solve him, and make him happy or miserable. But what other men thought was nothing to him, any more than what another dreameth.' Orat. 27. p. 468. And therefore he saith, Orat. 26. p. 443. As for me, I am a small and poor pastor, and to speak sparingly, not yet grateful, and accepted with other pastors, which whether it be done by right judgment and reason, or by malevolence of mind, and study of contention, I know not.' And Orat. 32. p. 523. 'I am tired, while I fight both with speech and envy, with enemies, and with those that are our own. Those strike at the breast, and obtain not their desire for an open enemy is easily taken heed of; but these come behind my back and are more troublesome.'

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Such obloquy had Jerom, such had Augustine himself, and who knoweth not that envy is virtue's shadow? And what talk I of others, when all godly men are hated by the world, and the apostles and Christ himself were used as they were; and Christ saith, "Which of the prophets did not your fathers kill and persecute?" (Matt. xxiii.) If hating, persecuting, slandering, silencing, killing men that know more than the rest, be a sign of wisdom, the world hath been wise since Cain's age until this.

Even a Galilæus, a Savonarola, a Campanella, &c. shall feel it if they will be wiser than the rest: so that Solomon's warning, (Eccles. vii. 16,) concerneth them that will save their skin; "Be not righteous overmuch, neither make thyself over-wise: why wilt thou destroy thyself?" But again I may prognosticate with Anthisthenes in Laert. Then cities are perishing, when they are not wise enough to know the good from the bad.' And with Cicero, Rhet. 1. That man's safety is desperate whose ears are shut against the truth, so that even from a friend he cannot hear it.'

XVIII. And this leadeth me to the next discovery. How rare wisdom is in the world, in that the wisest men and most learned teachers have so small success. How few are much the wiser for them! If they praise them, they will not learn of them, till they reach to their degree. Men may delight in the sweetness of truth themselves; but it is a feast where few will strive for part with them. A very few men that have first sprung up in obscure times have had great success so had Origen at Alexandria, and Chrysostom at Constantinople, but with bitter sauce. Pythagoras, Plato and

Aristotle at Athens, and Augustine at Hippo, had the most that history maketh mention of, with Demosthenes and Cicero in oratory; Melanchthon at Wirtemburgh, with Luther, and Zuinglius in Helvetia, and Calvin at Geneva prevailed much: and now and then an age hath been fruitful of learned, wise and godly men: and when we are ready to expect, that each of these should have a multitude of scholars like themselves, suddenly all declineth, and ignorance and sensuality get uppermost again. And all this is because that all men are born ignorant and sensual; but no man attaineth to any excellency of wisdom, without so long and laborious studies, as the flesh will give leave to few men to perform. So that he that hath most laboriously searched for knowledge all his days, knoweth not how to make others partakers of it; no not his own children of whom he hath the education: unless it be here and there one Scaliger, one Paræus, one Tossanus, one Trelcatius, one Vossius, &c. How few excellent men do leave one excellent son behind them! O what would a wise man give, that he could but bequeath all his wisdom to others when he dieth!

XIX. And it is evident that great knowledge is more rare than prefidence, in that the hardest students, and most knowing men, complain more than others of difficulties and ignorance: when certainly other men have more cause. They that study a little, know little, and think they know much : they that study very hard, but not to maturity, oft become sceptics, and think nothing certain. But they that follow it till they have digested their studies, do find a certainty in the great and necessary things, but confess their ignorance in abundance of things which the presumptuous are confident in. I will not leave this out, to escape the carping of those that will say, that by this character I proclaim myself one of the wisest, as long as it is but the confession of my ignorance which is their occasion. But I will say as Augustin to Jerom, Epist. 29. ' Adversus eos qui sibi videntur scire quod nesciunt, hoc tutiores sumus, quod hanc ignorantiam nostram non ignoramus.'

XX. Lastly, every man's nature, in the midst of his pride, is conscious of the fallibility and frailty of his own understanding. And thence it is that men are so fearful in great matters of being overreached. And wherever any conclusion dependeth upon a contexture of many proofs, or on any

long, operous work of reason, men have a natural consciousness of the uncertainty of it. Yea, though our doctrines of the immortality of our own souls, and of the life of retribution after this, and the truth of the Gospel, have so much evidence as they have, yet a lively, certain faith is the more rare and difficult, because men are so conscious of the fallibility of their own understandings, that about things unseen and unsensible, they are still apt to doubt, whether they be not deceived in their apprehensions of the evidence.

By these twenty instances it is too plain that there is little solid wisdom in the world; that wise men are few, and those few are but a little wise. And should not this suffice to make all men, but especially the unlearned, half-learned, the young, and unexperienced, to abate their ungrounded confidence and to have humble and suspicious thoughts of their own apprehensions.

CHAP. XVII.

Inference 5. That it is not the Dishonour, but the Praise of Christ, his Apostles and the Gospel, that they speak in a plain manner of the Certain Necessary Things, without the Vanity of School-Uncertainties, and feigned unprofitable Notions? I HAVE been myself often scandalized at the Fathers of the fourth Carthage Council", who forbid bishops the reading of the heathen books; and at some good old unlearned Christian bishops, who spake to the same purpose, and often reproach Apollinaris, Ætius and other heretics for their secular or Gentile learning, logic, &c. And I wondered that Julian and they should prohibit the same thing. But one that is so far distant from the action, is not a competent judge of the reasons of it. Perhaps there were some Christian authors then, who were sufficient for such literature as was best for the Church: perhaps they saw that the danger of reading the heathens' philosophy was like to be greater than the benefit: both because it was them that they lived among, and were to gather the churches out of; and if they put an honour upon logic and philosophy, they might find

Concil. Carth. 4, Can. 16.

it more difficult to draw men from that party which excelled in it, to the belief of the Scriptures which seemed to have so little of it: and they had seen also how a mixture of Platonic notions with Christianity, had not only been the original of many heresies, but had sadly blemished many great doctors of the churches.

Whatever the cause was, it appeareth that in those days it was the deepest insight into the sacred Scriptures which was reckoned for the most solid learning; philosophy was so confounded by differences, sects, uncertainties and falsehoods, that made it the more dispicable, by how much the less pure. And logic had so many precarious rules and notions, as made it fitter to wrangle and play with, than to further grave men in their deep and serious inquiry in the great things of God, and mysteries of salvation.

But yet it cannot be denied but that true learning of the subservient arts and sciences is of so great use to the accomplishing of man's mind with wisdom, that it is one of the greatest offences that ever was taken against Christ and the holy Scriptures, that so little of this learning is found in them, in comparison of what in Plato, Aristotle, Demosthenes, or Cicero. But to remove the danger of this offence, let these things following be well considered:

I. Every means is to be judged of by its aptitude to its proper use and end: morality is the subject and business of the Scriptures: it is not the work of it to teach men logic and philosophy, any more than to teach them languages: Who will be offended with Christ for not teaching men Latin, Greek, or Hebrew, Architecture, Navigation, or Mechanic Arts? And why should they be more offended with him for not teaching them Astronomy, Geometry, Physics, Metaphysics, Logic, &c. It was none of his work.

II. Nature is presupposed to grace; and God in nature have before given man sufficient helps to the attainment of so much of the knowledge of nature, as was convenient for him. Philosophy is the knowledge of God's works of creation. It was not this (at least chiefly) that man lost by his fall it was from God, and not from the creature that he turned and it was to the knowledge of God, rather than of the creature, that he was to be restored. What need one be sent from heaven to teach men the order and rules of speaking? or to teach men those arts and sciences which they

can otherwise learn themselves. As it is presupposed that men have reason, so that they have among them the common helps and crutches of reason.

III. The truth is, it is much to be suspected, lest as an inordinate desire of creature-knowledge was a great part of our first parents' sin, so it hath accordingly corrupted our nature with an answerable vicious inclination thereunto : not that the thing in itself is evil to know God's works; but good and desirable in its place and measure: but it is such a good as by inordinacy may become a dangerous evil: why should we not judge of this desire of knowing the creatures, as we do of other creature-affections? It is lawful and meet to love all God's creatures: his works are good, and therefore amiable. And yet I think no man is damned but by the inordinate loving of the creature, turning his heart from the love of God. And as our appetites are lawful and necessary in themselves, and yet nature's pravity consisteth much in the prevalency of them against reason, which is by reason's infirmity, and the inordinacy of the sensitive appetite; even so a desire to know God's works, is natural and good; but its inordinateness is our pravity, and a sinful lust.

Doubtless the mind and fantasy may find a kind of pleasure in knowing, which is according to the nature and use of the thing known. When it is vain, or low, and base, the pleasure is vain, and low, and base: when the object is ensnaring and diverting from higher things, it doth this principally by delight. Verily this inordinate desire of creature-knowledge is a lust, a vicious lust. I have been guilty of it in some measure myself, since I had the use of reason: I have lived a life of constant pleasure, gratifying my intellect and fantasy with seeking to know as much as I could know: and if I could not say truly, that I referred it as a means to the knowledge and love of God, I should say that it was all sin: but because I have loved it too much for itself, and not referred it to God more purely and entirely, I must confess that it was never blameless.

And the corruption of the noblest faculty is the worst: the delights of eating, drinking, venery, are the matter of common sensuality, when they are inordinately desired: and is not the inordinate desire of creature-knowledge, (if it