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perceive what knowledge it is that is best, and most desirable to all that love their happiness. Surely this sort of learning, wit and art, which the devil and the malignant world do no more dispraise, oppose and persecute, (though as it is sanctified to higher ends it be good, yet) of itself is comparatively no very excellent and amiable thing. I know Satan laboureth to keep out learning itself (that is truly such) from the world, because he is the prince and promoter of darkness, and the enemy of all useful light: and lower knowledge is some help to higher, and speculative theology may prepare for practical; and the most gross and brutish ignorance best serveth the devil's designs and turn, And even in heathen Rome the arts prepared men for the Gospel; and learning in the church-reformers hath ever been a great help and furtherance of reformation. But yet if you stop in learning and speculation, and take it as for itself alone, and not as a means to holiness of heart and life, it is as nothing. It is Paul's express resolution of the case, that if "we have all knowledge without this holy love, we are nothing," but as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal," (1 Cor. xiii.)

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But surely there is some special excellency in this holy knowledge, and love, and obedience, which the devil and the malignant world so hate, in high and low, in rich and poor, in kindred, neighbours, strangers, or any, where they meet with it. It is not for nothing. This is the image of God; this is it that is contrary to their carnal minds, and to their fleshly lusts, and sinful pleasures. This tells them what they must be and do, or be undone for ever, which they cannot abide to be or do.

Let us therefore be somewhat the wiser for this discovery of the mind of the devil and all his instruments. I will love and honour all natural, artificial, acquired excellencies in philology, philosophy and the rest: as these expose not men to the world's obloquy, so neither unto mine or any sober man's. In their low places they are good and may be used to a greater good. 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.

Inference 8.

CHAP. XII.

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 men's hearts, from carnal into spiritual, and to kindle in them the love of God. When this is well done, they have learned what we were sent to teach them; and when this is perfect, they are in heaven.

Those preachers that are enemies to the most godly 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 people's 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 instead of Divine Love and holy living, are but so many cheats, to deceive poor souls till time be past, and their convictions come too late.

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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 errors 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 ineffectual 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 crucify 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 God's Word, of the vanity of the world, of the greatness, wisdom and goodness of God, and of the 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 mortify 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 men's damnation; and the contrary effectual knowledge is it which saveth souls.

CHAP. XIII.

Inference 9. 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 hindrance 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 errors, and cause so many factions 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 rejoice in God. I blame not such for complaining

of the dullness 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 undervalue 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 God's 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 subtle 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. "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." (Jer. ix. 23, 24.)

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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 man's 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 demerit. It seemeth therefore that they may love

God as God.'

Answ. 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 a well-disposed, or to an ill-disposed soul. 3. This right disposition consisteth both in the abatement of men's 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 inexcusable 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 itself 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

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