without offering violence to the words, one as implied, the rest as expressed, to wit,

1. There is a knowledge of God to be had. 2. Some have it not.

3. The want of it is a matter of shame.

All which I intend to insist upon in this and the following exercitations.

4. Concerning the first. There is a knowledge of God to perfection, which is always saving; and another to salvation indeed, but as yet imperfect. The former had been proudly challenged by some sons of delusion, and accounted attainable in this life by the sole improvement of reason. For we read of Aetius that he dared to say, "I so know God, as I do myself; yea I do not know myself so well as I do God."* A certain evidence to make it appear, that the wretch neither knew himself nor God. And Petrus Abelardus is said to have maintained this assertion," that the whole of God's essence may be comprehended by human reason." But the truth is, it is neither attainable in this life, as being reserved for another world (according to the apostle's doctrine,† "We know but in part. When that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away,") nor at all by the sole improvement of reason. The less

Οντως οιδα τὸν Θεὸν ὡς παρ ἐμαυτὸν, καὶ εἰ τοσᾶτὸν διδα ἐμαυτὸν ὡς Tov O. Epiph. hæres. Totum quod Deus est humana ratione comprehendi posse. Osiand. hist. Eccles. centur. 12. p. 265. +1 Cor. xiii. 9, 10.

cannot comprehend the greater; "God is greater than our heart,"* saith St John, therefore incomprehensible by the shallow reason of shipwrecked nature. He and the Sun are alike in this, both refresh wary beholders, but put out the eyes of curious pryers. However faith may look upon God with much comfort, for reason to stare too much upon him is the way to lose her sight. When she hath tired and wildered herself in searching after the true God her return must be non est inventus, he is not to be found, at least not by me. Faith only can find him out, yet not to perfection neither, although to salvation it may and doth.

But

5. Which is the latter kind of knowledge above mentioned, and that I am now speaking to, as attainable here. Even the lowest rank of Christians, whom John styleth his little children, are described by their having known the Father.† And because the new covenant runneth thus, "They shall all know me from the least of them to the greatest of them, saith the Lord." although it be most true, that there is a saving knowledge of God attainable here, yet for any man to presume, that whatever knowledge of God he attaineth, it will certainly save him is a most strong delusion. For whereas there is a natural and a literal as well as a spiritual knowledge, it will be manifest by the sequel of this

1 John iii. 2. + 1 John ii. 13.

Jerem. xxxi. 33.

discourse, that none is saving but the third. The first is that which may be fetched out of the book of nature without any further induction of higher principles. Antony the religious monk, when a certain philosopher asked him, how he did to live without books, answered he had the voluminous book of all the creatures to study "Believe upon, and to contemplate God in.*

me, said Bernard to his friend, as one that "speaketh out of experience, there is sometimes 64 more to be found in woods, then there is in "books. Trees and stones will teach thee that, "which is not to be learned from other masters.' The book of Scripture without doubt hath the pre-eminence in worth by many degrees; but that of the creatures had the precedency in time, and was extant long before the written word. We may therefore well begin with it.

* Socrat. Eccles. histor. lib. 4. cap. 23.

+ Bern. epist. 107. Aliquid amplius invenies in sylvis quam in libris.

EXERCITATION II.

That there is a God, the prime dictate of natural light; deducible from man's looking backward to the creation, forward to the rewards and punishments dispensed after death, upward to the angels above us, downwards to inferior beings, within ourselves to the composition of our bodies and dictates of our consciences, about us to the various occurrences in the world.

THERE are six several acts which every man of understanding is able to exert in a way of contemplation: he may respicere, prospicere, suspicere, despicere, inspicere, and circumspicere. Whosoever shall advisedly exercise any of these will undoubtedly meet with some demonstrations of a deity; much more if he be industriously conversant in them all.

I. If he do respicere, look backward to the creation of the world (which the light of nature will tell him had a beginning) he will see and understand the invisible things of God by the things that are made, even his eternal power and God-head, as Paul speaks.* Basil therefore called the world a school wherein reasonable souls are taught the knowledge of God.† In a musical instrument when we observe divers strings meet in a harmony, we conclude that some skilful musician tuned them; when * Rom. i. 20. † ψυχῶν λογικῶν διδασκαλείον, καὶ τῆς θεογνωσίας παιδο SUTng. Basil. Hex.

M

we see thousands of men in a field, marshalled under several colours, all yielding exact obedience, we infer that there is a General, to whose commands they are all subject. In a watch, we take notice of great and small wheels all so fitted as to concur to an orderly motion, we acknowledge the skill of an artificer. When we come into a Printing-house and see a great number of different letters so ordered as to make a book, the consideration hereof maketh it evident that there is a composer, by whose art they were brought into such a frame. When we behold a fair building, we conclude it had an architect, a stately ship well rigged and safely conducted to the port, that it hath a Pilot, So here. The visible world is such an Instrument, Army, Watch, Book, Building, Ship, as undeniably argueth a God, who was and is the Tuner, General, and Artificer, the Composer, Architect and Pilot of it.

§. 2. II. If he do prospicere, look forwards to the rewards and punishments, to be dispensed in another world, (which the heathen's Elysium and Tartarus shew them to have had a slight knowledge of by the light of nature*) he cannot but acknowledge some supreme Judge, by whom they are dispensed; and that he is a searcher of hearts, wherein piety and sin do chiefly reside; seeing it were impossible for him otherwise to pass righteous judgment without mistaking good for evil, and evil for good. Some discourses of

* Vid. Livium Galant. Christian. Theolog. cum Platonica comparat. lib. xii. page 341. & sequent.