understandings be not extraordinary, how cautious should they be in judging; upon hearing the wisest, and hearing dissenters, and not only flatterers or consenters: and hearing men of several minds, and hearing all witnesses and evidence, and hearing every man speak for himself: and after all considering thoroughly of it: especially of laws and wars, and impositions in religion, where thousands of consciences, say what you can, will expect satisfaction. When a woman called to Antigonus to hear her cause, and to do her justice, he told her that he could not have leisure; she answered, you should not have while to be king then: whereupon he heard her, and did her right. Had it been to an inferior judge, she had spoken reason.

8. Lastly, pretended certainty is the greater sin when it is falsely fathered on God. But the Pope and Council dare pretend, that God hath promised them infallibility, and God hath certified them that the consecrated bread is no bread, and that our senses are all deceived; and God hath made the Pope the universal ruler of the world or church, and made him and his council the only judges, by which all men must know what is the word of God. So, when fanatics will pretend, that by revelation, visions, or inspirations of the Spirit, God hath assured them that this or that is the meaning of a text which they understand not, or the truth in such or such a controversy. Alas! among two many well-meaning persons, God is pretended for a multitude of sinful errors; and they that preach false doctrine will do it, as the old prophet spake to the young, as from the Lord: and they that rail at godliness, and they that censure, backbite, cast out or persecute their brethren, will do it as Rabshakeh ; "Hath not God sent me," &c. Men will not make any snares for the church, or their brethren's consciences, but in the name of God: They will not divide the church, nor cast out infants, nor refuse communion with their brethren, but in the name of God. One man saith, God forbiddeth him all book-prayers, or all imposed forms of prayer:' And another saith, God forbiddeth him all but such.' And all belie God, and add this heinous abuse of his holy word and name unto their sin.

CHAP. XV.

Some special Aggravations more of this Sin, in Students, and Pastors, which should deter them from pretended Knowledge or Prefidence.

To such, I will suppose, that to name the evils may suffice, on my part, without sharp amplifications. Though I have spoken to you first in what is said, I will briefly add,

1. That this sin will make slothful students. Few study hard, who are quickly confident of their first conceptions. 2. While you study, it keepeth out knowledge: you are too full of yourselves, to receive easily from others.

3. It is the common parent of error and heresy. Ignorance is the mother, and Pride the father of them all and prefidence and pretended knowledge, is but proud ignorance in another name.

4. What a life of precious time will you waste in following the erroneous thoughts of your bewildered minds.

5. As food altereth the temperament of the body while it nourisheth, so the very temperament of your minds, and wills, and affections, will become vain, and frothy, and shadowy, or malignant and perverse, according to the quality of your error.

6. It is the common parent of superstition: it defileth God's worship with human inventions, with duties and sins of our own making. All such men's dreams will seem to them to be the laws of God.

7. It will entail a corrupt education of youth upon us, and consequently a corrupt degenerate kind of learning, and so a degenerate ministry on the churches. When youths are possessed with abundance of uncertainties, under the name of learning and religion, it will grow the custom to teach, and talk, and live accordingly: do I say, it will do? If the schoolmen's error in this, deserve but half as much as Faber, Valla, Hutten, Erasmus, charge upon them; you should hear and take warning: not to avoid the most accurate knowledge by the hardest studies, but to avoid preding that you know what you do not.

And you will make vain strife and contention about , your very trade and business, when you come abroad

in the world. They that make uncertainties or errors to be their studies and honourable learning, must keep up the honour of it by living as they learned, and talking vainly for the vanities of their minds.

9. And you are likely hereby to become the chief instruments of Satan, to trouble the church either with heresies, schisms, or persecutions.

10. And truly it should much turn your hearts against it, to know that it is a continual habit or exercise of pride. And pride, the devil's sin, is one of the most heinous and odious to God. If you hate any sin, you should hate pride. And it is one of the worst sorts of pride too. As nature hath three principles, active power, intellect and will, and man three excellencies, greatness, wisdom and goodness; so pride hath these three great objects: men are proud that they are greater, or wiser, or better than others: that is, they think themselves greater, or wiser or better than they are; and they would have others think so too. As for pride of beauty, or clothing, or such like corporeal things and appurtenances; it is the vice of children, and the more shallow and foolish sort of women. But greater things make up

a greater sort of pride. O what a number of all ranks and ages do live in this great sin of pride of wisdom, or an overvalued understanding, who never feel or lament it.

11. Moreover, your prefidence prepareth you for scepticism, or doubting the most certain necessary truths: like some of our sectaries, who have been falsely confident of so many religions, till at last they doubt of all religion. He that finds that he was deceived while he was an Anabaptist, and deceived when he was a Separatist, and deceived while he was an Antinomian or Libertine, and deceived when he was a Quaker; is prepared to think also that he was deceived when he was a Christian, and when he believed the immortality of the soul, and the life to come. When you have found your understandings oft deceive you, you will grow so distrustful of them, as hardly ever to believe them when it is most necessary. He that often lieth, will hardly be believed when he speaketh truth. And all this cometh from believing your first and slight apprehensions too easily, and too soon, and so filling up your minds with lies, which when they are discovered, make the truth to be suspected. Like some fanciful, lustful youths, who hastily grow fond of some unsuitable,

unlovely person, and when they know them, cannot so much as allow them the conjugal affection which they are bound to.

12. Lastly, consider what a shame it is to your understandings, and how it contradicteth your pretence of knowledge. For, how little knoweth that man, who knoweth not his own ignorance! How can it be thought that you are likely to know great matters at a distance, the profundities, sublimities, and subtleties of sciences, who know not yet how little you know.

CHAP. XVI.

Proofs of the little Knowledge that is in the World, to move us to a due Distrust of our Understandings.

IF

you think this sin of a proud understanding, and pretended knowledge, doth need for the cure of a fuller discovery of its vanity, I know not how to do it more convincingly, than by showing you how little true knowledge is in the world, and consequently that all mankind have cause to think meanly of their understandings.

I. The great imperfection of the sciences, is a plain discovery of it when mankind hath had above five thousand years already to have grown to more perfection; yet how 'much is still dark, and controverted! And how much unknown in comparison of what we know! But above all, though nothing is perfectly known which is not methodically known; yet how few have a true methodical knowledge! He that seeth but some parcels of truth, or seeth them but confusedly, or in a false method, not agreeable to the things, doth know but little, because he knoweth not the place, and order, and respects of truths to one another, and consequently neither their composition, harmony, strength or use. a philosopher that knew nothing but elements, and not mixed bodies, or animate beings: or like an anatomist that is but an atomist, and can say no more of the body of a man, but that it is made up of atoms, or at most can only enumerate the similar parts: or like a man that knoweth no more of his clock and watch, but as the pieces of it lie on a heap, or at best, setteth some one part out of its place, which disableth the whole engine: or like one that knoweth the chessmen

Like

only as they are in the bag, or at best in some disorder. Who will make me so happy as to show me one true scheme of physics, of metaphysics, of logic, yea of theology, which I cannot presently prove guilty of such mistake, confusion, disorder, as tendeth to great error in the subsequent parts. I know of no small number that have been offered to the world, but never saw one that satisfied my understanding. And I think I scarcely know any thing to purpose, till I can draw a true scheme of it, and set each compounding notion in its place.

II. And the great diversity and contrariety of opinions, of notions and of methods, proveth that our knowledge indeed is yet but small. How many methods of logic have we! how many hypotheses in physics, yea, how many contentious volumes written against one another, in philosophy and theology itself! What loads of 'Videturs' in the schoolmen! How many sects and opinions in religion! Physicians agree not about men's lives. Lawyers agree not about men's estates; no nor about the very fundamental laws. If there be a civil war, where both sides appeal to the law, there will be lawyers on both sides. And doth not this prove that we know but little!

III. But men's rage and confidence in these contrarieties doth discover it yet more. Read their contentious writings of philosophy and theology; observe their usage of one another, what contempt, what reproach, what cruelties they can proceed to! The Papist silenceth and burneth the Protestant; the Lutheran silenceth and revileth the Calvinist; the Calvinist sharply judgeth the Arminians, and so round: and may I not judge that this wisest part of the world is low in knowledge, when not the vulgar only, but the leaders and doctors are so commonly mistaken in their greatest zeal! And that Solomon erred not in saying, "The fool rageth, and is confident."

IV. If our knowledge were not very low, the long experience of the world would have long ago reconciled our controversies. The strivings and distractions about them, both in philosophy, politics and theology, have torn churches, and raised wars, and set kingdoms on fire, and should in reason be to us as a bone out of joint, which by the pain should force us all to seek for a cure: and surely in so