30. The first inference, easily deduced from what has been said, is, “That we are not _false prophets_.” In one sense of the word, we are no prophets at all; for we do not foretel things to come. But in another (wherein every minister is a prophet) we are. For we do speak in the name of God. Now a false prophet (in this sense of the word) is one, who declares as the will of God, what is not so. But we declare (as has been shewn at large) nothing else as the will of God, but what is evidently contained in his written word, as explained by our own church. Therefore, unless you can prove the bible to be a _false book_, you cannot possibly prove us to be _false prophets_. The text which is generally cited on this occasion, is _Matthew vii. verse 15._ But how unhappily chosen! In the preceeding chapters, our Lord had been describing, that _righteousness_ which _exceeds the righteousness of the_ Scribes _and_ Pharisees, and without which we cannot _enter into the kingdom of heaven_: Even the life of God in the soul; holiness of heart, producing all holiness of conversation. In this, he closes that rule which sums up the whole, with those solemn words, _Enter ye in at the strait gate_: (such indeed is that of universal holiness) _For wide is the gate, and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction. The gate of_ hell _is wide_ as the whole earth; _the way_ of unholiness _is broad_ as the great deep. _And many there be which go in thereat_; yea, and excuse themselves in so doing, _Because strait is the gate and narrow is the way that leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it_. It follows, _Beware of false prophets_; of those who speak as from God, what God hath not spoken; those who shew you any other way to life, than that which I have now shewn. So that the _false prophets_, here spoken of, are those who point out any other way to heaven than this; who teach men to find _a wider gate, a broader way_, than that described in the foregoing chapters. But it has been abundantly shewn, that we do not. Therefore (whatever we are beside) we are not _false prophets_. Neither are we (as has been frequently and vehemently affirmed) _deceivers of the people_. If we teach _the truth as it is in Jesus_, if we _speak as the oracles of |God|_, it follows, that we do not _deceive_ those that hear, though they should believe whatever we speak. _Let God be true and every man a liar_: every man that contradicts his truth. But he will _be justified in his saying, and clear when he is judged_.