fore, what learning, true learning, is, and then you will see that there is small reason to contemn it. When men speak against a thing before they know what it is, no wonder if they know not what they say.

5. The angels, and the glorified spirits of the just, know more of God's works, and all these words and matters in question, than the greatest scholar on earth doth, and if you come to heaven, you will know more yourselves, at least of that much which will then be useful to be known. And will you despise that knowledge, as human, which is angelical, and wherein the most perfect do most excel?

6. Can you understand any Scripture, without the help of this learning, in yourselves, or others? The Spirit delivered it to the world in Greek and Hebrew, can you so understand it, before it is translated? If not, then the knowledge of those tongues is necessary in the translators. And would you have us so wholly take up all on trust from them, from age to age ever after, as not to know whether they translate it true or false i or whether there be any such thing as they tell us? If you yourselves must take it upon trust, from those that do understand it, when you do not, methinks you should so much the more honour and reverence them, whom you are fain to be so much beholden to, and whom you must trust in a matter of such concernment to your salvation; as, whether ever any of this was in the text of the Hebrew and Greek, which you find in the English? Sure that which is so laudable to the translators, is not to be contemned in your teachers.

What if the Rhemist papists tell you, that the Bible is falsely translated, I pray you what answer will you give them, if none of

your teachers knew it to be otherwise, whose words you must take as credible persons? Send a Hebrew and Greek Bible into Wales of Ireland, and when that converteth souls without an interpreter, then I will begin to think learning less necessary: yea, or when yourselves can so understand it. Besides, if there be not some knowledge of the situation of places, of the customs and state of that country, of the proverbial speeches of those times and places, with divers like things, it is not probable that you should understand much of the Scriptures.

7. Consider well, to what use and end it is, that the Spirit of holiness is sent, and then you will never think that this Spirit will serve you without common learning. This sanctifying Spirit is given to sanctify, that is, to give us the saving know

ledge of God by the interpreted or expounded word, and to draw up our hearts from the creature to him, and to conform us to our Lord Jesus Christ, in whom we have believed: but it is not the office of this spirit of holiness, as such, to teach men the knowledge of all natural truths, or the signification of words and phrases. Many thousands that have the Spirit cannot understand a Hebrew or Greek Bible, nor could they have told, by this time, how the year, or the week, goes about, nor how many years have been since Christ, nor what a year is, nor what day of the week goes over their heads, if they had never had the help of astronomers or learned men. The Spirit of holiness is given to bring men safe to heaven, and so it will do; but not to make them understand every natural or theological truth.

8. Consider your very learning to speak, or read, or write, is as much human learning as the learning to know the nature of creatures, and sense of strange languages: and if you renounce these, which you neither have by nature or grace, what persons would you be? You may as well say, therefore, that the Spirit will serve without learning to write, or read, or speak; for the difference of the cases is only in degree, and not in kind.

9. Consider well that there are several employments that God hath for men in the world, and in the church; and, accordingly, there are several gifts of the Spirit. For salvation, he giveth the Spirit of saving grace, which shall teach men effectually the need of Christ, the evil of sin, and the like, but not every other truth. Those whom he will employ as interpreters of Scripture, and teachers, and guides to others, he will furnish with gifts that are necessary for such employments. And a man may teach others, that may not be sanctified or saved himself; and many are sanctified and saved that are unfit to teach others. Are all prophets? Are all apostles? Are all teachers? Is all the body an eye, or hand? God may give teachers a spirit of teaching, and he gave Saul a spirit of government, and many wicked men, in the first age, a spirit of teaching, interpreting tongues, miracles; and deny these to better men, because he intendeth not them to the same use. Public gifts are for public

use.

10. Consider, you must distinguish between extensive and intensive knowledge; between knowing more and more truths; and knowing the same truths better, and more effectually. The Spirit of holiness is not given, to know more truths by, than an unsanctified man can know, but to know the same better. You

cannot name any truth which a gracious man knoweth, but an hypocrite may have a speculative knowledge of the same, and say the same words concerning it, as he can say. But grace makes a man know that heartily and affectingly, which another knows but superficially: but though the Spirit cause not the sanctified to know any man more for number of truths than an hypocrite may know; yet the commoner gifts of the Spirit, by study and learning, cause many ungodly men to know many truths, which thousands of the godly never knew: which truths, in their place, are usual and excellent.

11. Consider that it is the work of the Spirit of holiness to cause you savingly to know, at least, fundamentals, and the substance of christian religion; but it belongs more to learning and a commoner gift of the Spirit to enable men to defend these same fundamentals in disputation against an adversary, and orderly, methodically, and aptly to teach them to others, and rationally to explain them.

12. It is the work of the Spirit of holiness to give men saving grace in possession, but it more belongs to the common gifts of wit and learning, to define or describe these same graces, or movingly to talk of them. Many a man that never had faith or love, can give you a true definition of faith and love; and many a man that hath them cannot tell you what they be. Thousands believe savingly, that have not wit enough to tell you truly what believing is; and many thousands have the Spirit that know not what the Spirit is. So that an unsanctified man may more truly, and more exactly describe any grace, by the help of learning, than you have it by the Spirit of holiness, though you feel the powerful effects of it, which he never felt. I can give a truer description of any county in England, and the distance of one town from another by my maps, though I know not the places, than most men that live in those counties that do, because they know but a smaller part of it; and yet they know their own homes better, and their knowledge is more sensible ⚫ and experimental, and beneficial to them.

And, by the way, you may hence perceive that ministers or others should be very cautious how they cast any from church or communion, because they cannot tell them how they were converted, or what faith, or love, or holiness is. Seeing the Spirit gives these graces to many, to whom he gives not wit to define them, nor words to tell you what they do know of them. Their lives will tell you better than their tongues, whether they be sincere.

Obj. But how can men have faith, or love, that know not what it is?

Answ. They feel how it works within them, but they cannot describe it to themselves, or others. Are not divines themselves disagreed about the definitions of faith, repentance, and almost all graces? May not millions of poor men have health of body, that cannot tell you what health is; and have the humours in right temper that cannot tell you what those humours are? How little know we what our own natural, animal, or vital spirits are; how our food is concocted; how sanguification, and carnification are effected; how little know we of the soul itself, by which we know, and the life by which we live? What wonder, then, if a man have grace, that knows but little what grace is? as one saith, (Lod. Vives,) "God gave man a soul to use, rather than to know." So I may say of grace, God gives men grace to use, rather than to know, define, describe, or dispute about.

13. It is not the work of the Spirit, at least ordinarily, to teach men any particular truths, but what mere experience teacheth, without the use of outward means, by the industry and study of ourselves, or others, or both: but the Spirit worketh by these, and blesseth these to you. Every godly man hath more love to truth in general, and is more disposed to the reception of it, than others; and by the consideration of the fundamentals, the Spirit hath given him the knowledge of them: but as it was not without their own consideration, that the first were known, so are they not actually acquainted with all truths, that after they shall know. It is not the work of the Spirit, to tell you the meaning of Scripture, and give you the knowledge of divinity, without your own study and labour, but to bless that study, and give you knowledge thereby. Did not Christ open the eyes of the man born blind, as suddenly, as wonderfully, and by as little means, as you can expect to be illuminated by the Spirit? And yet that man could not see any distant object out of his reach, till he took the pains to travel to it, or it was brought to him, for all his eyes were opened. When he was newly healed, he could not have told what was done in Samaria, nor seen what was in Jericho, nor what a town Tyre or Sidon was, unless he would be at the pains to travel thither. And if he would see Rome, he must be at so much more pains, as the place was more distant. Would you have been so silly as to say, 'This man can presently see Samaria, Tyre, Rome, because Christ hath opened his eyes?' So

is it here. If Christ have anointed your eyes with the eye salve of the Spirit, and removed the inward impediments of your sight, yet it is not that you may presently know all truths, which you never heard of, or read of, or studied to know. You must study, and study again; and the further off, and more difficult the truths are, the more must you study, and then expect to know by the blessing of the Spirit: let experience witness. Did you not hear all those truths which you know from the mouth of some teacher, or other person, or else consider and study of them yourselves, before you came to know them by the Spirit? Go not, then, out of God's way, if you expect his blessing.

14. Doth not experience commonly tell you, that men know more that study and have learning, than those that do not? Are not the ministers and other learned men, and godly people, that have studied the Scriptures long, the most knowing people in England? Nothing but mad ignorance or impudence can deny it. What man breathing knew as much the first hour he received the Spirit, as he doth after many years' study and diligent labour?

15. To reject study on pretence of the sufficiency of the Spirit, is to reject the Scripture itself: for as a man rejecteth his land that refuseth to till it, or rejecteth his meat if he refuse to eat it, though he praise it never so much; so doth he reject the Scripture that refuseth to study it, or to study that which must first be known, or is necessary thereto. Meditation digesteth the word, which else is cast up again.

Obj. We would have men study Scripture, but not human writings.

Answ. You would have men study Scripture, but not learn to understand the words of it, or the languages it was written in? What a contradiction is that. You would have men study God's word, and not his works? The book of supernatural revelation, and not the book of nature; as if both were not God's, or both our duty?

Obj. Let men study the works of God, and spare not, but not books of human learning.

Answ. May we not take the help of those that have studied the same works before us? Then, if every man must begin all anew, and must make use of no other man's helps and experiments, we shall know but little, and knowledge will make but a pitiful progress. If we may take the help of men by talking with them, why not by reading their writings? How