[2.] Secondly, Especially if we consider that _God himself took this course to signify his mind to men_. His prophets were divinely inspired, and the Scriptures were not of ‘any private interpretation,’ ἰδίας ἐπιλύσεως. The words that the penmen of Scriptures wrote were not the interpretations of their own private thoughts, ‘for the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man, but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost,’ 2 Pet. i. 20, 21. Now though the prophecies of Scripture are sealed, and no more is to be added to them upon any pretence whatsoever, yet seeing there are promises left us of the ‘giving of the Spirit,’ of ‘being taught and led by the Spirit,’ it is an easy matter for Satan to beguile men into an expectation of prophetic inspirations, and a belief of what is pretended so to be; for all men do not or will not understand that these promises of the Spirit have no intendment of new and extraordinary immediate revelations, but only of the efficacious applications of what is already revealed in Scripture. This kind of revelation we acknowledge and teach, which is far enough from enthusiasm, that is, a pretended revelation of new truths, and we have reason to assert that internal persuasions without the external word are to be avoided as Satan’s cozenages.[258] But for all this, when men’s minds are set agadding, if they meet with such as magnify their own dreams, and call their fancies visions, the suitableness of this to their humour makes them to reject our interpretations of these promises as false, and to persuade themselves that they are to be understood of such inspirations as the prophets of old had; and then they presently conclude they are to believe them, lest otherwise they should resist the Holy Ghost.