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We should not be carried away with every wind of false doctrine.

serve a due order, in letting that which is natural first take place, and then afterwards that which is spiritual; whereas, you take a quite contrary course, and so do all that hearken to those blind guides, the Shepherds on yonder mountain. For they teach you to begin at the wrong end, and lay aside the service of our sense and reason, (which are the essential properties of our nature,) to believe, by implicit blind faith, the doctrines and opinions of such a number of men, pretending they were divinely inspired; and not only so, but to believe the doctrines that are diametrically opposite to your reason, and the common sense and experience of the whole world. As, for example, they teach and you must believe, that one can be three, and three can be one, contrary to the first principles of natural reason; that God is man, and man is God; that a virgin could conceive a son, without the help of a man, and, after child-birth, remain a virgin; with many more opinions of the like nature, inconsistent with themselves, and with our fundamental principles of nature.

Tender. If all be true that this man says, then, for aught I see, we are guilty of downright Popery: for I have heard many wise and learned men say, That the great secret of that religion, is to make its proselytes believe, by a blind implicit faith, things directly contrary to common sense and reason; and if we are guilty of the same error, wherein do we differ from the Papists? For my part, I am wonderfully taken with this man's discourse, he speaks home to the purpose; and I cannot see what can be objected against it, or how he can be answered.

Spiritual-man. Be not carried away with every wind of false doctrine, but let your heart be established in truth. Be not credulous, but examine well his discourse, and you shall find it all sophis

Our natural reason imperfect and frail.

try and deceit, and I shall make apparent, if you will give me the hearing.

In the first place, therefore he goes upon a wrong ground in supposing our reaon to be perfect in exercising itself upon its proper objects. Before the fall of Adam indeed it was so; but now it is imperfect and frail. It was then one entire shining diamond, but now it is shattered into pieces; we only retain some fragments or sparkles of the original jewel; we can boast of nothing, but some broken remnants of reason, escaped from the fatal shipwreck of human nature, which still float up and down in a sea of uncertainties. 'We grope in the dark, and can hardly discern things that are familiar with us. Our notions of things natural are liable to a thousand mistakes, our inferences loose and incoherent, and all our faculties turned upsidedown. Our discourse commonly is rather rhetoric than reason, and has either a smatch of the serpent's subtle sophistry, or the woman's soft and insinuating eloquence. These generally supply the place of true masculine reason, while the sophist does but mimic the philosopher, and both they and the orator act the divine, as this man has done in his specious and formal accusation of the Shepherds, and vindication of his own way. For,

In the second place, Suppose we grant his ground to be good, and that reason is perfect in its exercising itself on its proper objects; yet its inferences from thence are but the efforts of his eloquence and sophistry, while he would endeavour to persuade us, that Divine and supernatural things are the objects of natural reason also. It is just the same thing as if he would go about to convince us, that we may hear with our noses, and see with our we may as well do this as discern Divine and supernatural things by natural and human

ears:

reason.

Man can only discern the nature of God by faith.

God hath endued us with different faculties, suitable and proportionable to the different objects that engage them. We discover sensible things by our senses, rational things by our reason, things intellectual by our understanding; but Divine and celestial things he has reserved for the exercise of our faith, which is a kind of a Divine and superior sense in the soul. Our reason and understanding may at sometimes snatch a glimpse, but cannot take a steady and adequate prospect of things so far above their reach and sphere. Thus, by the help of natural reason I may know there is a God, the first cause and origin of all things; but his essence, attributes, and will, are hidden within the veil of inaccessible light, and cannot be discerned by us but by faith in his Divine revelation. He that walks without this light, walks in darkness, though he may strike out some faint and glimmering sparkles of his own; and he that, out of the gross and wooden dictates of his natural reason, carves out a religion to himself, is but a more refined idolater than those who worship stocks and stones, hammering an idol out of his fancy, and adoring the works of his own imagination. For this reason God is no where said to be jealous, but upon the account of his worship. To this end was he so particularly nice, (if I may so speak, with reverence,) in all those strict injunctions he laid on the children of Israel as to his worship. He gave to Moses in the mount an exact pattern of the tabernacle, its vessels, instruments, and appurtenances; he prescribed the particular times and seasons, the peculiar manner, rites and ceremonies of his worship, not a tittle of which were they to transgress, under pain of death.

Now what needed all this caution and severity, if it were a matter so indifferent, as this man makes it, how God is worshipped? He that thinks if by

The nature of faith.

patching up half a dozen natural reasons together he can prove a Deity, and pay some homage and acknowledgment to him as such, that all is well with him; nay, that he is in the nearest and readiest way to heaven; in the mean while concluding that we go round about, if not a contrary way, who take up our religion on no less credit and authority than that of Divine revelation. This he calls laying aside our senses and our reason, to believe by a blind and implicit faith, the doctrine and opinions of a certain number of men pretending to be Divinely inspired: and not only so, but believing doctrines diametrically opposite to our reason, and the common sense and experience of the whole world. But tell me, O vain man, how do we lay aside our senses and our reason, when we use both in a due subordination to faith? Faith comes itself by hearing, which is one of our senses; we hear the glad tidings of the gospel preached to us, and our hearts are brought into subjection to the power thereof; natural reason taught us to believe there is a God, but faith teaches us to believe in him, and how to worship him. The things which we believe of him, are indeed far above our senses and reason, but not contrary to them; nay, in this our senses and reason are instrumental to our faith, that when we read or hear of any of the miracles done by Christ and his apostles, our reason tells us they could not be done but by the mighty power of God, and that God would not by such miracles give testimony to a lie: therefore consequently our reason teaches us to believe that Christ and his apostles. were really such as they professed themselves to he; he the Son of God, they his servants, and men inspired by the Holy Ghost, and consequently that all their doctrines were true. How then can I stumble at the doctrine of the Trinity, the incarna

With out faith it is impossible to please God.

tion of Christ, his being conceived without the help of a man, and brought forth of a virgin, she remaining a pure virgin? Thus far my reason is serviceable to my faith: the one leads me by the hand to the vail, the other draws it back, and discovers all the sacred mysteries. Yet still let reason keep her distance; she is but the handmaid, faith is the mistress; sense and reason attend in the outer courts of the temple, but faith enters into the holy of holies. Now, without faith it is impossible to please God. Faith is the evidence of things not seen, the substance of things hoped for. This is that faith which thou, O Human-reason, hast so much contemned and vilified. This is the faith which the Shepherds recommended to us. This is that perspective-glass through which we saw the glories of the Celestial Jerusalem. Therefore cease henceforth to speak evil of the way of the Lord; cease to prevent the souls of such as seek the Lord in sincerity, and with an humble faith.

When he had made an end of these words, Tender-conscience burst out into tears for grief and joy; for grief, that he had suffered his mind to be warped by the seducing eloquence of Human-reason; and for joy, that Spiritual-man had so well answered and confuted his argument; which made him address himself thus to Spiritual-man:

Tender. I am heartily sorry that my foolishness should have hindered all the company of so much time, while we might have been a good way on our journey; now I am fully satisfied that Humanreason is but an ignis fatuus to the mind, a false light, a deceiver: and therefore let us leave him to his den of shadows, and prosecute our journey. Then I saw in my dream that they went forward, while Tender-conscience sang,

"Vain Human-reason boasts himself a light,
Though but a wand'ring meteor of the night;

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