diligent and slothful servants; but in matters that are above our reach, which we must take on trust, and know not whom to trust, the difficulty is greater: where the errors and haste of either party will breed mischief, but much more of both. If the physician, or other undertaker be confident in his error, and precipitant, he will impose ruin on men's health, as I have said: and if the patient be self-conceited and rash in his choice, he is likely to suffer for it; but when both physician and patient are so, what hope of escape! And especially when through the great imperfection of man's understanding, not one of a multitude is clear and skilful in things that are beyond the reach of sense: and if one man, after great experience, come to be wiser than the rest, the hearer knoweth it not, and he must cast out his notions among as many assailing warriors, as there are ignorant self-conceited hearers present, and that is usually as there are persons. And when every one hath poured out his confidence against it, and perhaps reproached the author as erroneous, because he will know more than they, and will not reverence their known mistakes; alas! how shall the person that we would instruct (be it for health or soul), be able to know which of all these to trust as wisest?

But the saddest work is that forementioned, in churches, kingdoms, families and souls. I must expect that opening the crime will exasperate the guilty: but what remedy? 1. Should I largely open what work this maketh in families, I have too much matter for the complaint. If the wife differ from the husband, she seemeth always in the right: if the servant differ from the master, and the child from the parent, if a little past infancy, they are always in the right: what is the contention in families, and in all the world, but who shall have his way and will? If they are of several parties in religion, or if any be against religion itself; if they be foolish, erroneous, or live in any sin, that can without utter impudence be defended, still they are able to make it good: and except children at school, or others that professedly go to be taught, whom can we meet with so ignorant or mistaken, that will not still think, when even superiors differ from them and reprove them, that they are in the right?

2. And what mischiefs doth it cause in churches! When the Papal tyrannical part are so confident that they are in the right, that when they silence preachers, and imprison

and burn Christians, they think it not their duty so much as to hear what they have to say for themselves. Or if they hear a few words, they have not the patience to hear all, or impartially to try the cause: but they are so full of themselves and overwise, that it must seem without any more ado a crime to dissent from them, or contradict them. And thus proud self-conceitedness smiteth the shepherds, scattereth the flocks, and will allow the Church of Christ no unity or peace. And the popular crowd are usually or often as selfconceited in their way; and if they never so unreasonably oppose their teachers, how hard it is to make them know or once suspect that they are mistaken! O what mutinies in Christ's armies, what schisms, what confusions, what scandals, what persecutions in the Church, what false accusations, what groundless censures, do proud self-conceited understandings cause!

But scarcely any where is it more lamentably seen than among injudicious, unexperienced ministers! What work is made in the Christian world, by sect against sect, and party against party, in cases of controversy, by most men's bold and confident judging of what they never truly studied, tried or understood! Papists against Protestants, Protestants against Papists, Lutherans (or Arminians) and Calvinists, &c. usually charge one another by bare hearsay, or by a few sentences or scraps collected out of their writings by their adversaries; contrary to the very scope of the whole discourse or context. And men cannot have leisure to peruse the books, and to know before they judge. And then they think that seeing their reverend doctors have so reported their adversaries before them, it is arrogance or injury to think that they knew not what they said, or else belied them. And on such supposition the false judging doth go on. Of all the pulpits that often trouble the people with invectives against this side or that, especially in the controversies of Predestination, Grace, and Freewill, how few do we hear that know what they talk against!

Yea, those young or unstudied men, who might easily be conscious how little they know, are ready to oppose and contemn the most ancient studied divines; when if ever they would be wise men, they should continue scholars to such, even while they are teachers of the people.

I will not presume to open the calamities of the world,

for want of rulers truly knowing their subjects' case, but judging hastily by the reports of adversaries: but that rebellions ordinarily hence arise I may boldly say. When subjects that know not the reasons of their ruler's actions, are so overwise as to make themselves judges of that which concerneth them not: and how few be they that think not themselves wiser than all their guides and governors!

And lastly, by this sin it is that the wisdom of the wisest is as lost to the world: for let a man know never so much more than others, after the longest, hardest studies, the selfconceitedness of the ignorant riseth up against it, or maketh them incapable of receiving it, so that he can do little good to others.

I conclude again, that this is the plague and misery of mankind, and the cause of all sin and shame and ruin,-that ignorant, unhumbled understandings will be still judging rashly before they have thoroughly tried the case, and will not suspend till they are capable of judging, nor be convinced that they know not what they know not, but be confident in their first or ungrounded apprehensions.

CHAP. XI.

The Signs and common Discoveries of a proud, self-conceited Understanding, and of pretended Knowledge.

By such effects as these, the most of men do show their guilt of overvaluing their own apprehensions.

1. When they will be confident of things that are quite above their understandings, or else which they never thoroughly studied. Some are confident of that which no man knoweth; and most are confident of that which I think they are unlikely to be certain of themselves, without miraculous inspiration, which they give us no reason to believe that they have. Things that cannot ordinarily be known, 1. Without the preparation of many other sciences, 2. or without reading many books, 3. or without reading or hearing what is said against it, 4. or at least without long or serious studies; we have abundance that will talk most peremptorily of them, upon the trust of their teachers or party, without any of this necessary means of knowledge.

2. The hastiness of men's conclusions discovereth this presumption and self-conceit. When at the first hearing or reading, or after a few thoughts they are as confident, as if they had grown old in studies; the best understandings must have long time to discern the evidence of things difficult, and a longer time to try that evidence by comparing it with what is brought against it: and yet a longer time to digest truths into that order and clearness of apprehension, which is necessary to distinct and solid knowledge, when without all this ado, most at the first lay hold of that which cometh in their way and there they stick, at least till a more esteemed teacher or party tell them somewhat that is contrary to it. It is but few of our first apprehensions that are sound, and need not reformation; but none that are well-digested, and need not much consideration to perfect them.

3. Is it not a plain discovery of a presumptuous understanding, when men will confidently conclude of things, which their own tongues are forced to confess that they do not understand? I mean not only so as to give an accurate definition of them, but really not to know what it is they talk of. Many a zealous Anabaptist I have known, that knoweth not what baptism is. And many a one that hath disputed confidently for or against freewill, that knew not at all what freewill is. And many a one that hath disputed about the Lord's-supper, and separated from almost all churches for want of sufficient strictness in it, and especially for giving it to the ignorant; who, upon examination, have not known the true nature of a sacrament, nor of the sacred covenant which it sealeth. Many a one forsaketh most churches as no churches, that they may be of a right constituted church, who know not what a church is. What abundance will talk against an Arminian, a Calvinist, a Prelatist, a Presbyterian, an Independent; that really know not what any of them are? Like a gentleman, the other day, that after long talk of the Presbyterians, being urged to tell what a Presbyterian was, could tell no more, but that he was one that is not so merry and sociable as other men, but stricter against sports, or taking a cup. And if I should tell you how few that can judge the controversies about predestination, do know what they talk of it, were easy to evince it. 4. May I not discern their prefidence, when men that hold contraries, five men of five inconsistent opinions, are

yet every one confident that his own is right? When at best it is but one that can be right? When six men confidently expound a text in the Revelation six ways. When five men are so confident of five several ways of Church-government, that they embody themselves into several policies or parties to enjoy them. Is not here self-conceitedness in all, at least save one?

5. When men themselves by turning from opinion to opinion, shall confess their opinion was false; and yet made a religion of it, while they held it; was not this a presumptuous understanding? When a man shall be one year of one sect, and another of another, and yet always confident that he is in the right.

6. When men that are known to be ignorant in other parts of religion, shall yet in some one opinion which they have espoused, seem to themselves much wiser than their teachers, and make nothing of the judgments of those that have studied it many a year, is not this a presuming mind? Take the ablest divine that ever you knew living, suppose him to be Jewel, Andrews, Usher, Davenant, Calvin, Chamier, Camero, Amesius, Gataker, &c. Let him be one that all learned men admire, whose judgment is sent for from several kingdoms; who hath spent a long life in hard and very successful studies, every boy and silly woman, every ignorant vicious clown, that differeth from him in any point, shall slight all the wisdom of this man, as if in comparison of himself he were a fool. Let it come but to the point of anabaptistry, separation, antinomianism, yea, the grossest opinions of the Quakers, and what senseless fellow is not much wiser than all these divines! And they will pity him as a poor, carnal, ignorant person, which hath not the teaching of God which they have. Yea, let him but seek to draw a sensualist from his voluptuousness, this poor sot doth presently take himself to be the wiser man, and can prove all his gaming, his idleness, his wantonness, his precious time wasted in plays and long feastings, his gluttony, his tippling, his prodigal wastefulness to be all lawful things, whatever the learned pastor say.

But why do not such men suspect their understandings, and consider with themselves, what likelihood is there, that men as holy as I, that have studied it all their days, should not be wiser than I, that never searched as they have done?