2. It is very condemnable for any man to be proud of his understanding: while it is so low, and poor, and dark, and hath still so much matter to abase us. He knoweth not what a dungeon poor mortals are in, nor what a darkened thing a sinful mind is, nor what a deplorable state we are in, so far from the heavenly light, no, nor what it is to be a man in flesh, who findeth not much more cause of humiliation than of pride in his understanding. O how much ado have I to keep up from utter despondency under the consciousness of so great ignorance, which no study, no means, no time doth overcome. How long, Lord, shall this dungeon be our dwelling! and how long shall our foolish souls be loath to come into the celestial light!

3. It is sinful folly to pretend to know things unrevealed and impossible to be known. "The secret things belong unto the Lord our God, but those things which are revealed belong to us, and to our children for ever, that we do them." (Deut. xxix. 29.) "For who hath known the mind of the Lord? or who hath been his counsellor?" (Rom. xi. 34.) And how many such compose the theology of some, and the philosophy of more.

4. It is sinful folly to pretend to know that which is impossible or unrevealed to him, though it be possible and revealed to others. For as the eye, so the understanding must have its necessary light, and due constitution and conditions of the object, and of itself; or else it cannot understand.

5. It is sinful folly to pretend to certainty of knowledge, when either the thing is but probable, or at best, we have but doubtful opinions or conjectures of it, and no true certainty.

6. It is sinful folly to pretend that we know or receive any thing by Divine faith (or revelation) when we have it but by human faith, or probable conjecture from natural evidence. As soon as men are persuaded by a sect, a seducer, or a selfish priest, to believe what he saith, abundance presently take such a persuasion for a part of their religion, as if it were a believing God.

7. It is sinful folly to take on us that we know what we know not at all; because we do but know that it is knowable, and that wise men know it, and as soon as we understand that it should be known, and that wise men conclude it to be true, therefore to pretend that we know it to be true.

8. And it is sinful folly to pretend that we truly know or apprehend the thing or matter, or incomplex object, merely because we have got the bare words, and second notions of it, which are separable from the knowledge of the thing. All these are false and sinful pretences of knowledge which men have not.

But because Paul so warneth us to take heed of vain philosophy, and atheists and infidels deride him for speaking against the wisdom of the world, as if he spake against learning, because he had it not; and because the disease which he attempted to cure, remaineth among scholars to this day, and instead of a cure, many contemn the physician; and dislike Christ himself and the Gospel, as defective of the learning which they overvalue; I will once again, and that more distinctly tell you some few of the faults of our common learning; even now that it is cultivated and augmented in this age, that you may see that Paul did not injuriously accuse it, or Christ injuriously neglect it.

I. Natural imperfection layeth the foundation of our common calamity; in that it is so long before sense and reason grow up to a natural maturity, through the unripeness of organs, and want of exercise, that children are necessitated to learn words before things, and to make these words the means of their first knowledge, of many of the things signified; so that most furnish themselves with a stock of names and words, before ever they get any true knowledge of the matter.

II. And then they are exceeding apt to think that this treasury of words and second notions is true wisdom, and to mistake it for the knowledge of the thing even as in religion we find almost all children and ignorant people, will learn to say by rote the Creed and Lord's-prayer, and Commandments, and Catechism, and then think that they are not ignorants, when it is long after, before we can get them to understand the sense of the words which they can so readily speak; yea, though they are plain English words, which they use for the most part in ordinary discourse.

e M. Antonine, 1. 1, sect. 17. Doth thank God that he made no greater progress in Rhetoric, Poetry, and such like studies, which might have hindered him from better things, if he had perceived himself to have profited in them. And (in fine) quod cum Philosophandi cupiditas incessisset, non in sophistam aliquem inciderim, nec commentariis evolvendis, vel syllogismis resolvendis, vel Meterologicis discutiendis tempus deses contriverim.

III. When children come to school, also their masters teach them as their parents did, or worse; I mean that they bestow almost all their pains to furnish them with words and second notions: and so do their tutors too often at the University. So that by that time they are grown to be masters of a considerable stock of words, grammatical, logical, metaphysical, &c., and can set these together in propositions and syllogisms, and have learned memoriter the theorems or axioms, and some distinctions which are in common use and reputation, they are ready to pass for Masters of the Arts, and to set up for themselves, and leave their tutors, and to teach others the like sort and measure of learning, which they have thus acquired. Like one that sets up his trade as soon as he hath gotten a shop full of tools.

IV. And indeed the memories of young men are strong and serviceable so many years sooner than their judgments, that prudent teachers think it meet to take that time to furnish them with words and organical notions, while they are unmeet to judge of things; even as pious parents must teach them the words of the catechism, that when they grow riper, their judgments may work upon that which their memories did before receive. And in this they are in the right upon two suppositions. 1. That distinguishing things obvious and easily understood from things remote, abstruse and difficult, they would teach them those of the first sort with the words, though not the second: and while they make haste with the languages they would not make too much haste with the notions and theorems of the arts and sciences. 2. That they still make them know that words as to matter are but as the dish to the meat, and all this while they are but preparing for wisdom and true learning, and not getting or possessing it; and that unless they will equalize a parrot and a philosopher, they must know how little they have attained, and must after learn things, or not pretend to know any thing indeed. As children learn first to speak and then learn what to speak of.

V. And the great mischief is, that multitudes of those notions that are taught us are false, not fitted to the things, but expressing the conceptions of roving, uncertain, erroneous, bewildered minds. Words are the instruments of communication of thoughts. And when I hear a man speak,

I hear, perhaps, what he thinketh of things, but not always what they are. Our universal notions are the result of our own comparing things with things. And we are so wofully defective in such comparings, that our universal notions must needs be very defective, so that they abound with

error.

VI. And the penury and narrowness of words is a great impediment to the due expressing of those poor confused conceptions which we have; for a man can think more aptly and comprehensively than he can speak. And hence it cometh to pass, that words and universal notions are become like pictures or hieroglyphics, almost of arbitrary signification and use, as the speaker pleaseth. And, as a multitude of school-distinctions tell us, you can know little by the grammatical use or etymology of the words, what the meaning of them is in a theorem or distinction, till the speaker tell it you by other words.

VII. And the conceptions of men being as various as their countenances, the same words in the mouths of several men, have several significations. So that when tutors read the same books to their scholars, and teach them the same notions, it is not the same conceptions always that they thus communicate.

VIII. And when all is done, 'recipiter ad modum recipientis.' It is two to one but the learner receiveth their notions with a conception somewhat different from them all. And when he thinks he hath learned what was taught him, and of his teacher's mind, he is mistaken, and hath received another apprehension.

IX. And the narrowness of man's mind and thoughts is such, that usually there must go many partial conceptions to one thing or object really indivisible: so that few things, or nothing rather in the world, is known by us with one conception, nor with a simplicity of apprehensions answerable to the simplicity of the things and hereby it cometh to pass that inadequate conceptions make up a great part of our learning and knowledge. And, yet worse, our words being narrower than our thoughts, we are fain to multiply words more than conceptions, so that we must have ten conceptions perhaps of one thing, and twenty words perhaps for those ten conceptions. And then we grow to imagine

the things to be as various as our conceptions, yea, and our words and so learning is become confused error, and the great and noble actions of the fantastical world, are a pitiful confused agitation of phantasms, and, whether fortuitous or artificial, a congress of atoms, sometimes digladiating, and sometimes seeming by amicable embraces to compose some excellent piece of art. And things seem to us to be multiplied and ordered as our conceptions of them are. And the Scotists may yet write as many more treatises de formalitatibus,' before men will understand indeed what a 'conceptus formalis' with them is, and whether diverse formalities be diverse realities, or only ejusdem conceptus inadequati.' But thus learning is become like a puppet-play, or the raising of the dust.

X. The entia rationis' being thus exceeding numerous, are already confounded with objective realities, and have compounded our common systems of logic, metaphysics, and too much of physics: so that students must at first see through false spectacles, and learn by seducing notions, and receive abundance of false conceptions, as the way to wisdom; and shadows and rubbish must furnish their minds under the name of truth, though mixed with many real verities. For young men must have teachers; they cannot begin at the foundation, and yet every one learn of himself, as if none had ever learned before him: he is like to have but a slow proficient, that maketh no use of the studies and experience of any that ever learned before him. And he that will learn of others, must receive their notions and words as the means of his information.

XI. And when they grow up to be capable of real wisdom, O ! what a labour is it, to cleanse out this rubbish, and to unlearn all the errors that we have learned, so that it is much of the happiest progress of extraordinary successful studies, to find out our old mistakes, and set our conceptions in better order one by one: perhaps in one year we find out and reform some two or three, and in another year one or two more, and so on. Even as when at my removal of my library, my servant sets up all my books, and I must take them half down again to set them in their right places. XII. And the difficulty of the matter is our great impediment, when we come to study things. For, 1. Their