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daily teaching of appointed pastors, against the judgment of the most learned and wise men in the world: against the express word of God; against the obligation of daily mercies; against the warnings of many afflictions; against the experience of all the world, who pronounce all this vanity which they sell their souls for; even while men die daily before their eyes, and they are certain that they must shortly die themselves; while they walk over the churchyard, and tread on the graves of those that went before them; yet will they take no warning, but neglect God and their souls, and sin on to the very death.

4. And this is not the case only of here and there one; we need not go to Bedlam to seek them. Alas! in how much more honoured and splendid habitations and conditions may they be found! In what reverend and honourable garbs! And in how great numbers throughout the world! And these are not only sots and idiots, that never were told of better things; but those that would be accounted witty, or men of learning and venerable aspect and esteem. But this is a subject that we use to preach on to the people; it being easy, by a multitude of arguments, to prove the madness of all ungodly persons. And is this nothing to humble us, who were naturally like them, and who, so far as we are sinners, are, alas! too like them still?

XVI. And the fewness of wise men in all professions, doth tell us how rare true wisdom is. Among men whose effects of it do not

wisdom lieth in speculation, where the openly difference it much from prefidence, the difference is not commonly discerned: a prating speculator goeth for a wise man; but in practicals the difference appeareth by the effects. All men see, that among physicians and lawyers, those that are excellent are few. And even among the godly preachers of the Gospel, O that it were more easy and common, to meet with men suited to the majesty, mystery, greatness, necessity and holiness of their works; that speak to God, and from God, like divines indeed, and have the true frame of sound theology ready in their heads and hearts; and that in public and private speak to sinners, as beseemeth those that believe that they and we are at the door of eternity, and that we speak, and they hear for the life of souls, and that are uncertain whether ever they shall speak again. Alas! Lord, thy treasure is not only in earthen ves

sels, but how ordinarily in polluted vessels, and how common are empty, sounding vessels, or such as have dirt or air instead of holy treasure!

And as for philosophers and judicious speculators in di› vinity, do I need to say, that the number is too small? Of such as are able judiciously to resolve a difficulty, to answer cases of conscience, to defend the truth, to stop the mouths of all gainsayers, and to teach holy doctrine clearly and in true method, without confusion, or running into any extremes? We bless God, this land, and the other reformed churches have had a laudable degree of this mercy: the Lord restore it to them and us, and continue the comfortable measure that we possess.

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XVII. And it is a notorious discovery of the common ignorance, that a wise man is so hardly known. Men that have not wisdom to imitate them, have not wit enough to value them; so that as Seneca saith, He that will have the pleasure of wisdom, must be content with it for itself, without applause: two or three approvers must suffice him.' The blind know not who hath the best eyesight. Swine trample upon pearls. Nay, it is well if, when they have increased knowledge, they increase not sorrow; and become not the mark of envy and hatred, and of the venom of malignant tongues and hands, yea, and that merely for their knowledge sake. All the learning of Socrates, Demosthenes, Cicero, Seneca, Lucan, and many more; and all the learning and piety of Cyprian, and all the martyrs of those ages; Boetius, of the African bishops that perished by Hunnerichus; of Peter Ramus, Marlorate, Cranmer, Ridley, Philpot, Bradford, and abundance such, could not keep them from a cruel death. All the excellency of Greg. Nazianzen, Chrysostom, and many others, could not keep them from suffering by orthodox bishops; no nor all the holiness and miracles of Martin. Insomuch that Nazianzen leaveth it to his people as a mark of the man whom he would have them value and choose when he was dead. This one thing I require, that he be one of those that are envied, not pitied by others; who obey not all men in all things; but for the love of truth in some things incurreth men's offence.' And of himself he professeth, that, 'Though most thought otherwise than he did, that this was nothing to him who cared nly for the truth, as that which must condemn him or ab

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 saitli, "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.'

they will not learn Men may delight

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, of them, till they reach to their degree. 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.

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