12. The deep and cruel censures which they pass against Dissenters, doth shew their self-conceitedness. None more censorious than raw, unexperienced persons, not only ignorant preachers, but women and boys. How readily and boldly, without any fear of God, doth one seek to make his brother odious as a schismatic and a fanatic, and worse than words can describe him; and another to reproach others as antichristian and carnal, whom he never understood! Nothing but pride could make men so ready and bold, and fearless in their most foolish censures.

13. And it further sheweth their proud presumption, when they dare do all this upon bare rumours and hearsay, and ungrounded suspicions. Were they not proud and presumptuous, they would think, alas, my understanding is not so clear and sure, nor my charity so safe and strong, as that I should in reason venture to condemn my brother, upon uncertain rumours, and such slight reports! Have I heard him speak for himself? or is it charity or common justice to condemn a man unheard? What, though they are godly men that report it? So was David, that committed adultery and murder, and hastily received a lie against Mephibosheth; and perhaps many of those Corinthians, against whose false censures, Paul was put so largely to vindicate himself.

14. Yea, when they dare proceed to vend these false reports and censures upon hearsay, to the destruction of the charity of those that hear them; and so entangle them all in sin. As if it were not enough to quench their own love to their brother by false surmises, but they must quench as many others also as they can.

15. Yea, when they dare venture so far as to unchurch many churches, yea, most in the world, and degrade most ministers, if not unchristian most Christians, or at least themselves withdraw from the communion of such churches, and all for something which they never understood; about a doctrine, a form, a circumstance, where self-opinion or self-interest draweth them to all this bold adventure.

To say nothing of condemnations of whole churches and countries, the tyrannical, proud impositions, the cruel persecutions, which the Papal faction hath been guilty of by this vice; judge now whether it be not too common a case to be guilty of an unhumbled understanding, and of pretended knowledge?

Object. If it be so, is it not best to do as the Papists, and keep men from reading the Scriptures, or meddling with divine things which they cannot master, any further than to believe what the Church believeth.'

Answ. 1. It is best no doubt, to teach men to know the difference between teachers and learners, and to keep in a humble, learning state, and in that state to grow as much in knowledge as they can; but not to cast away knowledge, for fear of overvaluing it, nor renounce their reason, for fear of error: no more than to put out their eyes for fear of mistaking by them, or choosing madness lest they abuse their wits: else we might wish to be brutes, because abused reason is the cause of all the errors and mischiefs in the world.

2. The Popish clergy who give this council for the blinding of the vulgar, are worse themselves; and by their proud contendings, censures and cruelties, shew more self-conceitedness than the vulgar do.

3. The truth is, the cause is the common frailty of man, and the common pravity of corrupted nature; and it is to be found in persons of all ranks, religions and conditions; of which more after in due place.

CHAP. XII.

VI. Of the mischievous Effects of this proud Pretence to more Knowledge than men have.

If the mischiefs of this sin had not been very great, I had not chosen this subject to treat of.

1. It is no small mischief to involve men's souls in the guilt of the sins which I named in the last chapter, as the discovery of this vice. Sure all those disorders, censures, slanders, and presumptions, should not seem small in the eyes of any man that feareth God, and loveth holiness, and hateth sin.

2. Pretended knowledge wasteth men some time in getting it, and much more in abusing it: all the time that you study for it, preach for it, write for it, is sinfully lost and cast away.

3. It kindleth a corrupt and sinful zeal; such as James

describeth, (James iii. 1. 15,) which is envious and striving, and is but earthly, sensual and devilish: a zeal against love, and against good works, and against the interest of our brother, and against the peace and concord of the Church; a hurting, burning, devouring, excommunicating, persecuting zeal. And a fever in the body is not so pernicious as such a sinful zeal in the soul. Such a zeal the Jews had, as Paul bears them witness. (Rom. xi. 1.) Such a zeal, alas! is so common among persecuting Papists on one side, and censorious Sectaries and Separatists on the other, that we must all bear the sad effects of it: and self-conceited knowledge is the fuel of this zeal, as James iii. fully manifesteth.

4. This pretended knowledge is the fixing of false opinions in the minds of men, by which the truth is most powerfully kept out. A child will not wrangle against his teacher, and therefore will learn; but these overwise fools do presently set their wits against what you say to keep out knowledge. You must beat down the garrison of his pride, before you come within hearing to instruct him: he is with more difficulty untaught the errors which he hath received, than an unprejudiced man is taught to understand most excellent truths.

5. By this, the gifts of the most wise and excellent teachers are half lost it is full bottles that are cast into these seas of knowledge, which have no room for more, but come out as they went in. If an Augustine, or an Aquinas, or Scotus were among them, yea, a Peter or Paul, what can he put into these persons that are full of their own conceits already?"Seest thou a man wise in his own conceit, there is more hope of a fool than of him.”

6. Yea, they are usually the perverters of the souls of others. Before they can come to themselves, and know that they were mistaken, what pains have they taken to make others of their own erroneous minds, whom they are not able afterward to undeceive again?

7. It is a vice that blemisheth many excellent qualifications. To hear of a man that valueth his own judgment but according to its worth, and pretendeth to know but so much as he knoweth indeed, is no shame to him; though knowledge is a thing fitter to be used than boasted of: but if a man know never so much, and can never so well express it,

if he think that he is wiser than he is, and excelleth others more than indeed he doth, and overvalueth that knowledge which he hath, it is a shame which his greatest parts cannot excuse or hide.

8. It exposeth a man to base and shameful mutability. He that will be hasty and confident in his apprehensions, is so often mistaken, that he must as often change his mind, and recant, or do much worse. I know that it cannot be expected, that any man should have as sound apprehensions in his youth, as in his age, and that the wisest should not have need of mutations for the better, and retractions of some youthful errors; and he that changeth not, and retracteth nothing, it seems is in his childish ignorance and error still: but when natural frailty exposeth us all to much of this disgrace, we should not expose ourselves to so much A hasty judger, or prefident man, must be a very weathercock, or be defiled with a leprosy of error. Whereas if men would but be humble, and modest, and self-suspicious, and suspend their presumption, and not take on them to know before they know indeed, how safely might they walk, and how seldom would they need to change their minds, or either stick in the sink of error, or make many shameful retractations!

more.

9. Prefidence and false judging engageth a man in a very life of sin. For when falsehood goeth for truth with him, it will infect his affections, and pollute his conversation : and all that he doth in the obedience and prosecution of that error will be sin. Yea, the greatest sin that he can but think no sin may be committed; as was the persecution of Christ and Christians, by the Jews and Paul, and others like them; and the Papists' bloodiness for their religion throughout Christendom.

10. It disturbeth the peace of all societies. This is the vice that disquieteth families: every one is wisest in his own eyes: the servant thinketh his own way better than his master's. What are all the contentions between husband and wife, or any in the family, but that in all their differences, every one thinketh himself to be in the right? His own opinion is right, his own words and ways are right; and when every one is wise and just, and every one is in the right, the effects are such as if no one were wise or in the right.

And in civil societies, seditions, rebellions, oppressions, tyranny, and all confusions come from this, that men pretend to be sure of what they are not. Rulers take up with false reports from idle, malicious whisperers and accusers against their inferiors, and have not the justice and patience to suspend their judgments, till they have searched out the matter, and fully heard men speak for themselves. Subjects make themselves judges of the secrets of government, and of the councils and actions of their rulers, of which they have no certain notice, but venture to conclude upon deceitful suspicions. And the contentions and factions amongst nobles and other subjects, come from misunderstandings, through hasty and ungrounded judgings. But the most woful effects are in the churches; where, alas, whilst every pastor will be wiser than another, and the people wiser than all their pastors, and every sect and party much wiser than all that differ from them, their divisions, their separations, their alienations, and bitter censurings of each other, their obtruding their own opinions, and rules and ceremonies upon each other, their bitter envying, strife, and persecutions of each other, do make sober standers-by to ask as Paul, "Is there not a wise man among you?" O happy the world, happy kingdoms, but most happy the Churches of Christ, if we could possibly bring men but to know their ignorance! If the pastors themselves were not prefident and presumptuous overvaluers of their own apprehensions! and if the people knew how little they know! but now, alas, men rage against each other in their dreams, and few of them have the grace to awake before death, and find to repentance, that they were themselves in error.

Hear me, with that remnant of meekness and humility which thou hast left, thou confident, bitter, censorious man! Why must that man needs be taken for a heretic, a schismatic, a refractory, stubborn, self-willed person, an antichristian, carnal, formal man, who is not of thy opinion in point of a controversy, of a form, of an order, of a circumstance, or subscription, or such like? It is possible it may be so! and it is possible thou mayest be more so thyself. But hast thou so patiently heard all that he hath to say, and so clearly discerned the truth on thy own side, and that this truth is made so evident to him as that nothing but wilful obstinacy can resist it, as will warrant all thy censures and