3. Consider, doth not certain experience tell you that you are utterly unable fully to understand the nature and reasons of those works of God, that are daily visible before your eyes? I will not say, only of the greater and more distant, but even of the least, or of any one of them. I am confident that there is. not the least fly, or worm, or pile of grass, (much more the sun and other planets,) but that which we know of them, is much less than that which no man knows. And should such poor understandings, then, be so arrogant as to think to fathom the counsels of God, and reject his plain, revealed truths, because they see not how such things can be?

4. Consider, what a stream of experience do you sin against in this arrogancy. Doth not every study that you fall upon, and every day's business that you are engaged in, most plainly discover the weakness of your understandings? Why else do you learn no faster, and know no more? Why are you not yet absolute masters in all sciences and arts? Yea, why are you so defective in all? And yet will you presume to dispute with God, and reject his truths as unreasonable, after all this experience of your own infirmity, and of your unfitness for works that are so much lower?

5. Consider, whether by this sinful arrogancy you do not equal your understandings with God's? For if you must be able to see the reason of all his truths and ways, and will control them because you see not the reason of them, doth not this imply that you suppose yourself to equal him in understanding? And what greater madness can you be guilty of, than such a conceit? So, also, when you quarrel with the word as if it contained things that are unrighteous, and strengthen your unbelief by such conceits, what do you but say that you are more righteous than God? O, think not that the foolishness of man is wiser than God, or that our darkness is comparable to his incomprehensible light, or our unrighteousness to his perfect justice, or that we are fit judges of these his perfections. Hear that voice that Eliphaz heard from the Spirit that passed before him in the visions of the night: "Shall mortal man be more

just than God? Shall a man be more pure than his Maker? Behold, he put no trust in his servants, and his angels he charged with folly how much less on them that dwell in houses of clay, whose foundation is in the dust, which are crushed before the moth they are destroyed from morning to evening: they perish for ever without any regarding it; doth not their excellency

which is in them go away? they die, even without wisdom." (Job iv. 13-21.)

6. Consider, further, that it is the very nature of faith to believe the thing revealed or testified, upon the mere credit of the testifier or revealer. If, therefore, you will have no such implicit belief in God, you will have no faith at all. To see a thing in its own evidence is not to believe. The formal object of faith is the veracity of God. Reason assures us, first, that God cannot lie, and next it discerneth by evidence that this is God's word, or a divine revelation; and then we may well build upon this foundation, that each particular of this revelation is true. So that it is no true belief, if the credit of the testifier be not the reason of your assent; if, therefore, you must see the reason of God's revealed truths, and the very manner and end of all his works, before you will believe, this is as much as openly to proclaim that you will be no believers at all. You will assent to the words of the falsest liar, as long as you see the evidence of truth in the things themselves which they report. And will you give no more credit to God than to such a one? Will you believe God no further than you see a cogent evidence in the thing asserted, which shows that he cannot deceive you therein if he would? Why, thus far you will believe the worst of men; for, indeed, this is no believing at all. If you do not first believe that God cannot lie, and so that all that he saith is true, you have no belief in him at all.

7. If you are Christians, you are Christ's disciples, and therefore must wait on him in the humblest posture of learners: and he that will no whit credit his teacher, is not like to learn. If you will not believe him, but assent only to that which is evident of itself without his word, then how are you his scholars?

8. Will you allow your own children or scholars to do so by you? If they should dispute with you instead of believing you, and so should reject all that you tell them is false, that is beyond their capacity as to the reasons and manner; you would not think that they did their duty. When a schoolmaster is teaching his scholars their lesson, shall they, instead of learning, dispute it with their master, and in every difficulty, or seeming contradiction, unbelievingly say, "How can these things be?" Be not guilty of that towards God which you would not have a child to be guilty of to a man.

9. Consider, also, if this course be taken whether ever you be like to come to knowledge: for the knowledge of things, whose

evidence is all in the revelation and the credit of the testifier, can be attained no other way but by believing. All things seem strange and difficult at first to those that have not learned them. If you understand all things already, what need you to learn any more? If you do not, then all that you understand will appear to you at first as darkness or contradiction. If, now, you will be so confident of your own understandings as to cast away all. that you understand not already, because it seems contradictory or unlikely, how are you likely to know any more? If you will conclude that all is false which you understand not already, you are like to make but unprofitable scholars. Well, therefore, saith Solomon, "Seest thou a man wise in his own conceit? There is more hope of a fool than of him." (Prov. xxvi. 12.) For certainly it is a double degree of folly for a man not only to be ignorant of the things of God, but also to be so ignorant of his own ignorance. And we must be more at pains to make such proud men know that they do not know, than to make the humble to know the truths themselves, which they perceive that they yet know not and therefore, Paul doth not only bid us, "Be not wise in your own conceits;" (Rom. xii. 16;) but also intimates that ignorance is the cause of such conceits of wisdom, "For I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this mystery, lest ye should be wise in your own conceits:" (Rom. xi. 25 :) as Solomon saith of the foolish sluggard, that "he is wiser in his own conceit than seven men who can render a reason." (Prov. xxvi. 26.)

10. Consider, whether in this case you join not impudence and inhuman ingratitude to your arrogancy, when Christ condescendeth to become your teacher, and you are loiterers and dullards, and will not learn, but have lost the most of your time in his school; is it not a great mercy now, that he will yet entertain you and instruct you, and doth not turn you out of his school? And will you, instead of being thankful for this mercy, fall a quarrelling with his truth, and take on you to be wiser than he, when you have so provoked him by your ignorance and unprofitableness? Will you fly in his face, with audacious, unbelieving questions, and say, "How can these things be?" as if it were he that knew not what he said, and not you that did not understand him?

11. Consider, how easily can God evince the verity of those passages which you so confidently reject, and open your eyes to see that as plain as the highway, which now seems to you so

contradictory or improbable; and then what will you have to say for your unbelief and arrogancy, but to confess your folly and sit down in shame? You know when any difficult case is propounded to you in any other matter, which you can see no probable way to resolve, yet when another hath resolved it to your hands in a few words, it is presently quite plain to you, and you wonder that you could not see it before. You are as one that wearieth himself with studying to unfold a riddle, and when he hath given it over as impossible, another openeth it to him in a word; or, as I have seen boys at play, with a pair of tarrying irons, when one hath spent many hours in trying to undo them, and casts them away as if it could not be done, another presently and easily opens them before his face; so when you have puzzled your brains in searching out the reasons of God's ways, and seeking to reconcile the seeming contradictions of his word, and say, "How can these things be?" In a moment can God show you how they can be, and make all plain to you, and make you even wonder that you saw it not sooner, and ashamed that you opened your mouth in unbelief. How plain is that to a man of knowledge, which to the ignorant seems impossible. If the certain event did not convince them, you should never persuade the ignorant vulgar, that learned men know so much of the motions of the planets, and can so long before tell the eclipse of sun or moon to a minute; but when they see it come to pass, they are convinced: thus can God convince thee of the verity of his word, either by a merciful illumination, or by a terrible execution; for there is not a soul in hell but doth believe the truth of the threatenings of God, and the devils themselves believe, that would draw thee to unbelief.

12. Lastly, take heed of the very beginnings of this sin, for it is the ordinary way to total apostasy: when men have once so far lost their humility and modesty, and forgot that they are men, or what a man is, as to make their shallow reason the censurer of God's word, because of certain seeming improbabilities; and when they will not rest satisfied in the bare word of God, that thus it is, but they must needs know why and how can it be; this opens the floodgate of temptations upon them, for the envious serpent will quickly show them more difficulties than their shallow brains can answer, and will cull out all those passages of Scripture, which are "hard to be understood, which the unlearned and unstable do wrest to their own de

struction." (2 Pet. iii. 18.) He will show them all the knots, but never show them how to untie them. Such arrogant questioners and censurers of God's word, do often run on to utter infidelity, while they are incompetent judges, and do not know it; what can be expected from them but a false judgment: for though the light shineth in darkness, yet the darkness comprehendeth it not; (John i. 9 ;) and therefore presumeth to condemn the light.

O, therefore, let all young, raw students, and unsettled wits, take heed in the fear of God, that they exalt not themselves, and that they think not their weak understandings to be capable of comprehending the counsels of God, and passing a censure upon his word, upon the nature of the matter as appearing unto them. Nay, let the sharpest wits and greatest scholars stoop down before the wisdom of God, and behave themselves as humble learners, and enter as little children into his school and kingdom, and submissively put their mouths in the dust, and take heed of setting their wits against heaven, or challenging the infinite wisdom to a disputation. If they love themselves, let them take this advice, and remember that God delighteth to scatter the proud in the imagination of their own hearts, (Luke i. 51,) and to pull down aspiring sinners to the dust. As they that would set their power against God, would soon be convinced of their madness by their ruin; so they that will set their wisdom against him, are like to escape no better. "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: for the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is written, he taketh the wise in their own craftiness: and again, the Lord knoweth the thoughts of the wise that they are vain." (1 Cor. iii. 18-20.)

Object. But would you not have men satisfied of the reasonableness of what they believe? Shall men believe that which is unreasonable? This were to make us mad, and not Christians.

Answ. You must believe nothing but what you have sufficient reason to believe: but then you must know what is sufficient reason for belief. Prove but the thing to be the testimony of God, and then you have sufficient reason to believe it, whatsoever it be. For faith proceeded by this augmentation, "Whatsoever God testifieth is true; but this God testifieth, therefore, it is true." You have as good reason to believe the major, as that there is a God: and he that acknowledgeth not a God, is unworthy to be a man. All that you have to look after, therefore, is to prove the minor, that this or that is the word