2. If it be no disparagement to God himself, that he is less certainly known of us, than sensibles, and our internal acts, ‘de esse,' it is then no disparagement to the Scripture, and supernatural truths, that they are less certainly known; seeing they have not so clear evidence as the being of God hath.

3. The certainty of the Scripture truths is mixed of almost all other kinds of certainty conjunct. 1. By sense and intellective perception of things sensed, the hearers and seers of Christ and his apostles, knew the words and miracles. 2. By the same sense we know what is written in the Bible, and in Church History concerning it, and the attesting matters of fact; and also what our teachers say of it. 3. By certain intellectual inference I know that this history of the words and fact is true. 4. By intellection of a natural principle I know that God is true. 5. By inference I know that all his word is true. 6. By sense I know (intellectually receiving it by sense) that this or that is written in the Bible, and part of that Word. 7. By further inference therefore I know that it is true. 8. By intuitive knowledge, I am certain that I have the love of God, and heavenly desires, and a love of holiness, and hatred of sin, &c. 9. By certain inference I know that this is the special work of the Spirit of Christ by his Gospel doctrine. 10. By experience I find the predictions of this Word fulfilled. 11. Lastly, By inspiration the prophets and apostles knew it to be of God. And our certain belief ariseth from divers of these, and not from any one alone.

4. There are two extremes here to be avoided, and both held by some, not seeing how they contradict themselves.

I. Of them that say that faith hath no evidence, but the merit of it lieth in that we believe without evidence. Those that understand what they say, when they use these words, mean that things evident to sense, as such, that is, incomplex sensible objects are not the objects of faith, "We live by faith and not by sight." God is not visible: heaven and its glory, angels and perfected spirits are not visible. Future events, Christ's coming, the resurrection, judgment, are not yet visible: it doth not yet appear (that is, to sense) what we shall be our life is hid (from our own and others' senses) with Christ in God. We see not Christ when we rejoice in him with joy unspeakable, and full of glory.

(1 Pet. i. 8.) Thus faith is the evidence of things not seen, or evident to sight. (Heb. xi. 1.) But ignorant persons have turned all to another sense; as if the objects of faith had no ascertaining intellectual evidence: when as it is impossible for man's mind to understand and believe any thing to be true, without perceiving evidence of its truth; as it is for the eye to see without light. As Richard Hooker saith in his Ecclesiastical Polity, Let men say what they will, men can truly believe no further than they perceive evidence.' It is a natural impossibility; for evidence is nothing but the perceptibility of the truth: and can we perceive that which is not perceptible?

It is true, that evidence from Divine revelation is often without any evidence ex natura rei:' but it may be nevertheless a fuller and more satisfying evidence.

Some say there is evidence of credibility, but not of certainty. Not of natural certainty indeed. But in Divine revelations (though not in human) evidence of credibility is evidence of certainty, because we are certain that God cannot lie.

And to say, I will believe, though without evidence of truth, is a contradiction or hypocritical self-deceit; for your will believeth not: and your understanding receiveth no truth but upon evidence that it is truth. It acteth of itself' per modum naturæ,' necessarily further than it is sub imperio voluntatis ;' and the will ruleth it not despotically; nor at all 'quoad specificationem,' but only 'quoad exercitium. All therefore that your will can do (which maketh faith a moral virtue), is to be free from those vicious habits and acts in itself which may hinder faith, and to have those holy dispositions and acts in itself which may help the understanding to do its proper office, which is to believe evident truth on the testimony of the revealer, because his testimony is sufficient evidence. The true meaning of a good Christian, when he saith I will believe, is, I am truly willing to believe, and a perverse will shall not hinder me, and I will not think of suggestions to the contrary. But the meaning of the formal hypocrite when he saith, I will believe, is, I will cast away all doubtful thoughts out of my mind, and I will be as careless as if I did believe, or I will believe the priest or my party, and call it a believing God. Evidence is an essentiating part of the intellect's act. As there is no act without an object, so there is no object sub formali

ratione objecti,' without evidence. Even as there is no sight but of an illustrated object, that is, a visible object.

II. The other extreme (of some of the same men) is, that yet faith is not true and certain if it have any doubtfulness with it. Strange! that these men can only see what is invisible; believe what is inevident as to its truth, that is, incredible, but also believe past all doubting, and think that the weakest true believer doth so too! Certainly there are various degrees of faith in the sincere: all have not the same strength! Christ rebuketh Peter in his fears, and his disciples all at other times, for their little faith. "When Peter's faith failed not, it staggered, which Abraham's did not: "Lord, increase our faith," and " Lord, I believe, help my unbelief," were prayers approved by Christ, I will call a prevalent belief which can lay down life and all this world for Christ and the hopes of heaven, by the name of certainty, which hath various degrees. But if they differ'de nomine,' and will call nothing certainty but the highest degree, they must needs yet grant that there is true, saving faith, that reacheth to no certainty in their sense. Yea, no man on earth then attaineth to such a certainty, because that every man's faith is imperfect.

To conclude. Though all Scripture in itself (that is indeed the true canon) be equally true, yet all is not equally certain to us, as not having equal evidence that it is God's word. But of that in the next Chapter of the Uncertainties.

CHAP. VI.

V. What are the unknown Things, and Uncertainties which we must not pretend a certain knowledge of.

SOMEWHAT of this is said already, Chap. iii. But I am here to come to more particular instances of it. But because that an enumeration would be a great volume of itself, I shall begin with the more general, that I may be excused in most of the rest; or mention only some particulars under them as we go.

I. A very great, if not the far greatest part of that part of philosophy called Physics, is uncertain (or certainly false) as it is delivered to us in any methodist that I have yet seen;

whether Platonists, Peripatetics, Epicureans, (the Stoics have little, but what Seneca gives us, and Barlaam collecteth, I know not whence, as making up their ethics, and what in three or four ethical writers is also brought in on the by, and what Cicero reporteth of them) or in our novelists, Patricius, Telesius, Campanella, Thomas White, Digby, Cartesius, Gassendus, &c., except those whose modesty causeth them to say but little, and to avoid the uncertainties; or confess them to be uncertainties. To enumerate instances would be an unseasonable digression. Gassendus is large in his confessions of uncertainties. I think not his brother Hobbes, and his second Spinosa worth the naming. Nor the Paracelsians and Helmontians as giving us a new philosophy, but only as adding to the old. There needs no other testimony of uncertainty to a man that hath not studied the points himself, than their lamentable difference, and confutation of each other, in so many things, even in the great principles of the science.

Yet here no doubt, there are certainties, innumerable certainties, such as I have before described. We know something certainly of many things, even of all sensible objects. But we know nothing perfectly and comprehensively; not a worm, not a leaf, not a stone, or a sand, not the pen, ink or paper which we write with; not the hand that writeth, nor the smallest particle of our bodies; not a hair, or the least accident. In every thing nearest us, or in the world, the uncertainties and 'incognita' are far more than that which we certainly know.

II. If I should enumerate to you the many uncertainties in our common metaphysics, (yea, about the being of the science) and our common logic, &c., it would seem unsuitable to a theological discourse. And yet it would not be unuseful, among such theologians as the schoolmen, who resolve more of their doubts by Aristotle than by the Holy Scriptures; doubtless, as Aristotle's predicaments are not fitted to the kinds of beings, so many of his distributions and orders, yea, and precepts are arbitrary. And as he left room and reason for the dissent of such as Taurellus, Carpenter, Jacchæus, Gorlæus, Ritchel, and abundance more, so have they also for men's dissent from them. Even Ramus hath more adversaries than followers. Gassendus goeth

right way, by suiting' verba rebus,' if he had hit righter

on the nature of things themselves. Most novel philosophers are fain to make new grammars and new logics, for words and notions, to fit their new conceptions, as Campanella, and the Paracelsians, Helmontians, (and if you will name the Behmenists, Rosicrucians, Weigelians, &c.) Lullius thought he made the most accurate art of notions; and he did indeed attempt to fit words to things: but he hath missed of a true accomplishment of his design, for want of a true method of physics in his mind, to fit his words to. As Cornelius Agrippa, who is one of his chief commentators, yet freely confesseth in his "lib. de Vanitate Scientiarum," which now I think of, I will say no more of this, but desire the reader to peruse that laudable book, and with it to read Sanchez's" Nihil Scitur," to see uncertainty detected, so he will not be led by it too far into scepticism. As also Mr. Glanvile's "Scepsis Scientifica."

As for the lamentable uncertainties in medicine, the poor world payeth for it. Anatomy as being by ocular inspection hath had the best improvement; and yet what a multitude of uncertainties remain! Many thousand years have millions yearly died of fevers, and the medicating them is a great part of the physician's work; and yet I know not that ever I knew the man that certainly knew what a fever is. I crave the pardon of the masters of this noble art for saying it; it is by dear experience that I have learned how little physicians know; having passed through the trial of above thirty of them on my own body long ago; merely induced by a conceit that they knew more than they did; and most that I got was but the ruin of my own body, and this advice to leave to others :-Highly value those few excellent men, who have quick and deep conjecturing apprehensions, great reading and greater experience, and sober, careful, deliberating minds, that had rather do too little than too much: but use them in a due conjunction with your own experience of yourself. But for the rest, how learned soever, whose heads are dull, or temper precipitant, or apprehensions hasty or superficial, or reading small, especially that are young, or of small experience, love and honour them, but use them as little as you can, and that only as you will use an honest, ignorant divine, whom you

* See a book written long ince this, called "the Samaritan," of excellent use, by Mr. Jones of Suffolk.