be killed in France, Savoy, Italy, Germany, &c. The French massacre killed about thirty on forty thousand. The Irish massacre in that little island killed about two hundred thousand. But were they not stronger after all these cruelties than before? Alas, sir, all your labour is lost, and your party is taken for a blood-thirsty generation, and human nature which abhorreth the blood-thirsty, ever after breedeth enemies to your way. This is the effect of false principles, and terms of unity and peace, contrived by proud, selfconceited men, that think the world should take their dictates for a supreme law, and obey them as the directive deities of mankind.

If all this be not enough to tell you what proud, pretended certainty is, read over the histories of the ages past, and you shall find it written in ink, in tears, in blood, in mutations, in subversions of the empires and kingdoms of the world, in the most odious and doleful contentions of prelates, lacerations of churches, and desolations of the earth. And yet have we not experience enough to teach us!

CHAP. XIII.

The Advantages of a Suspended Judgment, and Humble Understanding, which pretendeth to no more Knowledge or Certainty than it hath.

THE advantages of a humble mind, which pretendeth not to be certain till he is certain, you may gather by contraries from the twelve forementioned mischiefs of prefidence; which to avoid prolixity, I leave to your collection.

Moreover I add: 1. Such a humble, suspended mind doth not cheat itself with seeming to have a knowledge, a divine faith, a religion when it hath none. It doth not live on air and dreams, nor feed on shadows, nor is puffed up with a tympanite of vain conceits, instead of true, substantial wisdom.

2. He is not [prepossessed against the truth, but hath room for knowledge, and having the teachableness of a child, he shall receive instruction, and grow in true knowledge, when the proud and inflated wits, being full of nothing, are sent empty away.

3. He entangleth not himself in a seeming necessity of making good all that he hath once received and entertained. He hath not so many bastards of his own brain to maintain,. as the prefident, hasty judgers have: which saveth him much sinful study and strife.

4. He is not liable to so much shame of mutability he that fixeth not till he feel firm ground, nor buildeth till he feel a rock, need not pull down, and repent so oft as rash presumers.

5. Unless the world be bedlam mad in proud obtrudings of their own conceits, methinks such a wary, humble man should offend but few, and better keep both his own and the church's peace than others. Can persecutors for shame hang and burn men for mere ignorance, who are willing to learn, and will thankfully from any man receive information? What if in Queen Mary's 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. xv. And seeing most say that the sun itself 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 itself 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 generał 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 Freewill, or Reprobation, or Predetermination, or such like, a humble man should say, these are things above my understanding; I cannot reach to know what Freewill 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 had 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. XIV.

VII. The Aggravation of this Sin of Prefidence.

THOUGH there be so much evil in this sin of Presumption, as I have noted, yet it is not in all alike culpable or unhappy, but differeth in both respects, as I shall tell you.

I. For culpability 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 (cæteris 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-conceited of all her apprehensions against her husband, unless he be a fool: For the servant to set his wit against his master, where he should obey him: For children to think that their wits are brighter 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 expressly tell you this, Heb. v. 11, 12, " When for the time you ought to have been teachers, &c." Men should be wise according to the time and means of wisdom which they have had.

3. It is the greater crime when men will seem wisest in other men's 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 recerve into the Church, or exclude; when the servant will know best his master's duty, and every man his neighbour's, 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 tried by others. As if an empyric, 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 trial, and before them make good their skill by reason? If an inexperienced young student think himself able to be a physician, he is not to be the judge, but must be tried 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, they 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 human, 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, 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 surely all are not such. Why do you not desire the judgment of the wisest and most impatial 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 empyrics and she-physicians, vilify doctors of physic, 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 more heinous 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 the 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 physic, when people will be selfconceited, when the lives of others lie upon it: and a silly fellow or woman will venture 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 governors on whom the public welfare of the church, or army or navy, or country doth depend. O how wise should that person be, whose errors may cost thousands so dear as their destruction! Or if their