to observe their connexion and dependence on one another, and to digest them into such a method, that subsequent truths may give light to them that went before; or to lay them down in such a way, that the whole scheme of religion may be comprised in a narrow compass, and, as it were, beheld with one view, which will be a very great help to memory: and this is what we call a system of divine truths, or a methodical collection of the chief articles of our religion, adapted to the capacity of those who need to be taught the first principles of the oracles of God: and if they are designed to give the world a specimen of that form of sound words, which the church thinks itself obliged to hold fast, and stedfastly to adhere to, then we call it a confession of faith; or, if digested into questions and answers, we call it a catechism. And though systems of divinity, confessions of faith, and catechisms, are treated with contempt, instead of better arguments, by many who are no friends to the doctrines which they contain, and who appear to be partial in their resentment, in as much as they do not dislike those treatises which are agreeable to their own sentiments, by whatever name they are called; yet we are bound to conclude that the labours of those who have been happy in the sense they have given of scripture, and the method in which they have explained the doctrines thereof, in what form soever they have been, are a great blessing to us; though we are far from concluding that they are of equal authority with scripture, or that every word which they use is infallible; nor do we regard them any farther than as they are agreeable to, or sufficiently proved from scripture._ _IV. Confessions of faith and catechisms are not to be reckoned a novel invention, or not consonant to the scripture rule, since they are nothing else but a peculiar way of preaching or instructing us in divine truths. Therefore, since scripture lays down no certain invariable rule concerning this matter, the same command that warrants preaching the word in any method, includes the explaining of it, as occasion serves, in a catechetical one._ _V. As there are many excellent bodies of divinity printed in our own and foreign languages, and collections of sermons on the principal heads thereof; so there are various catechisms, or methodical summaries of divine truths, which, when consonant to scripture, are of great advantage to all Christians, whether elder or younger._