All error dreads the light of the word, and fears more to be examined by that, than a thief does to be tried before a strict judge. Hereticorum sententias prodidisse est superasse—to have expounded the doctrines of heretics is to have overcome them, saith Hieron. Unfold them, or bring them and the word face to face, and, like Cain, they hang down their head; they are put to shame. This is the only certain ordeal to try suspected opinions at. If they can walk upon this fiery law unhurt, unreproved, they may safely pass for truths, and none else. Paul tell us of some that ‘will not endure sound doc¬trine,’ II Tim. 4:3. Alas! how should they, when their minds are not sound? It is too searching for them. Gouty feet can¬not go but on soft way that gently yields to them. Such must have doctrine that will comply with their humour, which the word will not do, but rather judge them, and this they think it will do too soon at the great day; therefore now they shun it so much, lest it should torment them before their time. Thus the Quakers, they have their skulking hole to which they run from the Scripture, at whose bar they know their opinions would be cast undoubtedly, and therefore [they] appeal to another where they may have a more favourable hearing—the light within them, or, in plain English, their natural conscience; a judge which is known too well to be corrupt and easily bribed to speak what the lusts of men will oft have him do. Ah, poor creatures, what a sad change they have made!—to leave the word that is 6"<ã< J0H B\FJ,TH •684¬H, an inflexible rule of faith, and can no more lie or deceive them than God himself can do—to trust the guidance of themselves to themselves, a more ignorant, sottish, unfaithful guide than which the devil could not have chosen for them. ‘He that is his own teacher,’ saith Bernard, ‘is sure to have a fool for his master.’ And Solomon, yea a greater then Solomon, God himself by Solomon, saith, ‘The way of a fool is right in his own eyes: but he that hearken¬eth unto counsel is wise,’ Prov. 12:15. But he is most wise that makes the word of God the man of his counsel. The Papist he hath his thicket and wood also—antiquity and traditions—to which he flees before the face of the Scripture for sanctuary, as Adam did to a bush when God came walking to him. As if any antiquity were so authentic as God’s own oracles; and any traditions of men to be laid in the balance with the Scripture.
To name no more, the Socinian, he folds up himself in his own proud reason, and takes such state on him, that the Scripture must come to that to be sensed, and not that stoop to it. He must have a re¬ligion and Scripture that fits the model his own reason draws, or [he] will have neither. This forms the root of many prodigious errors and heretics; like those of whom Tertullian speaks, qui Platonicum et Aristotelicum Christianismum procuderunt—who went to the philosopher’s forge to shape a Christian¬ity. What is this but to carry gold to be weighed at the chandler’s scales, and to look for the sun by the light of the moon. A modern divine saith, ‘Most heresies have sprung either ex Samo Satani fastu, vel ex Ætii ignorantiâ, vel ex Arrii dialectiâ—from pride, Aetian ignorance, or the Arian sophistry of reason’—the last of which seems to be the shelf on which Paul himself observes some to have split, ‘and to have erred con¬cerning the faith,’ I Tim. 6:21; and therefore so affectionately exhorts Timothy to keep off this dan¬gerous shore, and steer his course by the word, ‘O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust,’ &c., ver. 20. For this which is here committed to him, I take for no other than ‘the form of sound words’ he exhorts him to hold fast in II Tim. 1:13.
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