A man of credit or an impudent Liar Both may be equal in confident asserting and in the plausibility of the narrative Meer humane belief therefore must be uncertain From whence we see the pitiful case of the subjects of the King of Rome for so I must rather call him than a Bishop Why doth a Lay-man believe Transubstantiation or any other Article of their Faith Because the Church faith it is Gods Word What is the Church that saith so It is a faction of the Popes perhaps at Laterane or forty of his Prelates at the Conventicle of Trent How doth he know that these men do not lie Because God promised that Peters Faith should not fail and the Gates of Hell should not prevail against the Church and the Spirit should lead the Apostles into all truth But how shall he know that this Scripture is Gods Word And also that it was not a total failing rather than a failing in some degree that Peter was by that promise freed from Or that the Spirit was promised to these Prelates which was promised to the Apostles Why because these Prelates say so And how know they that they say true Why from Scripture as before But let all the rest go How knoweth the Lay-man that ever the Church made such a decree That ever the Bishops of that Council were lawfully called That they truely represented all Christs Church on Earth That this or that Doctrine is the decree of a Council or the sence of the Church indeed Why because the Priest tells him so But how knoweth he that this Priest saith true or a few more that the man speaketh with there I leave you I can answer no further but must leave the credit of Scripture Council and each particular Doctrine on the credit of that poor single Priest or the few that are his companions The Lay-man knoweth it no otherwise Q. But is not the Scripture it self then shaken by this seeing the History of the Canon and incorruption of the Books c. dependeth on the word of Man Ans No. 1. I have elsewhere fully shewed how the Spirit hath sealed the substance of the Gospel 2. And even the matters of fact are not of meer humane Faith. For meer humane Faith depends on the meer honesty of the reporter but this Historical Faith dependeth partly on Gods attestation and partly on Natural proofs 1. God did by Miracles attest the reports of the Apostles and first Churches 2. The consent of all History since that these are the same writings which the Apostles wrote hath a Natural Evidence above bare humane Faith. For I have elsewhere shewed that there is a concurrence of humane report or a consent of history which amounteth to a true Natural Evidence the Will having its Nature and some necessary acts and nothing but necessary ascertaining causes could cause such concurrence Such Evidence we have that K. James Q. Elizabeth Q. Mary lived in England that our Statute books contain the true Laws which those Kings and Parliaments made whom they are ascribed to For they could not possibly rule the Land and over-rule all mens interests and be pleaded at the Bar c. without contradiction and detection of the fraud if they were forgeries though it 's possible that some words in a Statute Book may be misprinted There is in this a Physical Certainty in the consent of men and it depends not as humane Faith upon the honesty of the reporter but Knaves and Liars have so consented whose interests and occasions are cross and so is it in the case of the history of the Scripture Books which were read in all the Churches through the World every Lords day and contenders of various opinions took their Salvation to be concerned in them VIII Those things must needs be uncertain to any man as to a particular Faith or Knowledge which are more in number than he may possibly have a distinct understanding of or can examine their Evidence whether they be certain or not For instance the Roman Faith containeth all the Doctrinal decrees and their Religion also all the Practical decrees of all the approved General Councils that is of so much as pleased the Pope such power hath he to make his own Religion But these General Councils added to all the Bible with all the Apocrypha are so large that it is not possible for most men to know what is in them So that if the question be whether this or that Doctrine be the Word of God and the proof of the affirmative is because it is decreed by a General Council this must be uncertain to almost all men who cannot tell whether it be so decreed or no Few Priests themselves knowing all that is in all those Councils So that if they knew that all that is in the Councils is Gods Word they know never the more whether this or that Doctrine e. g. the immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary c. be the Word of God. And if a Heathen knew that all that is in the Bible is the Word of God and knew not a word what is in it would this make him a Christian or Saint him You may object that most Protestants also know not all that is in the Scripture Ans True nor any one And therefore Protestants say not that all that is in the Scripture is necessary to be known to Salvation but they take their Religion to have essential parts and integral parts and accidents And so they know how far each is necessary But the Papists deride this distinction and because all truths are equally true they would make men believe that all are equally Fundamental or Essential to Christianity But this is only when they dispute against us at other times they say otherwise themselves when some other interest leads to it and so cureth this impudency It were worthy the enquiry whether a Papist take all the Bible to be Gods Word and de fide or only so much of it as is contained particularly in the decrees of Councils If the latter then none of the Scripture was de fide or to be particularly believed for above 300 years before the Council of Nice If the former then is it as necessary to Salvation to know how old Henoch was as to know that Jesus Christ is our Saviour IX Those things must needs be uncertain which depend upon such a number of various circumstances as cannot be certainly known themselves For instance the common rule by which the Papist Doctors do determine what particular Knowledge and Faith are necessary to Salvation is that so many truths are necessary as are sufficiently propounded to that person to be known and believed But no man living learned nor unlearned can tell what is necessary to the sufficiency of this proposal Whether it be sufficient if he be told it in his Childhood only and at what Age Or if he be told it but once or twice or thrice or how oft whether by a Parent or
ordinary for self-conceited Persons to ruine their own Estates and Healths and Lives When they are rashly making ill Bargains or undertaking things which they understand not they rush on till they find their error too late and their Poverty Prisons or ruined Families must declare their sin For they have not humility enough to seek Counsel in time nor to take it when it is offered them What great numbers have I heard begging relief from others under the confession of this sin And far more even the most of Men and Women overthrow their Health and lose their Lives by it Experience doth not suffice to teach them what is hurtful to their Bodies and as they know not so you cannot convince them that they know not Most Persons by the excess in quantity of food do suffocate Nature and lay the Foundation of future Maladies And most of the Diseases that kill men untimely are but the effects of former Gluttony or Excess But as long as they feel not any present hurt no man can perswade them but their fulness is for their Health as well as for their Pleasure They will laugh perhaps at those that tell them what they do and what Diseases they are preparing for Let Physicians if they be so honest tell them It is the perfection of the nutritive Juices the Blood and nervous Oyl which are the causes of Health in man Perfect Concoction causeth that perfection Nature cannot perfectly concoct too much or that which is of too hard digestion While you feel no harm your Blood groweth dis-spirited and being but half concocted and half Blood doth perform its Office accordingly by the halves till crudities are heaped up and obstructions fixed and a Dunghil of Excrements or the dis-spirited humours are ready to take in any Disease which a small occasion offereth either Agues Feavers Coughs Consumptions Pleurisies Dropsies Colicks and Windiness Head-achs Convulsions c. or till the Inflammations or other Tumors of the inward Parts or the torment of the Stone in Reins or Bladder do sharply tell men what they have been doing A clean Body and perfect Concoction which are procured by Temperance and bodily Labours which suscitate the Spirits and purifie the Blood are the proper means which God in the course of nature hath appointed for a long and healthful Life This is all true and the reason is evident and yet this talk will be but despised and derided by the most and they will say I have so long eaten what I loved and lived by no such rules as these and I have found no harm by it Yea if Excess have brought Diseases on them if Abstinence do but make them more to feel them they will rather impute their illness to the Remedy than to the proper cause And so they do about the quality as well as the quantity Self-conceitedness maketh men uncureable Many a one have I known that daily lived in that fulness which I saw would shortly quench the Vital Spirits and fain I would have saved their Lives but I was not able to make them willing Had I seen another assault them I could have done somewhat for them but when I foresaw their death I could not save them from themselves They still said they found their measures of eating and drinking between Meals refresh them and they were the worse if they forbore it and they would not believe me against both Appetite Reason and Experience And thus have I seen abundance of my acquaintance wilfully hasten to the Grave And all long of an unhumbled self-conceited understanding which would not be brought to suspect it self and know its error 2. And O how often have I seen the dearest Friends thus kill their Friends even Mothers kill their dearest Children and too oft their Husbands Kindred Servants and Neighbours by their self-conceit and confidence in their ignorance and error Alas what abundance empty their own Houses gratifie covetous Landlords that set their Lands by Lives and bring their dearest Relations to untimely ends and a wise man knoweth not how to hinder them How oft and oft have I heard ignorant Women confidently perswade even their own Children to eat as long as they have an Appetite and so they have vitiated their Blood and Humours in their Childhood that their Lives have been either soon ended or ever after miserable by Diseases How oft have I heard them perswade sick or weak diseased Persons to eat eat eat and take what they have a mind to when unless they would Poyson them or cut their Throats they could scarce more certainly dispatch them How oft have these good Women been perswading my self that eating and drinking more would make me better and that it is Abstinence that causeth all my illness when Excess in my Childhood caused it as if every wise Woman that doth but know me knew better what is good for me than my self after threescore years experience or than all the Physicians in the City And had I obeyed them how many years ago had I been dead How ordinary is it for such self-conceited Women to obtrude their skill and Medicines on their sick Neighbours with the greatest confidence when they know not what they do yea upon their Husbands and their Children One can scarce come about sick Persons but one Woman or other is perswading them to take that or do that which is like to kill them Many and many when they have brought their Children to the Grave have nothing to say but I thought this or that had been best for them But you 'l say They do it in love they meant no harm I answer so false Teachers deceive Souls in Love. But are you content your selves to be kill'd by Love If I must be kill'd I had rather an Enemy did it than a Friend I would not have such have the guilt or grief Love will not save mens lives if you give them that which tends to kill them But you 'l say We can be no wiser than we are If we do the best we can what can we do more I answer I would have you not think your selves wiser than you are I would write over this word five hundred times if that would cure you About matters of Diet and Medicines and Health this is it that I would have you do to save you from killing your selves and your Relations 1. Pretend not to know upon the report of such as your selves or in matters that are difficult and beyond your skill or where you have not had long consideration and experience Meddle with no Medicining but what in common easy cases the common judgment of Physicians and common Experience have taught you 2. If you have not Money to pay Physicians and Apothecaries tell them so and desire them to give you their counsel freely and take not on you to know more than they that have studied and practised it all their riper part of their lives 3. Suspect your understandings and consider how much there may be
a wary humble man should offend but few and better keep both his own and the Churches peace than others Can Persecutors for shame Hang and Burn men for meer Ignorance who are willing to learn and will thankfully from any man receive information What if in Queen Marys days the poor Men and Women had told my Lords of Winchester and London We are not persons of so good understandings as to know what a spiritual body is as Paul describeth it 1 Cor. 15. And seeing most say that the Sun it self is a body and not a spirit and late Philosophers say that Light is a substance or body which yet from the Sun in a moment diffuseth it self through all the surface of the Earth and Air we know not how far locality limitations extension impenetrability divisibility c. belong to the body of Christ and consequently how far it may be really present we can say nothing but that we know not Would my good Lord Bishops have burnt them for I know not Perhaps they would have said You must believe the Church But which is the Church my Lord Why it is the Pope and a General Council But alas my Lord I have never seen or heard either Pope or Council Why but we have and you must believe us Must we believe you my Lords to be Infallible or only as we do other men that may deceive and be deceived Is any Infallible besides the Pope and his Council Truly my Lords we are ignorant people and we know not what the Pope and Councils have said and we are uncertain whether you report them truly and uncertain whether they are Fallible or not but we are willing to hear any thing which may make us wiser Would their Lordships have burnt such modest persons Suppose in a Church where men are put to profess or subscribe to or against the Opinions of Free-will or Reprobation or Predetermination or such like a humble man should say These are things above my understanding I cannot reach to know what Free-will is nor whether all Causes natural and free be predetermined by Divine Premotion c. I can say neither It is so nor It is not They are above my reach would they silence and cast out such an humble person and forbid him to preach the Gospel of Christ Perhaps they would But there are not so many hardened to such inhumanity as there are men that would deal sharply with one that is as confident as they are on the other side And those few that were thus silenced would have the more peace that they procured it not by self-conceited singularities and the silencers of them would be the more ashamed before all sober persons that shall hear it Other Instances I pass by Chap. 14. The Aggravations of this sin of Prefidence THough there be so much evil in this sin of Presumption as I have noted yet is it not in all alike culpable or unhappy But differeth in both respects as I shall tell you I. For culpability it is worst in these sorts and cases following 1. It is a great sin in those who have least reason to think highly of their own understandings and greatest reason to distrust themselves As. 1. In those that are young and unexperienced and must be miraculously wise if they are wiser than old experienced persons caeteris paribus 2. In the unlearned or half-learned who have had but little time or helps for study or at least have made but little use of them 3. In duller wits and persons that in other matters are known to be no wiser than others 4. In those that take up their prefidence upon the slightest grounds as bare surmises and reports from others that were uncertain 5. In those that have been oft deceived already and should by their sad experience have been brought to humble self-suspicion 2. And it is an aggravated sin in those whose place and condition obligeth them to learn from others As for the Wife to be self-conâ—eited of all her apprehensions against her Husband unless he be a fool For the Servant to set his wit against his Masters where he should obey him For Children to think that their wits are righter than their Parents or Masters and Apprentices and Learners to think that they know more than their teachers And for the ignorant people to censure over-hastily the Doctrine and Practice of their Pastors as if they were wiser than they Perhaps they are But it must be some rare person who is fit to be a Teacher himself or the Teacher some sot that hath intruded into the Office or else it must be a wonder For God usually giveth men Knowledge according to the Time and Means and Pains that they have had to get it and not by miraculous infusions without means Doth not the Apostle expresly tell you this Heb. 5.11 12. When for the Time you ought to have been Teachers c. Men should be wise according to Time and Means of Wisdom which they have had 3. It is the greater crime when men will seem wisest in other mens matters and concernments When the Subject will know best what belongeth to a King or Governor and the people will know best how the Pastor should teach them and when he faileth and whom he should receive into the Church or exclude When the Servant will know best his Masters duty and every man his Neighbours and least his own 4. It is the greater crime when men will be the Judges of their own understandings and think highly of them in cases where they should be tryed by others As if an Empyrick or Woman do think that they know better how to cure a disease than the ablest Physicians why do they not offer themselves to the Tryal and before them make good their Skill by reason If an unexperienced young student think himself able to be a Physician he is not to be Judge but must be Tryed and Judged by Physicians If a self-conceited Professor or a young Student think himself fit for the Ministry he must not presently contrive how to get in and how to shift off Examination but freely offer himself to be tried by able Godly Ministers and then by the ordainers who are to judge But when such Persons can think themselves sufficient if no body else do or if but a few ignorant persons do that are unfit to judge this proves their Pride and Presumption to be a great and heinous sin 5. And it is yet more heinously aggravated when to keep up the reputation of their own understandings they use to depress and vilify the wiser even those whom they never knew As he that affecteth to be a Preacher and dare not pass the Examination hath no way to hide his shame but 1. By crying down the Learning which he wanteth as a humane carnal thing And 2. By reproaching those that should judge of him and ordain him as poor carnal persons who understand not the things of the Spirit as he doth
he is considered as Active and his Love as an Act and Man as the Object But yet not as an Object of Efficiency but of Approbation and a Pleased Will or Delight Here then the great difficulty is in resolving which of these is the highest perfective notion of man's felicity perfection or ultimate end Our Love to God or God's Love to us Ans It is mutual Love and Union which is the true and compleat notion of our End And to compare God's Love and ours as the parts and tell which is the final principal part or notion is not easy nor absolutely necessary But I conceive 1. That our Love to God is Objectively or as to the Object of it infinitely more excellent than Gods Love to us as to the Object Which is but to say that God is Infinitely better than man God loveth man who is a worm But we Love God who is perfect goodness 2. Gods Love to us as to the Agent and the Act ex parte Agentis is Infinitely more excellent than our Love to him For it is Gods Essential will which loveth us and it is the will of a worm that loveth God. 3. That mans Felicity as such is not the chief notion of his ultimate end But he must Love God as God better than his own Felicity as such or better than God as our Felicity 4. That mans true ultimate end containeth these five inadequate conceptions 1. The lowest notion or part of it is our own holiness and felicity 2. The next notion of it is the perfection of the Church and Universe to which we contribute and which we must value above our own Including the Glory of Christs Humanity 3. The third notion is the Glory or Lustre of Gods perfections as they shine forth in us and all his perfected glorious works 4. The fourth notion is Gods own Essential goodness as the Object of our Knowledge Love and Praise 5. The fifth and highest notion is the Active Love or Complacency of Gods fulfilled Will in us and in the whole Creation So that the Pleasing of Gods will is the highest notion of mans ultimate end Though all these five are necessarily contained in it Chap. III. Doct. 3. Therefore Knowledge is to be valued sought and used as it tendeth to our Love of God. THis third Doctrine is much of the Scope of the Text All means are for their end So far as Knowledge is a means of love it must needs hence have the measure of its worth and we the motives of our desires of it and the direction for our using of it 1. All knowledge that kindleth not the love of God in us is so narrow and small that it deserveth not indeed the name of Knowledge For the necessary things that such a person is Ignorant of are a thousand times more or greater than that little which he knoweth For 1. What is it that he is Ignorant of 1. He hath no sound and real Knowledge of God. For if he knew God truly he could not but love him Goodness is so naturally the Object of the will that if men well knew the infinite Good they must needs love him However there is a partial knowledge that is separable from sincere Love. 2. He that knoweth not and loveth not God neither knoweth nor loveth any creature truly and effectually either as it is of God or Through him or To him Either as it beareth the Impress of the Glorious Efficient or as it is ordered to its end by the most wise Director or as it is a means to lead up Souls to God or to Glorify and please him no nor to make man truly happy And can he be said indeed to know any Creature that knoweth it not in any of these respects that knoweth neither its Original Order or Use Doth a Dog or a Goose know a Book of Philosophy because he looketh on it and seeth the bulk Doth he know a Clock or Watch who knoweth no more of it but that it hath such Parts and Shapes made of Iron and Brass It is most evident that an unholy person knoweth nothing that is no one Being though he may know aliquid de re aliqua something of some Being For he that knoweth not the Nature Order or Use and End of a Being cannot properly be said to know that Being but only secundum quid or some Accidents of it or to have a general Knowledge that it is a Substance or a something he knoweth not what As an Epicurean can call all things compacted Atomes or Matter and Motion An ungodly man is just like one that studieth the art of a Scrivener or Printer to make the Letters and place them by art but never learnt to read or know the signification of the Letters which he maketh or composeth Or if any may be said to have a Speculative knowledge of all this in the Creature the Nature Order and Use yet he is without the true Practical Knowledge which is it that only is Knowledge indeed and of use and benefit to man. For to be able to speak or write a true Proposition about God or the Creature is not properly to know God or the Creature but to know names and words concerning them It is but a Logical Knowledge of Notions and not the knowledge of the Thing it self to be able to say and know that this or that concerning it is true or false Nothing more deceiveth mankind both in point of Learning and of Religion and Salvation than mistaking the Organical or Logical Knowledge of second Notions Words Propositions Inferences and Methods for the Real Knowledge of the Things themselves And thinking that they know a thing because they know what to say of it He knoweth not a Countrey who is only able by the Map or hear-say to describe it He knoweth not Motion Light Heat Cold Sweet Bitter that knoweth no more than to give a true definition of it And as this is true of things sensible which must themselves be perceived first by sense so is it of things spiritual which must themselves be perceived first by Intellection and not only the notions and definitions of them He that doth not intuitively or by internal immediate perception know what it is to Understand to Remember to Will and Nill to Love and Hate and consequently to be able to do these acts doth not know what a man is or what a Reasonable Soul is and what an Intellectual Spirit is though he could were it possible without these learn the Definition of a Man a Soul a Spirit A definition or word of art spoken by a Parrot or a madman proveth not that he knoweth the thing Practical objects are not truly known without a Practical Knowledge of them He knoweth not what meat is that knoweth not that it must be eaten and how to eat it He only knoweth his clothing that knoweth how to put it on He only knoweth a Pen a Gun or other instrument that knoweth how
which is desireable When one man nameth GOD he hath an orderly conception of his several Attributes in which yet all men are defective and most Divines themselves are culpably ignorant When another man conceiveth but of fewer of them and that disorderly And yet these must not be accounted Atheists or denied to believe in the same God or refused Baptism nor is it several Gods that men so differently believe in I. He that knoweth God to be a most perfect Spirit most powerful Wise and Good the Father Son and Holy Ghost the Creator of the world our Owner Governour and most Amiable Lover Benefactor and End I think knoweth as much of God as is of necessity to Baptism and Church Communion II. He that knoweth that Jesus Christ is God and man the Redeemer of the sinful world and the Mediator between God and Man who was conceived by the Holy-Ghost in the Virgin Mary fulfilled all righteousness was crucified as a Sacrifice for mans sin and being dead and buried rose again and ascended into Heaven and is the Teacher King and Intercessor of his Church and hath made the new Covenant and giveth the Holy-Ghost to sanctify believers and pardoneth their sins and will raise our Bodies at last and Judge the World in righteousness according to his Gospel and will give everlasting happiness to the Sanctified I think knoweth as much of Christ as is necessary to Baptism and Church Communion III. He that knoweth that the Holy Ghost is God proceeding from the Father and the Son the sanctifier of Souls by Holy Life and Light and Love by the Holy Gospel of which he is the Inditer and the Seal I think knoweth all that is necessary unto Baptism concerning the Holy Ghost IV. And as to the Act of Knowing this Trinity of Objects there is great difference between 1. Knowing the Notions or Words and the matter 2. Between an orderly clear and a dark and more confused Knowledge 3. And between apt significant words and such as any way notify a necessary true conception of the mind 4. Between such a Knowledge as maketh a man Willing and Consent to give up himself to this Trinity in Covenant and that which prevaileth not for such consent And so 1. It 's true that we know not the Heart immediately and therefore must judge by Words and Deeds But yet it is the Knowledge of the Things as is aforesaid that is necessary to Salvation because it is the Love of the Things is chiefly necessary But by what words to express that Love or Knowledge is not of equal necessity in itself 2. There being no man whose conceptions of God Christ the Holy Ghost the Covenant c. are not guilty of darkness and disorder a great degree of darkness and disorder of conceptions may consist with true grace in those of the lowest rank of Christians 3. The second Notions and Conceptions of things and so of God our Redeemer and Sanctifier as they are verba mentis in the mind itself are but Logical Artificial Organs and are not of that necessity to Salvation as the conception of the matter or incomplex objects 4. Many a man in his studies findeth that he hath oft a general and true Knowledge of Things in themselves before he can put names and notions on them and set those in due Order and long before he can find fit words to express his mental notions by which must cost him much study afterward And as Children are long learning to speak and by degrees come to speak orderly and composedly and aptly mostly not till many years use hath taught them So the expressive ability is as much matter of art and got by use in men at age And they must be taught yet as Children to speak of any thing new and Strange and which they learned not before As we see in learning Arithmetick Geometry and all the Arts and Sciences Even so men how holy internally soever must by study and use by the help of Gods Spirit learn how to speak of holy things in Prayer in Conference in answering such as ask an account of their Faith and Knowledge And hypocrites that are bred up in the use of such things can speak excellently in Prayer Conference or Preaching When true Christians at first that never used them nor were bred up where they heard them used cannot tell you intelligibly what is in their minds but are like men that are yet to learn the very Language in which they are to talk in I know this by true experience of my self and many others that I have examined 5. Therefore I say again if men cannot aptly answer me of the very Essentials of Religion but speak that which in its proper sense is Heresie or unsound and false Yet if when I open the questions to them my self and put the Article of Faith into the question and ask them e. g. Do you believe that there is but One God or are there many Doth God know all things or not Is he our Owner or not Doth he rule us by a Law or not c If they by Yea or Nay do speak the truth and profess to believe it I will not reject them for lack of knowledge if the rest concur I meet with few censorious Professors to say nothing of Teachers that will not answer me with some nonsense or falseness or ineptitude or gross confusion or defectiveness if I examine them of the foregoing Notions of the very baptismal Covenant As what is a Spirit what doth the word God signifie what is Power in God what Knowledge what Will what Goodness what Holiness what is a Person in the Trinity what is the difference between the three Persons How is God our End Had Christ his humane Soul from the Virgin or only his flesh Had he his Manhood from Man if not his Soul which is the chief essential part what is the Union of the Divine and Humane Nature wherein different from the Union of God and Saints or every Creature with an hundred such In which I must bear with ignorant false answers from eminent Professors that separate from others as too ignorant for their Communion And why then must I not bear with more in those that are new beginners and have not had their time and helps 6. But if a man can speak never so well and profess never so confident a belief if he Consent not to the Covenant and Vow of Baptism to give up himself presently and absolutely to Christ I must reject that man from the Communion of the Church But if these two things do but concur in any 1. The foresaid signification of a tolerable Knowledge and Belief by yea or nay Dost thou Believe in God c. as the Ancient Churches used to ask the Baptized 2. And a ready professed consent to be engaged by that holy Vow and Covenant to God the Father Son and Holy Ghost I will not deny Baptism to such if Adult nor after Church
in a lower sort in the Soul that is Gods Image That is that the understandings most internal act viz. the knowing or perceiving when it knoweth any thing that it knoweth It is not really compounded of an act and an object as the knowledge of distinct objects is but that either its act is not properly to be called its object or that act and object are not two things but two inadequate conceptions of one thing And how doth the Soul perceive its own Volitions To say that Volitions which are acts of the Intellectual Soul must be sensate and so make a Species on the phantasie as sensate things do and be known only in that Species is to bring down the higher faculty and subordinate it to the lower that it may be intelligible while it is certain that we shall never here perfectly understand the solution of these difficulties is it not pardonable among other mens conjectures to say That the noble faculty of Sense because Brutes have it is usually too basely described by Philosophers And that Intellection and Volition in the rational Soul are a superior eminent sort of sensation transcending that of Brutes and that Intelligere Velle are eminenter sentire and that the Intellect doth by understanding other things eminently see or sense and so understand that it understandeth And that the will doth by willing feel that it willeth When I consult my Experience I must either say thus or else that Intellection and Volition so immediately ever move the Internal sense that they are known by us only as acts compounded with that sense But I am gone too far before I was aware IV. The Soul thus knowing or feeling its own acts doth in the next place rationally gather 1. That it hath power to perform them and is a substance so empowered 2. That there are other such substances with the like acts 3. And there is one prime transcendant substance which is the cause of all the rest which hath infinitely nobler acts than ours And thus Sense and Reason concur to our knowledge of God by shewing us and perceiving that Image in which by similitude we must know him The Fiery Ethereal or Solar Nature is at least the similitude of Spirits And by condescending similitude God in Scripture is called LIGHT and the FATHER of LIGHTS in whom is no darkness allowing and inviting us to think of his Glory by the similitude of the Sun or Light. But Intellectual Spirits are the highest Nature known to us and these we know intimately by most near perception By the similitude of these therefore we must conceive of God. A Soul is a self-moving Life or vital Substance actuating the Body to which it is united God is super-eminently Essential-Life perfect in himself as living Infinitely and Eternally and giving Being to all that is and Motion to all that moveth and Life to all that liveth A reasonable Soul is Essentially an understanding power And God is super-eminently an Infinite understanding knowing himself and all things perfectly A reasonable Soul is Essentially a rational Appetite or Will necessarily loving himself and all that is apprehended every way and congruously good God is super-eminently an Infinite Will or Love necessarily loving himself and his own Image which yet he freely made by communicative Love. All things that were made by this Infinite Goodness were made good and very good All his works of Creation and Providence however misconceived of by sinners are still very good All the good of the whole Creation is as the heat of this Infinite Eternal Fire of Love. And having made the World good in the good of Nature and the good of Order and the good of mutual Love he doth by his continual influx maintain and perfect it His Power moveth his Wisdom governeth and his Love felicitateth And man he moveth as man he Ruleth him by Moral Laws as man and he is his perfect Loâ—er and perfect amiable Object and End. As our Creator making us in this natural capacity and Relation as our Redeemer restoring and advancing us to blessed Union with himself and as our Sanctifier and Glorifier preparing us for and bringing us to Coelestial perfection And thus must God be conceived of that we may love him And false and defective conceptions of him as the great impediments of our love And we love him so little much because we so little know him And therefore it is not the true knowledge of God which Paul here maketh a competitor with love II. And as we know God by ascending from his Works and Image in the same order must our love ascend The first acts of it will be towards God in his works and the next will be towards God in his Relation to us and the highest towards God as Essentially perfect and amiable in himself I will therefore now apply this to the Soul that feareth lest he love not God because he perceiveth not himself either to know or love him immediately in the perfection of his Essence 1. Do you truely love the Image of God on the Soul of Man That is a Heavenly Life and Light and Love Do you not only from bare conviction commend but truly love a Soul devoted to God full of his love and living in obedience to his Laws and doing good to others according to his power This is to love God in his Image God is Infinite Power Wisdom and Goodness or Love To love true wisdom and goodness as such is to love God in his Works Especially with these two qualifications 1. Do you love to have Wisdom and Goodness and Love as Universal as is possible Do you long to have Families Cities Kingdoms and all the World made truly Holy Wise and united in Love to one another The most Universal Wisdom and Goodness is most like to God and to love this is to love God in his Image 2. Do you love Wisdom and Goodness in your selves and not in others only Do you long to be liker to God in your capacity and more near him and united to him That is Do you long to know him and his will more clearly and to enjoy a holy communion with him and his holy ones in the fullest mutual love loving and being beloved and to delight your Souls in his joyful praises in the communion of Saints This is certainly the love of God. Our union is by love he that would be united to God and his Saints in Jesus Christ that would fain know him more and love him better and praise and obey him joyfully in perfection doth undoubtedly love him And here I would earnestly caution you against two common deceits of men by counterfeit love I. Some think that they love God savingly because they love him as the God of Nature and cause of all the Natural Being Order and Goodness which is in the whole frame of Heaven and Earth This is to love somewhat of God or to love him secundum quid in one respect But if
they that have much unholy Knowledge Ch. 5. The first Inference By what measures to estimate Knowledge Ch. 6. The second Inference To abate our censures and contempt of the less-learned Christians and Churches Ch. 7. The third Inference How to judge of the Knowledge necessary to Church Communion Ch. 8. The fourth Inference The aptness of the Teaching of Christ to ingenerate the Love of God and Holiness Ch. 9. The fifth Inference What great cause of thankfulness men have for the Constitution of the Christian Religion And how unexcusable they are that will not learn so short and sweet and safe a Lesson Ch. 10. The sixth Inference How little reason ungodly men have to be proud of their Learning or any of their Knowledge Ch. 11. The seventh Inference Why the ungodly World hateth Holiness and not Knowledge Ch. 12. The eighth Inference What is the work of a faithful Preacher and how it is to be done Ch. 13. The ninth Inference Those that know God so far as to Love him truely may have comfort notwithstanding their remaining ignorance Ch. 14. Questions and Objections Answered Qu. 1. If so much Knowledge will save Men as causeth them To Love God may not Heathens be saved who know God to be good and therefore may Love him Qu. 2. May not a Papist or Heretick Love God and be saved Qu. 3. At least you make Ignorant Persons happy that can but Love God though they know not their Catechism Qu. 4. How are Infants saved that have neither Knowledge nor Love Qu. 5. If this hold true Universities and most humane Learning should be cast out as the Turks and Moscovites do and the Armenians Abassines Greeks and Ignorant sort of Papists are the wisest Because multitudes of other Notions must needs divert mens thoughts from God. Ch. 15. Use Exhort I. Deceive not your selves by over-valuing an unholy sort of Knowledge or common Gifts Ch. 16. Exhort II. Love best those Christians that Love God best and live in Love and Peace with others Ch. 17. Exhort III Pretend not your Knowledge against the Love of God or Man or against the Interest of the Church and Souls Ch. 18. Exhort IV. Bend all your Studies to a life of Increased and Exercised Love. How the Love of God must be Exercised and Increased The benefit hereof Ch. 19. Exhort V. Place your Comfort in Health and Sickness in Mutual Divine Love. 1. See that you Love God. How known Doubts Answered Ch. 20.2 But let it be the chief part of your Comfort that you are known of God. What comfort this affordeth What frame of Soul it bespeaketh in us in Life and at our Death PART I. 1 Cor. 8.2 3. And if any man think that he knoweth any thing he knoweth nothing yet as he ought to know But if any man Love God the same is known of Him. Chap. I. The Scope and Text opened what Philosophy or worldly Wisdom Paul depresseth and why THE Calamitous Divisions of the Churches of Christ and the Miscarriages and Contentions of too many particular Brethren having been sad upon my thoughts above forty years by this time without imputation of hastiness and rash judging I may take leave to tell the World what I have discovered to be the principal cause which is falsly PRETENDED KNOWLEDGE or IGNORANCE OF IGNORANCE or a proud unhumbled understanding confident that it knoweth that which it knoweth not And consequently what must be the cure if our calamity be here cureable viz. To know as much as we can but withal to know how little we know and to take on us to know no more than we do know nor to be certain of our uncertainties The Text which I have chosen to be the ground of my discourse is so plain notwithstanding some little difficulties that did not the nature of the Disease resist the clearest Remedy so many good people had never here often read their sin described as insensibly as if they read it not The Chapter hath so much difficulty as will not stand with my intended brevity to open it I refer you to Expositors for that whether they were the Nicolaitans or any other sort of Hereticks that the Apostle dealeth with I determine not It is plain that they were Licentious Professors of Christianity who thought that it was the ignorance of others that made them judge it unlawful to eat things offered to Idols and that their own greater knowledge set them above that scruple A mixture of Platonick Philosophy with Christianity made up most of the Primitive Hereticks and for want of a due digestion of each too much corrupted many of the Greek Doctors of the Church The unlearned sort of Christians were so much despised by some of the Philosophical Hereticks that they were not thought worthy of their Communion for as Jude saith they separated themselves being sensual having not the Spirit but more affected Philosophical fancies which made Paul warn men to take heed lest any seduced them by vain Philosophy not using the name of Philosophy for that solid knowledge of Gods works which is desireable but for the Systemes of vain Conceits and Precepts which the Word was then used to signifie as every Sect derived them from their Masters And so the Apostle taketh knowledge in this Text not for solid knowledge indeed but for Gnosticism or Philosophical presumptions such as even yet most Philosophers are guilty of who take a multitude of Precepts some useful some useless some true and some false and all but notionally or to little purpose and joining these do call them Philosophy And Paul tells them that opinionative and notional knowledge were it true like the Devils Faith is of no such excellency as to cause them to shelter their sins under the confidence and honour of it and despise unlearned conscionable Christians for such knowledge by inflation oft destroyeth the Possessors or becomes the Fuel of the Devilish sin of Pride when Love buildeth up our selves and others to Salvation And to conceit that a man is wise because of such knowledge and so to over-value his own understanding is a certain sign that he is destitute of that knowledge in which true wisdom doth consist and knoweth nothing with a wise and saving knowledge as every thing should be known And indeed a mans excellency is so far from lying in vain Philosophical Speculations that the use of all true knowledge is but to bring us up to the Love of God as the highest felicity to be approved and beloved by God And those unlearned Christians that have the Spirit of Sanctification without your vain Philosophy have knowledge enough to bring them to this Love of God which is a thing that passeth all your knowledge or rather to be known of God as his own and loved by him For our felicity lyeth in receiving from God and in his loving us more than in our loving him but both set together to love God and so to be loved of him are the
ultimate end and perfection of man and all knowledge is to be estimated but as it tendeth to this This being the plain Paraphrase of the Text I shall stay no longer on it but thence deduce and handle these two Observations Doct. I. Falsly pretended knowledge is oft pernicious to the Possessor and injurious to the Church And over-valuing ones own Opinions and Notions is a certain mark of dangerous Ignorance II. A Man is so far truly wise as he loveth God and consequently is approved or loved by him and as he loveth others to their Edification I. The first is but the same that Solomon thus expresseth Prov. 26.12 Seest thou a man wise in his own conceit there is more hope of a fool than of him And Paul elsewhere Rom. 12.16 Be not wise in your own conceits And Rom. 11.25 and Prov. 26.5 16. For it is certain that we are all here in great darkness and it 's but little that the wisest know And therefore he that thinks he knoweth much is ignorant both of the things which he thinks he knoweth and ignorant of his ignorance Therefore 1 Cor. 3.18 Let no man deceive himself If any man among you seemeth to be wise in this World let him become a Fool that he may be wise To be wise in this World is the same with that in the words following The wisdom of this World is foolishness with God And 1 Cor. 1.19 20 21 22. It is written I will destroy the wisdom of the wise c. Where is the wise where is the Scribe where is the disputer of this World Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this World For after that in the wisdom of God the World by wisdom knew not God it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe For the Jews require a sign and the Greeks seek after wisdom c. So Chap. 2.4 5 6 7 8. And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words or probable discourses of mans wisdom but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power that your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men but in the power of God Howbeit we speak wisdom among them that are perfect yet not the wisdom of this World nor of the Princes of this World that come to nought But we speak that wisdom of God in a Mystery even the hidden wisdom which God ordained before the World unto our glory even Christ the wisdom of God chap. 1.24 which none of the Princes of this World knew In all this note 1. That there is a wisdom which Paul placeth Christianity it self in 2. That this is to know God in Christ objectively and to be taught of God by Christ and his Spirit efficiently 3. That there is a Wisdom which Paul comparatively vilifieth 4. This is called the Wisdom of this world or age 5. That most plainly he meaneth by it that which then was called Learning and Philosophy which the Greeks did value and by which they judged of the Gospel which comprehended the methods of all the Sects Epicureans Academicks Peripateticks and Stoicks but not their true Morals but their Physicks and Logick and Metaphysicks which Laertius and others tell us how variously they held 6. That Paul doth not absolutely prohibit such studies nor yet despise any true knowledge 7. But he vilifieth this Philosophy on these accounts 1. Because it was the exercise of a poor low insufficient Light They did but Grope after God in the dark as Acts 17.27 2. Because it was mostly taken up with inferiour things of small concernment comparatively As things corporeal are good in themselves and when sanctified and made subservient to things spiritual so the knowledge of Physicks is to be esteemed But as things corporeal yet are objectively the snare and ruine of those that perish and therefore the world to be renounced and crucified as it is our temptation an Enemy or Competitor with Christ just so it must be with Natural Philosophy 3. Because it was greatly overvalued by the World as if it had been the only Wisdom when indeed it is of it self but an indifferent thing or fit but to make a by-recreation of till it be made to serve to higher ends even as Riches Honour and Pleasure are overvalued by worldlings as if they were the only felicity when in themselves they are but more indifferent things and prove beneficial or hurtful as they are used Therefore Paul was to take down the pernicious esteem of this kind of Philosophy as Preachers now must take down mens esteem of worldly things however they are the works and gifts of God. And as Christ would by his actual poverty and sufferings and not by words only take down the esteem of worldly wealth and pride so Paul by neglecting and forbearing the use of Artificial Logick Physicks and Metaphysicks would depress their rate 4. Because that there was abundance of falshood mixt with the truth which the Philosophers held as their multitude of different Sects fully proves 5. Because the Artificial Organical part was made so operous as that it drowned Real Learning instead of promoting it and became but like a game at Chess a devise rather to exercise vain proud wits by than to find out useful truth As to this day when Logick and Metaphysicks seem much cultivated and reformed yet the variety of methods the number of notions the precariousness of much the uncertainty of some things the falshood of many maketh them as fit for Boys to play with in the Schools and to be a Wood into which a Sophister may run to hide his Errours as to be a means of detecting them And therefore a knavish Cheater will oft bind you strictest to the pedantick part of the Rules of Disputation that when he cannot defend his Matter he may quarrel with your Form and Artifice and lose time by questioning you about Mood and Figure 6. Because by these operous diversions the minds of men were so forestalled or taken up as that they had not leisure to study great and necessary saving truth And if men must be untaught in the Doctrines of Life till they had first Learnt their Logick Physicks and Metaphysicks how few would have been saved when at this day so many come from our Universities after several years study raw smatterers in these and half-witted Scholars whose Learning is fitter to trouble than to edifie And if Scripture had been written in the terms and method of Aristotle how few would have been the better for them But great Good must be common And as Paul on all these accounts sets light by this Philosophy so he calls it the wisdom of this world 1. Because this world was its chief object 2. And the creatures were its only Light. 3. And it led but few to any higher than worldly ends 4. And it was that which worldly men that were strangers to heavenly Light and Holiness did then most magnify and use Yet as Christ when
have several significations So that when Tutors read the same books to their Schollars and teach them the same notions it is not the same conceptions always that they thus communicate VIII And when all is done Recipitur ad modum recipientis It 's two to one but the Learner receiveth their notions with a conception somewhat different from them all And when he thinks that he hath learnt what was taught him and is of his Teachers mind he is mistaken and hath received another apprehension IX And the narrowness of mans mind and thoughts is such that usually there must go many partial conceptions to one thing or Object really indivisible So that few things or nothing rather in the world is known by us with one conception nor with a simplicity of apprehensions answerable to the simplicity of the things And hereby it cometh to pass that Inadequate conceptions make up a great part of our Learning and knowledge And yet worse our words being narrower than our Thoughts we are fain to multiply words more than conceptions so that we must have ten conceptions perhaps of one thing and twenty words perhaps for those ten conceptions And then we grow to imagine the things to be as various as our conceptions yea and our words And so Learning is become confused error and the great and noble Actions of the Phantastical world are a pitiful confused agitation of Phantasms and whether fortuitous or artificial a congress of Atoms sometimes digladiating and sometimes seeming by amicable embraces to compose some excellent piece of Art. And things seem to us to be multiplyed and ordered as our conceptions of them are And the Scotists may yet write as many more Treatises de formalitatibus before men will understand indeed what a conceptus formalis with them is and whether diverse formalities be diverse realities or only ejusdem conceptus inadequati But thus Learning is become like a poppet play or the raising of the dust X. The Entia Rationis being thus exceeding numerous are already confounded with objective Realities and have compounded our common Systems of Logick Metaphysicks and too much of Physicks So that Students must at first see through false Spectacles and Learn by seducing notions and receive abundance of false conceptions as the way to Wisdom and Shadows and Rubbish must furnish their minds under the name of truth though mixt with many real Verities For young men must have Teachers They cannot begin at the foundation and every one learn of himself as if none had ever learnt before him He is like to make but a slow proficient that maketh no use of the Studies and Experience of any that ever learnt before him And he that will learn of others must receive their notions and words as the means of his information XI And when they grow up to be capable of real wisdom O! what a labour is it to cleanse out this rubbish and to unlearn all the errors that we have learnt so that it is much of the happiest Progress of extraordinary successful Studies to find out our old mistakes and set our conceptions in better order one by one Perhaps in one year we find out and reform some two or three and in another year one or two more and so on Even as when at my removal of my Library my Servant sets up all my books and I must take them half down again to set them in their right places XII And the difficulty of the matter is our great Impediment when we come to study things For 1. Their Matter 2. Their Composure 3. Their Numbers 4. Their Order and Relations 5. And their Action and Operation are much unknown to us XIII 1. The substance of Spirits is so little known as tempteth Sadduces to dream that there are none The notion of a Spirit to some through ignorance is taken to be meerly negative as if it signified no more but not corporeal The notion of Immateriality is lubricous and he that knoweth not the true bounds of the signification of Materia knoweth not what it is to be Immaterial The purest Spirit is known only by many inadequate conceptions One must answer the similitude of Matter in fundamental substantiality Another must be answerable to that of Forms of simple Elements and another answerable to Accidents And though nothing be so notorious of Spirits as their Operations and from the Acts we know the Virtues or Powers yet that these Virtues are not Accidents but the very Essential Form and that they are in all Spirits One in Three and many other things concerning their Essentiality are quite overlookt by the greater part of Philosophers and those few that open it do either with Campanella lose it again in a wood of mistaken ill gathered consequences or with Lullius drown it in a multitude of irregular arbitrary notions or with Commenius give us a little undigested with the mixture of crudities and mistakes or with our Learned Dr. Glisson de vitâ Naturae confound Spirits and Bodies and make those Spirits which are the Vital constitutive principle of Compounds to be but the inadequate conception of Bodies as if they were all simply and formally Vital of themselves and for a Body to be inanimate were a contradiction or impossible And they that treat more nobly of Spirits as Mr. Got and many Platonists do it so immethodically and confusedly as greatly disadvantageth the Learner And yet to treat of Bodies without treating of the Spirits that animate or actuate them is a lame deluding unedifying thing As it is to treat of a Kingdom an Army a School without mentioning a King a Captain or a Schoolmaster or as to describe a Gun without any mention of Gunpowder or shooting Or a Clock or Watch without the Poise or Spring or Motion or a Book or words without the sense and so of a Man without a Soul or Reason or a Brute without any Life or Sense I mean when we speak of Compound Beings and not meerly of Corporeity in the notion as abstracted from all Vital moving principles XIV 2. And what the true notion of Matter or Corporeity it self is it is but darkly and uncertainly known how confidently soever some decantate their moles or quantity divisibility or discerptibility and impenetrability Whether Fire be material and divisible and impenetrable and how far Fire and Spirits herein differ and so Spirits and Bodies and how far sensible must enter the definition of Corpus is not easily known XV. 3. Nor do we well know the Nature of the simple Corporeal Elements whether they agree only in materiality quantity and divisibility and impenetrability and whether they differ only in magnitude shape sight and contexture of parts or by any essentiating Formal Virtues or both or as Mr. Got thought by a differencing proper spirit XVI 4. How little of the Divine Artifice is known in the composition of mixt Bodies And we know of no existent Simples in the world that are not found only
by Certainty to overcome it 11. When a man hath attained a satisfying degree of perception he is capable still of clearer perception Even as when in the heating of water after all the sensible cold is gone the water may grow hotter and hotter still So after all sensible doubting is gone the perception may go clearer still 12. But still the Objective Certainty is the same that is There is that Evidence in the object which is in suo genere sufficient to notifie the thing to a prepared mind 13. But this sufficiency is a respective proportion and therefore as it respecteth mans mind in common it supposeth that by due means and helps and industry the mind may be brought certainly to discern this Evidence But if you denominate the sufficiency of the Evidence from its respect to the present disposition of mens minds so it is almost as various as mens minds are For recipitur ad modum recipientis and that is a certifying sufficient Evidence of truth to one man which to a thousand others is not so much as an Evidence of probability Therefore mediate and immediate sufficiency and certainty of Evidence must be distinguished From all this I may infer 1. That though God be the Original and End of all Verities and is ever the First in ordine essendi efficiendi and so à Jove principium in methodo syntheticâ yet he is not the primum notum the first known in ordine cognoscendi nor the beginning in methodo inquisitivâ though in such Analytical methods as begin at the ultimate end he is also the first Though all truth and evidence be from God yet two things are more evident to man than God is and but two viz. 1. The present evident objects of sense 2. Our own internal Acts of Intellective Cogitation and Volition And these being supposed the Being of God is the third evident Certainty in the World. 2. If it be no disparagement to God himself that he is less certainly known of us than sensibles and our Internal acts de esse it is then no disparagement to the Scripture and supernatural Truths that they are less certainly known Seeing they have not so clear evidence as the Being of God hath 3. The certainty of Scripture Truths is mixt of almost all other kinds of certainty conjunct 1. By sense and Intellective perception of things sensed the Hearers and See-ers of Christ and his Apostles knew the words and Miracles 2. By the same sense we know what is written in the Bible and in Church History concerning it and the attesting matters of Fact And also what our Teachers say of it 3. By certain Intellectual inference I know that this History of the words and fact is true 4. By Intellection of a natural principle I know that God is true 5. By inference I know that all his Word is true 6. By sense I know Intellectually receiving it by sense that this or that is written in the Bible and part of that word 7. By further inference therefore I know that it is true 8. By Intuitive knowledge I am certain that I have the Love of God and Heavenly desires and a Love of holiness and hatred of sin c. 9. By certain inference I know that this is the special work of the Spirit of Christ by his Gospel Doctrine 10. By experience I find the predictions of this Word fulfilled 11. Lastly By Inspiration the Prophets and Apostles knew it to be of God. And our certain Belief ariseth from divers of these and not from any one alone 5. There are two extreams here to be avoided and both held by some not seeing how they contradict themselves I. Of them that say that Faith hath no Evidence but the merit of it lyeth in that we believe without Evidence Those that understand what they say when they use these words mean that Things evident to sense as such that is Incomplex sensible objects are not the objects of Faith. We live by Faith and not by sight God is not visible Heaven and its Glory Angels and perfected Spirits are not visible Future Events Christs coming the Resurrection Judgment are not yet visible It doth not yet appear that is to sense what we shall be Our Life is hid from our own and others senses with Christ in God. We see not Christ when we rejoice in him with joy unspeakable and full of glory Thus Faith is the evidence of things not seen or evident to sight But ignorant Persons have turned all to another sense as if the objects of Faith had no ascertaining Intellectual Evidence When as it is impossible for mans mind to understand and believe any thing to be true without perceiving evidence of its truth as it is for the Eye to see without Light. As Rich. Hooker saith in his Eccl. Pol. Let men say what they will men can truly believe no further than they perceive Evidence It is a natural Impossibility For Evidence is nothing but the perceptibility of the Truth And can we perceive that which is not perceptible It 's true that evidence from Divine Revelation is oft without any Evidence ex natura rei But it may be nevertheless a fuller and more satisfying evidence Some say there is Evidence of Credibility but not of Certainty Not of natural Certainty indeed But in Divine Revelations though not in humane evidence of Credibility is Evidence of Certainty because we are certain that God cannot lie And to say I will believe though without Evidence of Truth is a contradiction or hypocritical self-deceit For your will believeth not And your understanding receiveth no Truth but upon evidence that it is Truth It acteth of itself per modum naturae necessarily further than it is sub imperio Voluntatis And the will ruleth it not despotically Nor at all quoad Specificationem but only quoad exercitium All therefore that your will can do which maketh Faith a moral Virtue is to be free from those vicious habits and acts in itself which may hinder faith and to have those holy dispositions and acts in itself which may help the understanding to do its proper Office which is to believe evident truth on the testimony of the revealer because his Testimony is sufficient Evidence The true meaning of a good Christian when he saith I will believe is I am truly willing to believe and a perverse will shall not hinder me and I will not think of suggestions to the contrary But the meaning of the formal hypocrite when he saith I will believe is I will cast away all doubtful thoughts out of my mind and I will be as careless as if I did believe or I will believe the Priest or my Party and call it a believing God. Evidence is an essentiating part of the Intellects act As there is no Act without an Object so there is no object sub formali ratione objecti without evidence Even as there is no sight but of an Illustrated
it thus with extraordinary diligence but with different successes And Lyra with other old ones turn all quite another way And then come Grotius and Dr. Hammond and contradict both sides and make it all saving a few Verses to have been fulfilled many Ages since And can the unlearned or the unstudied part of Ministers then with any modesty pretend a certainty where so many and such men differ I know it is said Blessed is he that readeth and they that hear the words of this Prophecy and keep those things which are written therein But that proveth no more than 1. That some of it as ch 1 2 3. is plain and commonly intelligible 2. That it is a desirable thing to understand the rest and worthy mens endeavour in due time and rank and he that can attain to certainty may be glad of it I pass by the darkness of many Types and Prophecies of Christ in the Old Testament and how little the Jews or the Apostles themselves till after Christs Resurrection understood them With very many other obscurities which yet are not written in vain nay which make up the true perfection of the whole IX There are very many proverbial Speeches in the Scripture which are not to be understood as the words properly signifie but as the sense of those Proverbs then was among the Jews But disuse hath so totally obliterated the knowledge of the sense of many of them that no man living can certainly understand them X. There are many Texts which have words adapted to the Places the Animals the Utensils the Customs the Coins the Measures the Vegetables c. of that place and time which are some hard and some impossible now to be certainly understood And therefore such as Bochart Salmasius Casaubone Scaliger c. have done well to add new Light to our conjectures but leaving great uncertainty still XI Because the Jewish Law is by Paul plainly said to be ceased or done away it remaineth very difficult to be certain of abundance of passages in the Old Testament how far they are obligatory to us For when they now bind no otherwise than as the continued Law of nature or as reassumed by Christ into his special Law where the latter is not found in the former there is often insuperable difficulty For most lyeth upon the proof of a parity of Reason which puts us upon trying cases hardly tryed unless we knew more of the reason of all those Laws As about Vows and Dispensations Num. 30. about prohibited degrees of Marriage and such like which makes Divines so much differ about the obligation of the Judicials of which see Junius vol. 1. p. 1861 c. de Polit. Mos observ and about Usury Priesthood Magistrates power in Religion and many such XII There are abundance of Texts which only open the substance of the matter in hand to us and say nothing about abundance of difficulties of the manner and many circumstances as the manner of the Divine influx and the Spirits operation on the Soul c. And here all that which is unrevealed must needs be unknown XIII There are many Precepts which were local personal particular and so temporary and bind not universally all Persons at all times afterwards Such as the Rechabites Precepts from their Father and such as the Love Feasts the Kiss of Love Womens Veil and long Hair Mens being uncovered c. Now it is very hard to know in all instances whether the Precepts were thus temporary or universal and durable which makes Divines differ about the Anointing of the Sick the Office of Deacons and Deaconesses the Power of Bishops and Extent of their Diocesses the Eating things strangled and Blood against which Chr. Beckman in his Exercit. hath abundance of shrewd Arguments though few are of his mind In these cases few reach a Certainty and none so full a Certainty as in plainer things XIV It is very hard to be Certain when and how far Examples of holy men in Scripture bind us Though I have elsewhere proved that wherever the Apostles practice was the Execution of their Commission for setling Church Orders in which Christ promised them the help of his Spirit their Practice was obligatory Yet in many instances the obligation of Examples is very doubtful Which occasioneth the Controversies about imitating John Baptist's Life in the Wilderness and Anna and about Lent and about Baptizing by dipping over Head and about the Lords Supper whether it should be Administred to a Family or at Evening only or after Supper or Sitting or in a private House c. And about washing Feet and many Church Orders and Affairs XV. There are many things in Scripture that are spoken but once or twice and that but as on the by and not very plainly And we cannot be so Certain of any Doctrine founded on these as on passages frequently and plainly written XVI There are so many seeming differences in Scripture especially about Numbers as that if they be reconcileable few or none in the World have yet found out the way If we mention them not our selves such paultry Fellows will do it as Bened. Spinosa in his Tractatus Theolog. Polit. I will not cite any but desire the Learned Reader to consider well of what that Learned and Godly man Ludov. Capellus saith in his Critic Sacr. l. c. 10. and l. 6. c. 7 8. I own not his supposition of a better Hebrew Copy used by the Sept. I think an impartial considerer of his instances will confess that as God never promised all or any of the Scribes or Printers of the Bible any infallible Spirit that they should never write or print a word falsly and as it is certain by the various Lections that many such there have been in many and most Books so there is no one Scribe that had a promise above the rest nor any one Hebrew or Greek Copy which any man is sure is absolutely free from such miswritings For how should we be sure of that one above all the rest And I wish the Learned Reader to consider Bibliander's Preface to his Hebr. Grammar and Casaubone's Exercit. 1. § 28. and Pellicanus his Preface to his Coment on the Bible Hierom on Mic. 5.2 is too gross de Matth. 2. Quod Testimonium nec Haebraico nec 70 Interpretibus convenire c. Let him read the rest that will which is harsher he that will not confess miswritings of numbers and some names and words heretofore as well as some misprintings now doth but by his pretended Certainty tempt men to question the rest for the sake of that and injureth the Sacred Word XVII We have not the same degree of Certainty of the Canonicalness or Divineness of every Book of Scripture Though they are all Gods Word they have not all the same Evidence that they are so The New Testament had a fuller Attestation from Heaven for its Evidence to man than most of the Old had And of the
they had never so torn the Churches by their Animosities nor resisted and wearied peaceable Melanchthon nor frustrated so many Conventions and Treaties for Concord as they have done Bucer had not been so censured agreement had not been made so impossible All Dury's Travels had not been so uneffectual Schlusserburgius had not found so many Heresies to fill up his Catalogue with nor Calovius so much matter for his virulent Pen nor so many equalled Calvinism with Turcism nor had Calixtus had such scornful Satyrs written against him nor the great Peace-makers Lud. Crocius Bergii Martinius Camero Amyraldus Testardus Capellus Placaeus Davenant Ward Hall and now Le Blank had so little acceptance and success Had it not been for this spreading Plague the over-valuing of our own understandings and the accounting our crude conceits for certainties all these Church Wars had been prevented or soon ended All those excellent endeavours for peace had been more successful and we had all been One. Had it not been for this neither Arminians nor Antiarminians had ever so bitterly contended nor so sharply censured one another nor written so many confident condemning Volumes against each other which in wise mens Eyes do more condemn the authors and SELF-CONCEIT or PRETENDED KNOWLEDGE should have been the title of them all How far I am able to prove that almost all their bitter and zealous contentions are about Uncertainties and Words the Reader may perceive in my Preface to the Grotian Religion and if God will I shall fuller manifest to the World. The Synod of Dort had not had so great a work of it nor the Breme and Brittain Divines so difficult a task to bring and hold them to that moderation of expressions which very laudably they have done one of the noblest successful attempts for peace though little noted which these ages have made In a word almost all the contentions of Divines the sects and factions the unreconciled fewds the differences in religion which have been the Harvest of the Devil and his Emissaries in the World have come from Pretended Knowledge and taking Uncertainties for Certain Truths I will not meddle with the particular Impositions of Princes and Prelates not so much as with the German Interim Nor the Oaths which in some place they take to their Synodical Decrees much less will I meddle at all with any Impositions Oaths Subscriptions Declarations or usages of the Kingdom where I live As the Law forbiddeth me to contradict them so I do not at all here examine or touch them but wholly pass them by which I tell the Reader once for all that he may know how to interpret all that I say Nor is it the error of Rulers that I primarily detect but of humane corrupted Nature and all sorts of men Though where such an Errour prevaileth alas it is of far sadder consequence in a Publick person a Magistrate or a Pastor that presumeth to the hurt of Publick Societies than of a private man who erreth almost to himself alone I profess to thee Reader that next to God's so much deserting so Great a part of this world there is nothing under the Sun of all the affairs of mankind that hath so taken up my thoughts with mixtures of indignation wonder pity and sollicitude for a cure as this one vice A PROUD or UNHUMBLED UNDERSTANDING by which men live in PRETENDED KNOWLEDGE and FAITH to the deceit of themselves and others the bitter censuring and persecuting of Dissenters yea of their Modest Suspending Brethren tear Churches and Kingdoms and will give no Peace nor Hopes of Peace to themselves their Neighbours or the World Lord Is there no Remedy no Hope from Thee though there be none from Man 1. Among Divines themselves that should not only have Knowledge enough to know their own Ignorance but to Guide the People of God into the ways of Truth and Love and Peace O how lamentably doth this vice prevail To avoid all offence I will not here at all touch on the case of any that are supposed to have a hand in any of the sufferings of me and others of my mind or of any that in Points of Conformity differ from me Remember that I meddle not with them at all But even those that do no way differ among themselves as Sect and Sect or at least that all pretend to Principles of Forbearance Gentleness and Peace yet are wofully sick of this disease And yet that I may wrong none I will premise this publick Declaration to the World that in the Countrey where I lived God in great mercy cast my lot among a company of so humble peaceable faithful Ministers and People as free from this Vice as any that ever I knew in the world who as they kept up full Concord among themselves without the least disagreement that I remember and kept out Sects and Heresies from the People so their converse was the joy of my life and the remembrance of it will be sweet to me while I live and especially the great success of our labours and the quiet and concord of our several Flocks which was promoted by the Pastors humility and concord Though we kept up constant Disputations none of them ever turned to spleen or displeasure or discord among us And I add in thankfulness to God that I am now acquainted with many Ministers in and about London of greatest note and labour and patience and Success who are of the same Spirit Humble and Peaceable and no confident troublers of the Churches with their Censoriousness and high esteem of their own opinions Who trade only in the simple Truths of Christianity and love a Christian as a Christian and joyn not with Back-biters nor factious self-conceited men but study only to win Souls to Christ and to live according to the Doctrine which they preach And both the former and these have these ten years since they were ejected continued their humility and peaceableness fearing God and honouring the King. And I further add that those Private Christians with whom I most converse are many of them of the same Strain suspecting their own understandings and speaking evil of no man so forwardly as of themselves So that in these Ministers and people of my most intimate acquaintance experience convinceth me that this grand disease of corrupted nature is cureable and that God hath a people in the world that have learnt of Christ to be meek and lowly who have the wisdom from above which is first pure and then peaceable gentle easy to be intreated full of mercy and good fruits and the fruit of mercy is sown in peace of these peace-makers I see in them a true Conformity to Christ and a grand difference between them and the furious fiery pretenders to more wisdom And the two sorts of Wisemen and Wisdom excellently described by James Chap. 3. I have seen in two sorts of Religious people among us most lively exemplified before our Eyes God hath
and as proud self-seeking men that will approve of none but those that flatter them and are of their way Some such there may be But sure all are not such Why do you not desire the Judgment of the wisest most impartial men but take up with the applause of unlearned persons that are of your own mind and way and magnify you for humouring them So you shall hear Empyricks and She-Physicians vilify Doctors of Physick as men that have less knowledge than they and are so Proud and Covetous and Dishonest that there is no trusting them When Pretended Knowledge must have so base a Cloak it is the greater sin 6. And it is the heinouser sin when they venture to do heinous mischief by it As a Papist a Quaker or a Separatist will in his confidence be a perverter of others and a Condemner of the Just and a defamer of those that are against him and a troubler of the Church and World. He that in his self-conceitedness dare resist the wisest and his Teachers and Rulers and set Countries on Fire is wickedly presumptuous So in the practice of Physick when people will be self-conceited when the Lives of others lie upon it and a silly Fellow or Woman will venture to purge to let blood to give this or that who know neither the disease nor proper cure 7. It is therefore a heinous sin in Rulers who must judge for the life and death of others or for the peace or misery of thousands about them I mean Pastors and Commanders in Armies and Navies and other Governours on whom the publick welfare of the Church or Army or Navy or Countrey doth depend O how wise should that person be whose errours may cost thousands so dear as their destruction Or if their understandings be not extraordinary how cautelous should they be in judging upon hearing the wisest and hearing dissenters and not only Flatterers or Consenters and hearing men of several minds and hearing all Witnesses and Evidence and hearing every man speak for himself and after all considering throughly of it Specially of Laws and Wars and Impositions in Religion where thousands of Conscience say what you can will expect Satisfaction When a Woman called to Antigonus to hear her cause and do her Justice he told her that he could not have leisure She answered you should not have while to be King then Whereupon he heard her and did her right Had it been to an inferior Judge she had spoken reason 8. Lastly Pretended Certainty is the greater sin when it is falsly fathered on God. But the Pope and Council dare pretend that God hath promised them Infallibility and God hath certified them that the consecrated Bread is no Bread and that our senses are all deceived and God hath made the Pope the universal Ruler of the World or Church and made him and his Council the only Judges by which all men must know what is the word of God. So when Fanaticks will pretend that by Revelation Visions or Inspirations of the Spirit God hath assured them that this or that is the meaning of a Text which they understand not or the truth in such or such a controversy Alas among too many well meaning persons God is pretended for a multitude of sinful errors And they that preach false Doctrine will do it as the old Prophet spake to the young as from the Lord And they that rail at godliness and they that censure backbite cast out or persecute their Brethren will do it as Rabshakeh Hath not God sent me c. Men will not make any snares for the Church or their Brethrens Consciences but in the name of God They will not divide the Church nor cast out Infants nor refuse Communion with their Brethren but in the name of God. One man saith God forbiddeth him all Book Prayers or all Imposed Forms of Prayer And another saith God forbiddeth him all but such And all bely God and add this heinous abuse of his holy word and name unto their sin Chap. 15. Some special aggravations more of this sin in Students and Pastors which should deter them from pretended Knowledge or prefidence TO such I will suppose that to name the Evils may suffice on my part without sharp amplifications Though I have spoken to you first in what is said I will briefly add 1. That this sin will make you slothful students Few study hard who are quickly confident of their first conceptions 2. While you do study it keepeth out Knowledge You are too full of your selves to receive easily from others 3. It is the Common Parent of Errour and Heresy Ignorance is the Mother and Pride the Father of them all And Prefidence and Pretended Knowledge is but Proud Ignorance in another name 4. What a life of precious time will you waste in following the erroneous thoughts of your bewildred minds 5. As food altereth the temperament of the body which it nourisheth so the very temperament of your minds and wills and affections will become vain and frothy and shadowy or malignant and perverse according to the quality of your Errour 6. It is the common Parent of Superstition It defileth God's Worship with Humane Inventions with duties and sins of our own making All such mens dreams will seem to them to be the Laws of God. 7. It will entail a corrupt Education of Youth upon us and consequently a corrupt degenerate kind of Learning and so a degenerate Ministry on the Churches When Youths are possessed with abundance of Uncertainties under the name of Learning and Religion it will grow the custom to Teach and Talk and Live accordingly Do I say It will do If the Schoolmens Errour in this deserve but half as much as Faber Valla Hutten Erasmus charge upon them you should hear and take warning Not to avoid the most accurate knowledge by the hardest studies but to avoid pretending that you know what you do not 8. And you will make vain strife and contention about vanity your very trade and business when you come abroad in the world They that make Uncertainties or Errours to be their studies and honourable Learning must keep up the honour of it by Living as they Learnt and talking vainly for the vanities of their minds 9. And you are like hereby to become the chiefest Instruments of Satan to trouble the Church either with Heresies Schisms or Persecutions 10. And truly it should much turn your hearts against it to know that it is a continual habit or exercise of Pride And Pride the Devil's sin is one of the most heinous and odious to God. If you hate any sin you should hate Pride And it is one of the worst sorts of Pride too As Nature hath three Principles active Power Intellect and Will and Man three Excellencies Greatness Wisdom and Goodness so Pride hath these three Great Objects Men are proud that they are Greater or Wiser or Better than others That is They think themselves Greater or Wiser
may be used Holily as God's mercies to raise us unto spiritual delights and to serve him the better our selves and to be helpful to others And for these ends they are given us and may be sought and used when yet as they are the fuel of Lust they are the snares of Satan the Mammon the God of this World the damnation of Souls So is it with the knowledge of the creature sanctified and made serviceable to God and Holiness it is of great utility but out of its place it is poison and perdition Yea as Appetite and Sensual Delight is Necessary while we are in a body in which the Soul must operate and receive Even so is some knowledge of Creatures and common things called Learning of Necessity as a means to better And while we see as in a glass we must not cast away the glass nor neglect it though it be but a help to see the species I conclude then 1. That it is hard to say that any man can know too much except it be 1. Matter of Temptation 2. And of penal Knowledge raising terrours and tormenting the Soul. In these two cases we may know too much And I fear some mens knowledge is much of the first sort But so far am I from disswading any from true knowledge or studies to attain it that I think Ignorance is the Mother as Pride is the Father of all heresies and almost all sins And that the lazy student shall never be wise though one may take his years in the University the greatness of his Library or the titles which he hath obtained instead of Wisdom and another as slothful may boast that the Spirit hath saved him the labour of long and hard studies for my part I shall account both sorts as they are and leave them to be admired by such as themselves And verily they have their reward He that will be wise must spare no pains and be diverted by no worldly things but take wisdom for his welfare here and the getting and using it for all his work Never was slothful or impatient or presumptuous person wise 2. God hath not made and set before us his works in vain Great and wonderful are all his works sought out of them that have pleasure therein The Image of his Power Wisdom and Goodness is imprinted on them all Who can look up to the Sun and Moon and Stars to the vast and numerous Globes above us to this Earth and all its furniture and inhabitants and not see the footsteps of the Great and Wise and Good Creator and be edified and made more holy that doth not use the Eye of sense alone while he winketh with the eye of reason Our Redeemer came to recover us to the Knowledge Love and Obedience of our Creator and by Faith to lead us up to the love of God and to sanctifie us to our Makers praise and Service Far was it from his design to call us from studying the works of Creation which he prepareth us better to understand and use Nor would he deprive Reason of its Spectacles but help us to better than we had before Mans wit and Tongue are apt to be so irregular that we have need of the Rules of true Logick to keep them to order and save them from deceit Too little true Logick and Philosophy is much of their unhappiness who think they have enough to deserve veneration and applause 3. But all this is dreaming insignificant incoherent nonsence deliration worse than Childrens chat as it troubleth the world more if God be not the Beginning Guide and End of it and if we know not how to please him and be saved And if all Learning be not directly or indirectly a Learning to know God and life eternal When Conscience is awakened all things are as dreams and signify nothing in comparison of God and Life eternal to be obtained by Christ When men come to die the most Learned die in this mind And further than it is Divine and Holy and Felicitating they cry out of all their Fame and Learning Vanity of Vanities all is Vanity Though Learning be the most splendid of all Vanities Fear God and Keep his Commandments is the end of true Learning and the whole Learning of Man. Of writing many Books there is no end and much reading is a weariness to the flesh and he that increaseth Knowledge Contracteth Envy and Contradiction and increaseth sorrow But sanctified Learning maketh a man indeed so it be true and not false pretended Learning 4. Therefore the industry of a mans study the most of his time the Zeal of his Soul must be laid out on God and the great and endless concernments of his own and others Souls And Learning must be Desired Esteemed Sought and Used according to its usefulness to these high and glorious Ends Then it is the lower part of wisdom Which all that want it must esteem and honour and desire Else it is a dream and folly which leaveth the awakened Soul in shame But I have been too long on this IV. Consider next that as this lower sort of Learning is presupposed by Christ as true and the desire of it Cured as it is a lust so Plainness and Intelligibleness were altogether necessary to his ends what came he on Earth to do but to reconcile us to God and make known his Kingdom and his Love to sinners To procure us pardon and a Spirit of Vivification Illumination and Sanctification And the word that must be the means of this must be fitted to its end and be intelligible to the unlearned or else he should have been the Saviour of a few Learned men only and not of the World. Kings and Parliaments write their Laws in a stile suitable to the matter And so do men draw up their Covenants and Princes their Pardons and Physicians their Bills and Directions And none of these useth to write a Grammar or Logick instead of their proper work nor to fill their writings with Ludicrous Logical Tricks and Toys He that is but to tell men how to be saved from sin and Hell and brought to Heaven and live so here that he may live with God and Angels for ever must speak in plainness and in good earnest V. And consider that the Scripture is not void of so much Logick and Philosophy as is suitable to its design In a well flesht body the distinction and compagination of the parts are hid which in an ugly Sceleton are discerned So the Scripture is a Body of Essentials Integrals and Accidentals of Religion and every unstudied fellow cannot anatomize it But it hath its real and excellent Method for all that it is hid to the unskilful There is a Method of Scripture Theology which is the most accurate that ever the World knew in Morality I have drawn up the Body of Theology into Schemes In which I doubt not but I have shewn that the Method of Theology contained in the holy Scriptures is
side and the other to receive and rashly tell about lies of one another that I confess I am grown to take little heed of what such say in such a case unless the report continue a year uncontrolled For it 's common for them to tell those things as unquestionable which a few months prove false And yet never to manifest any repentance but to go on with the like one month disproving what the former hatcht and vended And indeed the very wisest and best of men are guilty of so much Ignorance Temerity Suspiciousness of others partiality c. That we must believe them though far sooner than others yet still with a reservâ—â—o change our minds if we find them mistaken 〈◊〉 still on supposition that they are fallible persons and that all men are Liars VII Another great cause of pretended false Knowledge and Confidence is the unhappy prejudices which our minds contract even in our Childhood before we have time and wit and Conscience to try things by true deliberation Children and Youth must receive much upon trust or else they can learn nothing But then they have not wit to proportion their apprehensions to the Evidence whether of Credibility or Certainty And so fame and tradition and education and the Countreys Vote do become the ordinary Parents of many Lies and folly maketh us to fasten so fearlesly in our fâ—rst apprehensions that they keep open the door to abundance of more falshoods And it must be clear Teachers or great impartial studies of a self-denying mind with a great blessing of God that must deliver us from prejudice and undeceive us And therefore all the World seeth that almost all men are of the Religion of their Country or their Parents be it never so absurd Though with the Mahometans they believe the Nonsence of a very sot once reading a quarter of whose Alcoran one would think should cure a man of Common reason of any inclination to his belief And among the Japonians even the eloquent Bonzii believe in Amida and Xaca To mention the belief of the Chinenses the People of Pegu Siam and many other such yea the Americans the Brasilians Lappians c. that correspond with Devils would be a sad instance of the unhappiness of mens first apprehensions and education And what doth the foresaid instance of Popery come short herein which tells us how Prejudice and Education and Company can make men deny all mens common sence and believe common unseen Miracles pretended in the stead VIII Another cause is the mistaking of the nature of the duty of submitting our judgment to our Superiours and Teachers especially to the Multitude or the Church or Antiquity No doubt but much reverence and a humane belief is due to the Judgment of our Teachers credibly made known But this is another thing quite different 1. From knowing by Evidence 2. And from believing God of which before and after IX Another cause is base slothfulness which makes men take up with the judgment of those in most reputation for Power Wisdom or Number to save them the labour of searching after the scientifical Evidence of things or the certain Evidence of Divine Revelations X. Another frequent cause is an appearance of something in the Truth which frighteneth men from it either for want of a clear methodical advantageous representation or by some difficult objection or some miscarriage in the utterance carriage or life of them that seem most zealous for it such little things deceive dark man And when he is turned from the Truth he thinks that the contrary Errour may be embraced without fear XI Another great cause of Confidence in false Conceits is the byass of some personal Interest prevailing with a corrupted Will and the mixture of Sense and Passion in the Judgment For as interested men hardly believe what seemeth against them and easily believe that which they would have to be true so Sense and Passion or Affections usually so bear down Reason that they think it their right to possess the Throne Not but that Sense is the only discerner of its own sensible Object as such and Reason by Sense as it is intelligible But that 's not the matter in hand But the Sensualist forceth his Reason to call that Best for him which his Sense is most delighted with and that Worst which most offendeth Sense The Drunkard will easily judge that his drinking is good for him and the Glutton that his pleasant meats are lawful and the Time-waster that his Plays are lawful and the Fornicator the wrathful revenger c. that their lusts and passions are lawful because they think that they have Feeling on their side It 's hard to carry an upright Judgment against Sense and Passion XII Sometimes a strong deluded Imagination maketh men exceeding confident in Errour some by Melancholy and some by a natural weakness of Reason and strength of Phantasie and some by misapprehensions in Religion grow to think that every strong conceit which doth but come in suddenly at reading or hearing or thinking on such a Text or in time of earnest prayer especially if it deeply affect themselves is certainly some suggestion or inspiration of God's Spirit And hence many Errours have troubled poor Souls and the Church of God which afterward they have themselves retracted Hence are the confidence of some ignorant Christians in expounding difficult Scriptures Prophecies and the boldness of others in expounding dark Providences and also in foretelling by their own surmises things to come XIII And not a few run into this mischief in some extreams by seeing others run into Errour on the other side Some are so offended at the credulity of the weak that they will grow confident against plain certainties themselves As because there are many feigned Miracles Apparitions Possessions and Witchcrafts in the World divulged by the Credulity of the injudicious therefore they will more foolishly be confident that there are no such things at all And because they see some weak persons impute more of their opinions performances and affections to God's Spirit than they ought therefore they grow mad against the true operations of the Spirit and confident that there is no such thing Some deride Praying by the Spirit and Preaching by the Spirit and Living by the Spirit when as they may as well deride understanding willing working by a Reasonable Soul no holy thing being holily done without God's Spirit any more than any act of life and reason without the Soul And they may on the same grounds deride all that Live not after the flesh and that are Christians Rom. 8.5 6 7 8 9 13. or that Love God or that seek Salvation Yea some run so far from spiritual Fanaticisms that they deny the very Being of Spirits and many confidently set up a dead Image of true Religion in bitter hatred and opposition of all that hath Life and serious Holiness So mad are some made by seeing some feverish persons dote XIV Another Cause
Holy Light is that Knowledge and Belief which kindleth Love and causeth a Holy Life Holy Love is that complacency of the Will in God and Goodness which is kindled by Holy Life and Light and operateth in Holy practice Any one of these thus described where Love is the Heart of all is an infallible mark of Holiness But all other Graces and Duties which are but the Integrals of Holiness are in all Characters and Promises to be understood with a caeteris paribus that is supposing them to be animated with Holy Love and caused by Holy Life and Light Knowledge and Belief And that God doth most certainly Love all that Love him besides the forementioned proofs from Scripture is further evident 1. The Love of God and Goodness is the Divine Nature And God cannot but Love his own Nature in us It is his Image which as in its several degrees he Loveth for himself and next to himself 2. The Love of God is the Rectitude of Man's Soul its soundness health and beauty And God Loveth the Rectitude of his creatures 3. The Love of God is the final perfect operation of the Soul even that end which it was created and redeemed for And God Loveth to have his works attain their end and to see them in their perfection 4. The Love of God is the Goodness of the Soul it self And Goodness is Amiableness and must needs be Loved by Him that is Goodness and Perfection Himself 5. The Love of God is our uniting adhesion to him And God that first draweth up the Soul to this Union will not himself reject us and avoid it 6. Love is a pregnant powerful pleasing Grace It delivereth up our selves and all that we have to God It delighteth in duty It conquereth difficulties It contemneth competitors and trampleth on temptations It accounteth nothing too much nor too dear for God. Love is the Soul's nature appetite and pondus according to which it will ordinarily act A man's Love is his Will his Heart himself And if God have our Love he hath our selves and our all So that God cannot but Love the Soul that truly Loveth him as God. But here are some Doubts to be resolved Q. 1. What if the same Soul have Love and Sin mixed or sincere Love in a degree that is sinfully defective and so is consistent with something of its contrary God must hate that Sin How then can he Love that Soul Ans Remember still that Diversity is only in us and not in God Therefore God's Will is related and denominated towards us just as its object is All that is Good in us God Loveth All that is Evil in us he hateth Where Goodness is predominant there God's Love is predominant or greatest from this Relation and Connotation Where Sin is predominant God's aversation displicency or hatred is the chief And we may well expect that the effects be answerable Obj. But we are beloved as Elect before Conversion Ans That was answered before That is God from Eternity purposed to make us Good and Amiable and Happy if you will call that as you may his Love. Obj. But we are beloved in Christ for his Righteousness and Goodness and not for our own Ans The latter is false The former is thus true For the Merits of Christ's Righteousness and Goodness God will pardon our sins and make us Good Holy and Happy and will Love us as the Holy Members of his Son that is both as Related to him and as Holy. Obj. But if God must needs Love sincere imperfect Lovers of him as such with a predominant Love which will not damn them then sin might have been pardoned without Christ's death and the sinner be loved without his Righteousness if he had but sincerely loved God. Ans The supposition is false that a sinner could have Loved God without Pardon and the Spirit purchased by the Death and Righteousness of Christ God perfectly Loveth the perfected Souls in Glory for their own holy perfection But they never attained it but by Christ And God Loveth us here according to the measure of our Love to him But no man can thus Love him till his sin be pardoned for which he was deprived of the Spirit which must kindle Love. And imperfect Love is ever joyned with imperfect Pardon whatever some falsly say to the contrary I mean that Love which is sinfully imperfect Quest 2. Doth not God's Loving us make us Happy And if so it must make us Holy. And then none that he Loveth will fall away from him Whereas the fallen Angels and Adam Loved him and yet fell from him How then were they beloved by him Ans I before told you that God's Will or Love is first Efficient causing Good and then Final being pleased in the Good that is caused God's Efficient Will or Love doth so far make men Holy and Happy as they are such even efficiently But God's Will or Love as it is our Causa finalis and the termiting Object of our Love and is pleased in us and approveth us is not the Efficient Cause of our Holiness and Happiness but the objective and perfect constitutive Cause Now you must further note that God's Benevolent Efficient Will or Love doth give men various degrees of Holiness To Adam in Innocency he gave but such a degree and upon such terms as he could lose and cast away which he did But to the blessed in Glory he giveth that which they shall never lose These degrees are from God's Efficient Love or Will which therefore causeth some to persevere when it left Adam to himself to stand or fall But it is not God's Final Love of Complacency as such that causeth our perseverance For Adam had this Love as long as he Loved God and stood and he after lost it so that it is not that Final Complacency which is the Terminus of our Holiness and Constitutive Cause of our Happiness which alone will secure the perpetuity of either of them Obj. Thus you make God mutable in his Love as Loving Adam more before his fall than after Ans I told you Loving and not Loving the Creature are no changes in God but in the Creature It is Man that is mutable and not God. It is only the Relation of God's Will to the Creature as varying in it self and the extrinsick denomination by connotation of a changed Object which is changed as to God. As the Sun is not changed when you wink and when you open your Eyes Nor a Pillar changed when your motion sets it sometimes on your right hand and sometimes on your left 5. Lastly It must be noted as included in the Text That our own Loving God is not the only or total notion of our end perfection or felicity but to be Known and Loved by God is the other part which must be taken in to make up the total notion of our end In our Love God is considered as the Object But in God's Complacential Love to us
what it is good for and how to get and use it or he that can only tell you whether it be Copper or Silver or Gold not knowing well what any of these are and knoweth nothing of the Impress or Value or Use I tell you the humble holy person that seeth God in all and knoweth all things to be Of Him and By Him and To Him and Loveth Him in and for all and serveth Him by all is the best Philosopher and hath the greatest most excellent and profitable Knowledge In comparison of which the unholy Learning of the world is well called Foolishness with God. For I believe not that Paraphraser who would perswade us that it is but the Phanatick conceits and pretensions of the Gnosticks that the Apostle here and elsewhere speaketh of But I rest satisfied that it is primarily the unholy Arts and Sciences of the Philosophical Heathens and secondarily the Platonick Hereticks pretensions to extraordinary Wisdom because of their speculations about Angels Spirits and other invisible and mysterious things which they thought were peculiarly opened unto them Doting about questions that engender strife and not edification and do increase to more ungodliness is the true description of unholy Learning 6. The Lovers of God are wise for perpetuity They see before them They know what is to come even as far as to Eternity They know what will be best at last and what will be valued and serve our turn in the hour of our extremity They judge of things as all will judge of them and as they shall constantly judge of them for ever But others are wise but for a few hours or a present job They see not before them They are preparing for repentance They are shamefully mutable in their Judgments magnifying those pleasures wealth and honours to day which they vilifie and cry out against at death and to eternity A pang of sickness the sight of a grave the sentence of death the awakening of Conscience can change their Judgments and make them speak in other Language and confess a thousand times over that they were fools And if they come to any thing like Wisdom 't is too late when time is past and hope is gone But the godly know the day of their visitation and are wise in time as knowing the season of all duties and the duties of every season And as some Schoolmen say that All things are known to the Glorified in speculo Trinitatis so I may say that All things are morally and savingly known to him that knoweth and Loveth God as the Efficient Governour and End of all Yet to avoid mistakes and cavils remember that I take no true Knowledge as contemptible And when I truly say that he knoweth nothing as he ought to know that doth not know and Love his God and is not wise to his duty and salvation yet if this Fundamental Knowledge be presupposed we should build all other useful Knowledge on it to the utmost of our capacity And from this one stock may spring and spread a thousand branches which may all bear fruit I would put no limits to a Christian's desires and endeavours to know but that he desire only to know useful and revealed things Every degree of knowledge tendeth to more And every known Truth befriendeth others and like Fire tendeth to the spreading of our knowledge to all neighbour Truths that are intelligible And the want of acquaintance with some one Truth among an hundred may hinder us from knowing rightly most of the rest or may breed an hundred Errours in us As the absence of one wheel or particle in a Watch or the ignorance of it may put all the rest into an useless disorder What if I say that Wisdom lieth more in knowing the things that belong to salvation to publick good to life health and solid comfort than in knowing how to sing or play on the Lute or to speak or carry our selves with commendable decency c. It doth not follow that all these are of no worth at all and that in their places these little matters may not be allowed and desired For even Hair and Nails are appurtenances of a man which a wise man would not be without though they are small matters in comparison of the animal vital and nobler parts And indeed he that can see God in all things and hath all this sanctified by the Love of God should above all men value each particle of Knowledge of which so holy an use may be made As we value every grain of Gold. Chap. V. The first Inference By what measures to estimate mens Knowledge FRom hence then we may learn how to value the understandings of our selves and others That is Good which doth good Would God but give me one beam more of the heavenly light and a little clearer knowledge of himself how joyfully could I exchange a thousand lower notions for it I feel not my self at all miserable for want of knowing the number and order of the Stars the nature of the Meteors the causes of the ebbing and flowing of the Sea with many hundred other questions in Physicks Metaphysicks Mathematicks Nor do I feel it any great addition to my happiness when I think I know somewhat of such things which others know not But I feel it is my misery to be ignorant of God and ignorant of my state and duty and ignorant of the world where I must live for ever This is the Dungeon where my wretched Soul doth lie in captivity night and day groaning and crying out O when shall I know more of God! and more of the Coelestial Habitations and more of that which I was made to know O when shall I be delivered from this darkness and captivity Had I not one beam that pierceth through this Lanthorn of flesh this Dungeon were a Hell even the outer darkness I find Books that help me to names and notions But O for that Spirit that must give me Light to know the Things the spiritual great and excellent things which these names import O how ignorant am I of those same things which I can truly and methodically speak and write of O that God would have mercy on my dark understanding that I be not as a Clock to tell others that which it self understandeth not O how gladly would I consent to be a fool in all common Arts and Sciences if I might but be ever the wiser in the Knowledge of God! Did I know better Him by whom I live who upholdeth all things before whom my Soul must shortly appear whose favour is my life whom I hope to love and praise for ever what were all other things to me O for one beam more of his Light For one tast of his Love for one clear conception of the heavenly glory I should then scarce have leisure to think of a thousand inferiour speculations which are now magnified and agitated in the world But much more miserable do I find my self for want of more
Communion to them if they are already in the Covenant And all this is because that the Will is the Man and if any Man truely love Jesus Christ he is a true Believer in Christ and if any Man love God the same Man is known and loved of him and hath so much knowledge as will save his Soul. I confess in private Catechizing and Conference I have met with some ancient Women that have long lived as godly Persons in constant affectionate use of means and an honest godly Life and been of good repute in the Church where they lived who yet have spoken downright Heresie to me through ignorance in answering some questions about Jesus Christ But I durst not therefore suspend their Communion nor condemn their former Communion For as soon as I told them better they have yielded and I could not perceive whether it was from gross ignorance or from unreadiness of notions or from the want of memory or what that they spake amiss before So that I shall be very loth to reject one from Communion that sheweth a love of God and Jesus Christ and Holiness by diligent use of means and an upright Life 7. And he that will impartially be ruled by the Holy Scriptures will be of the same mind For no one was ever taken to be a Church Member at Age without so full a consent as was willingly exprest by devotedness to God in the Solemn Covenant The Jews by the Sign of Circumcision and the Christians by Baptism and both by Covenanting with God were initiated And consent is love But the Articles and objective Degrees of Knowledge and Belief have greatly varied The Jews were to know and profess more than the Gentiles and the Jews since the Egyptian Deliverance more than before And John Baptized upon a shorter Profession than the Apostles did And the Apostles till Christs Resurrection believed not many great Articles of our Faith not knowing that Christ must die and be an Expiatory Sacrifice for Sin and Sin to be pardoned by his Blood nor that he was to rise again and send the Holy Ghost for the work which he was sent for c. And Acts 19. there were Disciples that had not heard that there was a Holy Ghost I confidently think twice Baptized And if we mark how the Apostles Baptized with what Orders for it they received from Christ it will confirm my conclusion For Christ could have given a particular Creed and Profession of Faith if he had pleased but he taketh up with the General three Articles of Believing in the Father Son and Holy Ghost Mat. 28.19 20. lest any should cast out his weak ones for want of distinctness of Knowledge and Belief And he maketh the Covenant-consent in Baptism the necessary Thing as the End and Measure of their Knowledge He that hath Knowledge enough to cause him to thirst may come and drink of the waters of Life Rev. 22.17 And he that hungreth and thirsteth after righteousness shall be satisfied and he that cometh to Christ he will in no wise cast out And the Apostles Baptized so many thousands in a short time that they could not examine each Person about a more particular Knowledge and Belief Acts 2. c. Nor do we read in Scripture of such particular large Professions as go much beyond the words of Baptism And though no doubt they did endeavour to make the ignorant understand what they profest and did and so had some larger Creed yet was it not all so large as the short Creed called the Apostles now is several of its Articles having been long since added I have spoken all this not only to Ministers who have the Keys of Admission but especially for the Religious Persons sakes who are too much enclined to place godliness in words and ability to speak well in Prayer or Conference or answering Questions and that make a more distinct Knowledge and Profession necessary than God hath made Yea if all the Articles of the Creed are professed when the understanding of them is not clear and distinct they deride it and say A Parrot may be taught as much and they separate from those Pastors and Churches that receive such to their Communion Many do this of a godly Zeal lest ignorance and formality be encouraged and the godly and ungodly not sufficiently distinguished But their Zeal is not according to Knowledge nor to the holy Rule and they little know how much Pride oft lurketh unobserved in such desires to be publickly differenced from others as below us and unmeet for our Communion And less know they how much they injure and displease our gracious Lord who took little Children in his Arms and despiseth not the weak and carrieth the Lambs and refuseth no one any further than they refuse him I tell you if you see but true love and willingness in a diligent reformed pious and righteous Life there is certainly there is saving Knowledge and Faith within and if words do not satisfactorily express it you are to think that it is not for want of the thing it self but for want of use and exercise and for want of well studied Notions or for want of natural Parts Education or Art to enable them to act that part aright But if God know the meaning of Abba Father and of the groans of the Spirit in his Beloved Infants I will not be one that shall condemn and reject a lover of God and Christ and Holiness for want of distinct particular Knowledge or of words to utter it aright Chap. VIII The fourth Inference The aptness of the Teaching of Christ to ingenerate the Love of God and Holiness IF Love be the End and Perfection of our Knowledge then hence we may perceive that no Teacher that ever appeared in the World was so fit for the ingenerating of true saving knowledge as Jesus Christ For none ever so promoted the love of God. 1. It was he only that rendered God apparently lovely to sinful man by reconciling us to God and rendering him apparently propitious to his Enemies pardoning sin and tendering Salvation freely to them that were the Sons of Death Self-love will not give men leave to love aright a God that will damn them though deservedly for sin But it is Christ that hath made Atonement and is the Propitiation for our sins and proclaimeth Gods love even to the Rebellious Which is more effectually to kindle holy love in us than all the Precepts of Naturalists without this could ever have been His Cross and his Wounds and Blood were the powerful Sermons to Preach Gods winning love to sinners 2. And the benefits are so many and so great which he hath purchased and revealed to man that they are abundant fewel for the Flames of Love. We are set by Christ in the way of Mercy in the Houshold of God under the Eye and special Influence of his love all our sins pardoned our Everlasting punishment remitted our Souls renewed our wounded Consciences healed
But let that holy knowledge and love be mine which God most loveth and the World most hateth and costeth us dearest upon Earth but hath the blessed end of a Heavenly Reward Chap. XII The eighth Inference What is the work of a faithful Preacher and how it is to be done IF that Knowledge which kindleth in us the Love of God be the only saving Knowledge then this is it that Ministers must principally preach up and promote Could we make all our hearers never so learned that will not save their Souls But if we could make them holy and kindle in them the love of God and goodness they should certainly be saved The holy practical Preacher therefore is the best Preacher because the holy practical Christian is the best and only true Christian We work under Christ and therefore must carry on the same work on Souls which Christ came into the World to carry on All our Sermons must be fitted to change mens Hearts from Carnal into Spiritual and to kindle in them the love of God. When this is well done they have learnt what we were sent to teach them and when this is perfect they are in Heaven Those Preachers that are Enemies to the godliest of the people and would make their Hearers take them all for Hypocrites that go any further than obedience to their Pastors in Church-forms and Orders Observances and Ceremonies and a civil Life are the great Enemies of Christ his Spirit his Gospel and the Peoples Souls and the Eminent Servants of the Devil in his malignant War against them all All that Knowledge and all those Formalities which are set up instead of divine Love and holy Living are but so many cheats to deceive poor Souls till time be past and their convictions come to late I confess that ignorance is the calamity of our times and people perish for lack of Knowledge And that the Heart be without Knowledge it is not good And lamentable ignorance is too visible in a great degree among the religious sort themselves as their manifold differences and errours too openly proclaim And therefore to Build up men in Knowledge is much of the Ministerial work But what Knowledge must it be Not dead Opinions or uneffectual Notions or such Knowledge as tendeth but to teach men to talk and make them pass for men of parts But it is the Knowledge of God and our Redeemer the Knowledge of Christ Crucified by which we Crucifie the Flesh with all its Affections and Lusts And by which the World is Crucified to us and we to it If the Gospel be hid it is hid to them that are lost in whom the God of this World hath blinded their Eyes when there is no truth and mercy and knowledge of God in the Land no wonder if such a Land be clad in mourning When men have not so much Knowledge of the evil of sin and their own sin and misery and of the need and worth of Christ of the truth of Gods Word of the vanity of the World of the greatness wisdom and goodness of God and of certain most desirable Glory of Heaven as shall humble their Souls and turn them from the World to God and absolutely deliver them up to Christ and mortifie fleshly Lusts and overcome temptations and renew them unto the Love of God and goodness and set their Hearts and Hopes on Heaven This is the ignorance that is mens damnation And the contrary effectual Knowledge is it which saveth Souls Chap. XIII The ninth Inference Those that Know God so far as to Love him above all may have comfort notwithstanding their remaining ignorance A Great number of upright hearted Christians who Love God sincerely and obey him faithfully are yet under so great want of further knowledge as is indeed a great dishonour to them and a hinderance of them in their duty and comfort and to many a great discouragement And O that we knew how to cure this imperfection that Ignorance might not feed so many Errours and cause so many fractions and disturbances in the Church and so many sinful miscarriages in its members But yet we must conclude that the person that hath knowledge enough to renew his Soul to the Love of God shall be loved by him and shall never perish and therefore may have just comfort under all the imperfections of his knowledge More wisdom might make him a better and more useful Christian But while he is a Christian indeed he may rejoyce in God. I blame not such for complaining of the dulness of their Understandings the badness of their Memories their little profiting by the means of Grace I should blame them if they did not complain of these And I think their case far more dangerous to the Church and to themselves who have as much ignorance and know it not but proudly glory in the wisdom which they have not But many a thousand Christians that have little of the Notional and Organical part of Knowledge have powerful apprehensions of the Power Wisdom and Love of God and of the great Mercy of Redemption and of the Evil of Sin the Worth of Holiness and the Certainty and Weight of the Heavenly Glory And by how much these men love God and Holiness more than the more Learned that have less Grace by so much they are more beloved of God and accounted wiser by the God of wisdom and therefore may rejoice in the greatness of their felicity I would have none so weak as to under-value any real useful Learning But if Pharisees will cry out against unlearned godly Christians These people know not the Law and are accursed Remember the Thanksgiving of your Lord I thank thee Father Lord of Heaven and Earth that thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent and hast revealed them to Babes And as the reputed foolishness of God that is of Gods Evangelical Mysteries will shortly prove wiser than all the reputed wisdom of men so he that hath wisdom enough to love God and be saved shall quickly be in that World of light where he shall know more than all the Doctors and subtile disputers upon Earth and more in a moment than all the Books of men can teach him or all their Authors did ever here know Jer. 9.23 24. Thus saith the Lord Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom neither let the mighty man glory in his might let not the rich man glory in his riches But let him that glorieth glory in this that he understandeth and knoweth me that I am the Lord which exercise loving kindness and righteousness in the Earth For in these things do I delight saith the Lord. Chap. XIV Questions and Objections answered Quest 1. IF so much knowledge will save a man as helpeth him to love God as God may not Heathens or Infidels at least be saved For they know that there is one God who is Infinitely Good and Perfect and more amiable than all the World and the
great Benefactor of man and of the whole Creation So that there is no goodness but what is in him or from him and through him and finally to him And mans will is made to love apprehended good and followeth the last practical act of the Intellect at least where there is no Competitor but omnimoda ratio boni And all men know that God is not only Best in himself but Good yea Best to them because that all they have is from him And they have daily Experience of pardoning Grace contrary to their Commerit It seemeth therefore that they may love God as God. Ans 1. To cause a man to Love God as God there is necessary both Objective Revelation of God's Amiableness and such Subjective Grace which consisteth in a right Disposition of the Soul. 2. Objective Revelation is considered as sufficient either to well disposed or to an ill disposed Soul. 3. This Right disposition consisteth both in the abatement of mens Inclinations to contrary sensual objects and in the inclining them to that which is Divine and Spiritual And now I answer 1. It cannot be denied but that so much of God's Amiableness or Goodness is revealed to Infidels that have not the Gospel by the means mentioned in the Objection as is sufficient to bring men under an obligation to love God as God and to leave them unexcusable that do not 2. Therefore to such the Impossibility is not Physical but Moral 3. And there is in that objective Revelation so much sufficiency as that if the Soul it self were sanctified and well disposed it might love God upon such revelation Which Amyraldus hath largely proved 4. But to an unholy and undisposed Soul no objective Revelation is sufficient without the Spirits help and operations 5. Only the Spirit of Christ the Mediator as given by and from him doth thus operate on Souls as savingly to renew them 6. Whether ever the Spirit of Christ doth thus operate on any that hear not of Christs Incarnation must be known either by the Scripture or by experience By the Scripture I am not able to prove the Universal Negative though it 's easy to prove sanctification incomparably more common in the Church than on those without if any there have it The case of Infants and of the Churches and the World before Christs Incarnation must here come into consideration 2. And by experience no man can prove the Negative because no man hath experience what is in the Hearts of all the persons in the World. Q. 2. May a Papist or an Heretick by his knowledge be a lover of God as God Ans What is said to the former question is here to be reviewed And further 1. A Papist and such Heretick as positively holdeth all the essentials of Christianity and seeth not the opposition of his false opinions hereto and holdeth Christianity more practically than those false opinions may be saved in that state for he is a Lover of God But no other Papists or Hereticks can be saved but by a true conversion 2. There is a sufficiency in the Doctrine of Christianity which they hold to save them as to Objective Sufficiency And that God giveth not subjective Grace of Sanctification to any such notwithstanding their errours is a thing that no man can prove nor any sober charitable Christian easily believe And experience of the piety of many maketh it utterly improbable though we know not certainly the Heart of another There are many murmurings against me in this City behind my back for never one man of them to my remembrance to this day did ever use any charitable endeavour to my face to convince me of my supposed errour as one that holds that a Papist may be saved yea that we are not certain that none in the World are saved besides Christians and the Sectaries whisper me to one another to be like Origen a person in these dangerous opinions forsaken of God in comparison of them What really I assert about these Questions I have here briefly hinted but more largely opened in my Catholick Theology But I will confess that I find no inclination in my Soul to desire that their doctrine may prove true who hide the Glorified love of God and would contract his Mercy and Mans Salvation into so narrow a Room as to make it hardly discernable by man and the Church to be next to no Church and a Saviour to save so very few as seem scarce considerable among the rest that are left remediless And who would make us believe that the way appointed to bring men to the Love of God is to believe that he hath elected that particular person and left almost all the World many score or hundreds to one unredeemed and without any promise or possibility of Salvation I am sure that the covenant of Innocency is ceased And I am sure that all the World was brought under a Law of Grace made after the fall to Adam and Noe And that this Law is still in force to those that have not the more perfect edition in the Gospel And that Christ came not to bring the World that never hear of him nor can do into a worse condition than Jews and Gentiles were in before nor hath he repealed that Law of Grace which he before made them nor hath God changed that Gracious Name which he proclaimed even to Moses Exod. 34.6 7. And I am sure that Abraham the Father of the Faithful conjectured once even when God told him that Sodom was ripe for destruction that yet there might be fifty Righteous persons in it By which we may conjecture what he thought of all the World And I know that in every Nation he that feareth God and worketh righteousness is accepted of him And that he that cometh to God must believe that God is and that he is the Rewarder of them that diligently seek him and therefore without Faith none can please God And that men shall be judged by that same Law which they were under and obliged by whatever it be And they that have sinned under the Law of Moses shall be judged by it And they that sinned without that Law shall be judged without it And I know that God is LOVE it self and Infinitely Good and will shew us his goodness in such Glorious Effects to all eternity as shall satisfy us and fill us with Joyful praise And as for the Papists I know that they are seduced by a worldly Clergy and that by consequence many of the Errours in that Church do subvert the Fundamentals And so do many Errors of the Antinomians and others among us that are taken for religious persons yea and as notoriously as any Doctrines of the Popish Councils do But I know that as a Logical Faith or Orthodoxness which consisteth in holding right Notions and Words deceiveth thousands that have no sound belief of the things themselves expressed by these words So also Logical errors about Words Notions and Sentences may
oft also so over-rule the Hearts of Men and the Course of the World as to make the knowledge and gifts of bad Men serviceable to his Church as wicked Souldiers oft fight in a good Cause and save the lives of better men yet a worldly mind is likest to follow the way of worldly interest and it is but seldom that worldly interest doth suite with and serve the interest of truth and holiness but more commonly is its greatest adversary Therefore most usually it must be expected that such worldly men should be adversaries to the same truth and holiness which their worldly interest is adverse to And hence hath arisen that Proud and Worldly and Tyrannical Clergy which hath set up and maintained the Roman Kingdom under the Name of the Holy Catholick Church and which hath by their Pope and pretended General Councils usurped a Legislative and Executive Power over the whole Christian World and made great numbers of Laws without Authority and contrary to the Laws of Christ multiplying Schisms on pretence of suppressing them and making so many things necessary to the Concord of Christians as hath made such Concord become impossible presumptuously voting other men to be Hereticks while their own Errours are of as odious a kind yea when holy Truth is sometime branded by them as Heresie And when they cannot carry the Judgments Consciences and Wills of all men along in obedience to their Tyrannical Pride and Lust and Interest they stir up Princes and States to serve them by the Sword and Murder and Persecute their own Subjects and raise bloody Wars against their Neighbours to force them to obey these proud Seducers Yea and if Kings and States be wiser than thus to be made their Hangmen or bloody Executioners to the ruine of their best Subjects and their own Everlasting Infamy and Damnation they stir up the foolish part of the Subjects against such Rulers and in a word they will give the World no peace So that I am past all doubt that the Ten Heathen Persecutions so much cryed out of was but a small matter as against the Christians Blood in comparison of what hath been done by this Tyrannical Clergy And the cruelest Magistrates still seem to come short of them in cruelty and seldom are very bloody or persecuting but when a worldly or proud Clergy stirs them up to it And all the Heresies that ever sprang up in the Church do seem to have done less harm on one side than by pretences of Unity Order and Government they have done on the other O how unspeakably have been and still are the Churches Sufferings by a proud and worldly Clergy and by mens abuse of pretended Learning and Authority 5. I will add yet one more considerable mischief that is that your unholiness and carnal minds for all your Learning corrupteth your judgments and greatly hindereth you from receiving many excellent truths and inclineth you to many mortal errours To instance in some particulars 1. About the Attributes and Government of God a bad man is inclined to doubt of Gods particular Providence his holy Truth and Justice and to think God is such a one as he would have him to be Whereas they that have the love of God and goodness have his Attributes as it were written on their Hearts that he is Good and Wise and Holy and Just and True they know by an Experimental certain knowledge which is to them like Nature and Life it self Joh. 17.3 Hos 2.20 Psal 34.8 c. 2. The very truth of the Gospel and Mystery of Redemption is far hardlier believed by a man that never felt his need of Christ nor ever had the operations of that Spirit on his Soul which are its Seal than by them that have the witness in themselves and have found Christ actually save them from their sins Who are regenerated by this holy Seed and nourished by this Milk. 1 Joh. 5.10 11 12. 1 Pet. 1.22 23. and 1 Pet. 2.2 3. Yea the very truth of our Souls Immortality and the Life and Glory to come is far hardlier believed by them who feel no inclination to sucâ— a future Glory but only a propensity to this present Life and the interest and pleasures of it than by them that have a Treasure a Home a Heart and a Conversation in Heaven and that long for nearer Communion with God and that have the Earnest and First-fruits of Heaven within them Math. 6.20 21. Phil. 3.20 21. Col. 4.1 2 3 4. Rom. 8.17 18 19 20. 4. The evil of sin in general and consequently what is sin in particular is hardlier known by a man that loveth it and would not have it to be sin than by one that hateth it and loveth God and holiness above all They that love the Lord hate evil 5. Most Controversies about the Nature of Grace are hardlier understood by them that have it not than by them that have it as a new Nature in them And consequently what kind of Persons are to be well thought of as the Children of God The Pharisees were strict and yet haters of Christ and Christians Many Preach and Write for godliness that yet when it cometh to a particular judgment deride the godly as Hypocrites or Superstitious 6. In cases about the worship of God a carnal Mind how Learned soever is apt to relish most an outside carnal ceremonious way and to be all for a dead formality or else for a proud ostentation of their own Wits Opinions and Parts or some odd singularity that sets them up to be admired as some extraordinary Persons or teacheth their own Consciences so to flatter them When a Spiritual Man is for worshipping God though with all decent Externals yet in Spirit and in Truth and in the most understanding sincere and humble manner and yet with the greatest joy and praise Rom. 8.16 26 c. 7. Specially in the work of self-judging how hard a work have the most Learned that are ungodly truely to know themselves When Learning doth but help their Pride to blind them And yet none so apt to say as the Pharisees John 9.10 Are we blind also And to hate those that honour them not as erroneously as they do themselves And therefore Augustine so lamenteth the misery of the Clergy and saith that the unlearned take Heaven by violence when the Learned are thrust down to Hell with all their learning who are prouder and more self-ignorant Hypocrites in the World expecting that all should bow to them and reverence them and cry them up as wise and excellent men than the Unholy Worldly Fleshly Clergy 8. And in every case that themselves are much concerned in their Learning will not keep them from the most blind in Justice Let the case be but such as their honour or profit or relations and friends are much concerned in and they presently take all Right to be on their side and all these to be honest men that are for them and
body or the fruit of 3. This life of Love is the perfection of mans faculties as to their intended end and use As all the operations of the lower faculties Vegetative and Sensitive are subordinate to the use and operations of the Intellectual part which is the higher so all the Acts of the Intellect itself are but subservient and Dirigent to the Will or Love and Practice The understanding is but the Eye by which the Soul seeth what to love and choose or refuse and what to do or to avoid Love is the highest act of our highest faculty And complacency in the highest infinite good is the highest of all the acts of Love. This is the State of the Soul in its Ripeness and Mellow Sweetness when it is delightful embracing its most desired object and is blessed in the fruition of its ultimate end All other Graces and Duties are Servants unto this They are the parts indeed of the same new creature but the Hands and Feet are not the Heart 4. For Love is the very foretast of Heaven the beginning of that felicity which shall there be perfect In Heaven all Saints shall be as One and all united to their glorious Head as he is united to the Father disparities allowed Joh. 17.24 And what more uniteth Souls than Love Heaven is a state of Joyful Complacence and what is that but Perfect Love The Heavenly work is perfect Obedience and Praise And what are these but the actions and the breath of Love 5. Therefore they that live this life of Love are fitter to die and readier for Heaven than any others Belief is a foresight of it but Love is a foretast the first fruits and our earnest and pledge He that Loveth God and Christ and Angels and Saints and perfect Holiness and Divine Praise is ready for Heaven as the Infant in the womb is ready for birth at the fulness of his time But other Christians whose Love is true but little to their fears and damped by darkness and too much love of the body and this world do go as it were by untimely birth to Heaven and those in whom the love of the body is predominant come not thither in that state at all The God of Grace and Glory will meet that Soul with his felicitating embracements who panteth and breatheth after him by Love And as Love is a kind of Union with the Heavenly Society the Angels who love us better than we love them will be ready to convey such Souls to God. As the living dwell not in the graves among the dead and the dead are buried from among the living so holy Souls who have this life of Love cannot be among the miserable in Hell nor the dead in sin among the blessed 6. Therefore this life of holy Love doth strengthen our Belief it self Strong Reasons that are brought for the Immortality of Souls and the future Glory are usually lost upon unsanctified hearers yea with the Doctors themselves that use them When they have perswaded others that there is a Heaven for Believers and that by Arguments in themselves unanswerable they have not perswaded their own hearts but the predominant Love of Flesh and Earth doth byass their understandings and maketh them think that they can confute themselves Their gust and inclination prevaileth against Belief And therefore the greatest Scholars are not always the strongest Believers But holy Love when it is the Habit of the Soul as it naturally ascendeth so it easily believeth that God that Glory to which it doth ascend The gust and experience of such a Soul assureth it that it was made for Communion with God and that even in this life such Communion is obtained in some degree and therefore it easily believeth that it is Redeemed for it and that it shall perfectly enjoy it in Heaven for ever Though Glory be here but seminally in Grace and this world be but as the womb of that better world for which we hope yet the life that is in the Embrio and seed is a confirming Argument for the perfection which they tend to O that men knew what holy Love doth signifie and foretel As the seed or Embrio of a man becometh not a Beast or Serpent so he that hath the habitual Love of God and Heaven and Holiness is not capable of Hell no more than the Lovers of worldliness and sensuality are capable of present Communion with God and of his Glory God doth not draw mens Hearts to Himself nor kindle Heavenly desires in them in vain He that hath the Spirit of Christ hath the Witness in himself that Christ and his Promises of Life are true 1 John 5.10 11 12. And what is this Spirit but the Habit of Divine and Heavenly Love and its concomitants May I but feel my Soul inflamed with the fervent Love of the Heavenly Perfection surely it will do more to put me quite out of doubt of the certainty of that blessed state than all Arguments without that Love can do 7. And holy Love will be the surest Evidence of our Sincerity which many old Writers meant that called it The Form of Faith and other graces As means as means are informed by their aptitudinal respect unto the End so Love as it is the Final Act upon God the Final Object thus informeth all subordinate Graces and Duties as they are means And as all Morality is subjected in the Will as the proper primary seat and is in the Intellect executive power and senses only by participation so far as their acts are imperate by the Will so Love and Volition being really the same thing it may accordingly be said that nothing is any further acceptable to God than it is Good and nothing is morally Good any further than it is voluntary or willed and to be willed as Good as End or as Means and to be Loved are words that signifie the same No preaching praying fasting c. no fear of punishment no belief of the Truth c. will prove us sincere and justified any further than we can prove that all this either cometh from or is accompanied with Love that is with a Consenting Will. With the heart man believeth unto righteousness Rom. 10. And If thou believe with all thy heart thou mayest be baptized saith Philip to the Eunuch Acts 8. My Son give me thy heart is Wisdom's invitation All 's nothing without the heart that is without willingness or Love. They that love most are sureliest forgiven and have most holiness or grace how unskifull soever they may be in their expressions The sealing Spirit of Adoption is the Spirit of Love and the Abba Father and the unexpressed groans of filial Love are understood and acceptable to God. A Loving Desire after God and Holiness is a better Evidence than the most taking Tongue or largest Knowledge 8. This life of Holy Love will make all our Religion and Obedience easy to us It will give us an alacrity to the performance and a
drowsy knowledge or belief that God and Holiness are best may not be ordinarily kept out of act and consist with a prevailing habit of sensuality or love of forbidden pleasure in the will and with a privation of prevalent habitual love to God and Holiness I suppose with most such sinners this is the true case the understanding said lately It is best for thee to love God and live to him and deny thy lust And it oft forgetteth this while it still saith with sense that fleshly pleasure is desireable and at other times it saith Though God be best thou maist venture at the present on this pleasure and so le ts loose the corrupted will reserving a purpose to repent hereafter as apprehending most strongly at the present that just now sensual delight may be chosen though holiness will be best hereafter Obj. But if a habit will not prove that we sincerely love and prefer God how shall any man know that he loveth and preferreth him when the best oft sin and in the act of sin God is not actually preferred Ans 1. I told you that a habit of true love will prove sincerity though not a habit of true opinion or belief which is not brought into lively and ordinary act uneffectual faith may be habitual Yea such an uneffectual counterfeit half love which I before described to you may be habitual and yet neither act nor habit saving 2. The Sins of godly men are not prevalent absolutely against the being operation or effects of the love of God and Holiness For even when they sin these live and are predominant in all other things and in the main bent and course of life but only they prevail against some Degree of holy love perhaps both in the act and habit for such sins are not ungodliness but imperfection of godliness and the effects of that imperfection 3. When godly men fall into a great extraordinary sin it is not to be expected that they should comfortably discern the sincerity of their love to God either by that sin or in that sin but they may discern it 1. By the course of a godly life where the prevalency of the habit appeareth in the power and stream of acts and 2. By their Repentance for and abhorring and forsaking of that sin which stopt and darkened their love to God. And these two together viz A resolved course of living unto God and Repentance and Hatred of every sin which is against it and especially of greater sins will shew the sincerity and power of holy love Obj. But then one that sinneth daily e. g. by passion or too much love to the World or creatures and by omissions c. shall never be sure that he sincerely loveth God because this is a course of sin and he cannot have such assurance till he forsake it Ans One that ordinarily committeth gross and wilful sin that is such sin as he had rather keep than leave and as he would leave if he were but sincerely willing hath no predominant love of God at least in act and therefore can have no assurance of it But one that is ordinarily guilty of meer infirmities may at the same time know that the love of God doth rule both in his heart and life The Passion of fear or of anger or of sorrow may be inordinate and yet God loved best because the will hath so weak a power over them that a man that is guilty of them may truly say I would fain be delivered from them And some inordinate love of life health wealth friends honour may stand with a more prevailing love of God and the prevalency be well perceived But what greater actual sin as Noahs or Lots Drunkenness Davids Adultery and Murder Peters denial of Christ are or are not consistent with true love to God is a case that I have elsewhere largely handled and is unmeet for a short decision here Obj. But when I feel my heart desires and delights all cold to God and Holiness and too hot after fleshly worldly things may I not conclude that I love these better Ans Sensible near things may have much more of the passionate part of our love our desires and delights and yet not be best loved by us For God and Things Spiritual being out of the reach of sense are not so apt or like to move our sense and passion immediately to and by themselves As I said before that is best loved which hath 1. The highest esteem of the understanding 2. The most resolved prevalent choice of the will 3. And the most faithful endeavours of our life And many a Christian mistaketh his affection to the thing it self because of his strangeness to the place and to the change that death will make If the weakest Christian could have without dying the clear knowledge of God the communion of Faith and Love by his Spirit could he love God but as much as he would love him and answerably tast his love in every prayer in every promise in every Sacrament in every mercy could his Soul keep a continual sabbath of delight in God and in his Saints and Holy worship this seemeth to him more desireable and pleasing than all the treasures of the World. And he that desireth this communion with God desireth Heaven in reality though he fear the change that death will make because of the weakness of faith and our strangeness to the state of separated Souls Chap. XX. The second part of the Exhortation Rest in this that you are known with Love to God. 2. TO be KNOWN OF GOD here signifieth to be approved and Loved of him and consequently that all our concerns are perfectly known to him and regarded by him This is the full and final comfort of a believer Our Knowledge and Love of God in which we are agents are 1. The evidence that we are known with Love to God and so our comfort as is said by way of Evidence 2. And they are our comfort in their very exercise But the chief part of our comfort is from God not only as the Object of our Love but as the Lover of us and all his Saints even in our passive receiving of the blessed effects of his Love for ever When a Christian therefore hath any discerning of his interest in this Love of God by finding that he Loveth God and Goodness here he must finally Anchor his Soul and quietly rest in all Temptations Difficulties and Tribulations 1. Our enemies know us not but judge of us by blinding interest and the biass of their false opinions and by an easy belief of false reports or by their own ungrounded suspicions And therefore we are odious to them and abused slandered and persecuted by them But God knoweth us and will justify our righteousness and bring all our innocency into light and stop the mouth of all iniquity 2. Strangers know us not but receive such Characters of us as are brought to them with the greatest advantage And
on his truth and mercies But God will not lose his knowledge of me nor turn away his mercy from me The foundation of God standeth sure having this seal the Lord knoweth them that are his and let him that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity 2 Tim. 2.19 He can call me his Child when I doubt whether I may call him Father He doubteth not of his right to me nor of his graces in me when I doubt of my sincerity and part in him Known unto God are all his works Act. 15.18 What meaneth Paul thus to describe a state of grace Gal. 4.9 Now after ye have known God or rather are known of of God but to notify to us that though our knowledge of God be his grace in us and our evidence of his love and the beginning of life eternal Joh. 17.3 yet that we are loved and known of him is the first and last the foundation and the perfection of our security and felicity He knoweth his Sheep and none shall take them out of his hand When I cannot through pain or distemper remember him or not with renewed Joy or Pleasure he will remember me and delight to do me good and to be my Salvation 8. And though the belief of the unseen World be the principle by which I conquer this yet are my conceptions of it lamentably dark A Soul in flesh which acteth as the form of a body is not furnished with such images helps or light by which it can have clear conceptions of the state and operations of separated Souls But I am known of God when my knowledge of him is dark and small And he knoweth whither it is that he will take me what my state and work shall be He that is preparing a place for me with himself is well acquainted with it and me All Souls are his and therefore all are known to him He that is now the God of Abraham Isaac and Jacob as being living with him while they are dead to us will receive my departing Soul to them and to himself to be with Christ which he hath instructed me to commend into his hands and to desire him to receive He that is now making us living Stones for the new Jerusalem and his heavenly temple doth know where every one of us shall be placed And his knowledge must now be my satisfaction and my peace Let unbelievers say How doth God know Psal 73.11 But shall I doubt whether he that made the Sun be Father of lights and whether he know his dwelling and his continued works Be still O my Soul and know that he is God Psal 40.10 and when he hath guided thee by his counsel he will take thee to Glory and in his Light thou shalt have Light And though now it appear not to sight but to Faith only what we shall be yet we known that we shall see him as he is and we shall appear with him in glory And to be KNOWN of God undoubtedly includeth his PRACTICAL LOVE which secureth our Salvation and all that tendeth thereunto It is not meant of such a knowledge only as he hath of all things or of such as he hath of the ungodly And why should it be hard to thee O my Soul to be perswaded of the love of God Is it strange that he should love thee who is Essential Infinite love Any more than that the Sun should shine upon thee which shineth upon all capable recipient objects though not upon the uncapable which through interposing things cannot receive it To believe that Satan or wicked men or deadly Enemies should love me is hard But to believe that the God of love doth love me should in reason be much easier than to believe that my Father or Mother or dearest friend in the World doth love me If I do not make and continue my self uncapable of his complacence by my wilful continued refusing of his grace it is not possible that I should be deprived of it Prov. 8.17 I love them that love me Psal 146.8 The Lord loveth the righteous John 16.27 2. Why should it be hard to thee to believe that he loveth thee who doth good so universally to the World and by his love doth preserve the whole Creation and give all Creatures all the good which they possess When his mercy is over all his works and his Goodness is equal to his wisdom and his power and all the World is beautified by it shall I not easily believe that it will extend to me The Lord is good to all Psal 145.9 Luk. 18.19 None is good essentially absolutely and transcendently but he alone Psal 33.5 The Earth is full of the goodness of the Lord Psal 52.1 The goodness of God endureth continually He is good and doth good Psal 119.68 And shall I not expect good from so good a God the cause of all the good that is in the World 3. Why should I not believe that he will love me who so far loved the World yea his Enemies as to give his only begotten Son that whoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life Joh. 3.16 Having given me so precious a gift as his Son will he think any thing too good to give me Rom. 8.32 yea still he followeth his Enemies with his mercies not leaving himself without witness to them but filling their hearts with food and gladness and causing his Sun to shine on them and his Rain to fall on them and by his goodness leading them to repentance 4. Why should I not easily believe his love which he hath sealed by that certain gift of love the Spirit of Christ which he hath given The giving of the Holy Ghost is the shedding abroad of his love upon the heart Rom. 5. I had never known desired loved or served him sincerely but by that Spirit And will he deny his name his mark his seal his Pledge and Earnest of Eternal life Could I ever have truly loved Him his Word his Ways and Servants but by the reflection of his love shall I question whether he love those whom he hath caused to love him When our love is the surest gift and token of his love shall I think that I can love him more than he loveth me or be more willing to serve him than he is willing and ready to reward his Servants Heb. 11.6 1 Joh. 3.24 and 4.13 5. Shall I not easily hope for good from him who hath made such a covenant of Grace with me in Christ Who giveth me what his Son hath purchased who accepteth me in his most beloved as a member of his Son Who hath bid me ask and I shall have And hath made to Godliness the promise of this life and that to come and will with-hold no good thing from them that walk uprightly Will not such a Gospel such a Covenant such promises of love secure me that he loveth me while I consent unto his covenant terms 6. Shall I not easily believe