resurrection, has hereby made his calling and election as sure, as things knit together by an absolute decree and an unchangeable law are uncapable of being ever disjoined, or forced asunder. And therefore, instead of those uncouth, ill-sounding words, used by Luther upon another occasion, Si decipior, Deus me decepit, such an one may with equal reverence and assurance conclude, that while he believes the Christian religion true, because the great author and promulger of it died, and rose again from the dead, according to the scriptures, it will be as impossible for him, so doing, to be deceived, as it is for the God of infinite truth and goodness to deceive him.

To which God, who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus Christ, that great shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, be rendered and ascribed, as is most due, all praise, might, majesty, and dominion, both now and for evermore. Amen.

SERMON XXXVIII.

ECCLESIASTES i. 18.

In much wisdom there is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.

IT is a saying usual, and of great reason, that we are to believe the skilful in their own art and profession. And therefore, if we would understand the nature, properties, and effects of knowledge, none can be so fit to inform us, as he who, by the very verdict of omniscience itself, was of all men in the world the most knowing.

Nothing indeed is more common than for every man almost to pass an universal censure upon all persons and things; but none can despise a thing rationally, but he who knows it thoroughly. Otherwise, though a man should pass a right judgment upon a thing, yet he does it only by accident; and not by reason, but luck: and therefore, though the thing spoke be truth and wisdom, yet the speaker of it utters it like a fool. None but a scholar can be a competent judge of knowledge; and therefore all the encomiums and endless praises of it that now fly about the world, must come, and be tried, and stand or fall, according to the verdict of this rule.

First therefore we shall find those that are loudest in their commendations, and highest in their admirations of learning, are for the most part such as were never bred to it themselves: hence it is, that

such, of all others, are the most desirous to breed their sons scholars; so that if we take a list of the most renowned philosophers in former ages, and the most eminent divines in the latter, we shall find that they were, for the most part, of mechanic, mean, and plebeian parentage.

Upon this score also there came to be so many free-schools and endowed places for learning; because those are most apt to send their children to study, who, being poor and low, are not able to maintain them in it; and therefore need the expense and benevolence of others, to bring their imprudent designs to maturity. Let this therefore be fixed upon, as one great reason that the praise of knowledge is so great in the world, viz. that much the major part of the world is ignorant. And ignorant men are indeed very fit to praise and admire, but very unfit to judge.

I am not insensible that many will here presently be apt to stop me with those elogies that the most learned bestow upon knowledge, still adorning it with such panegyrics, such high words and expressions, as if rhetoric was invented for nothing else but to describe and set off her praise.-But in answer to this, though I might note, that to be learned and to be wise are things very different; yet I shall produce another reason of these commendations, which in all probability is this; that learned men would not seem and be judged fools, for spending their time upon so empty a thing; and therefore, as those that have been deceived into a ridiculous sight, do yet commend it, that they may not be thought to have been deceived, but may bring others into the same cheat with themselves:

So here, should philosophers confess, that all the time they spent about materia prima, about esse per se, and esse per accidens, they were laboriously doing nothing; the world would be apt to hiss, and to explode them; and others would be so wise as, seeing the example, to forbear the imitation. But now, when a man finds himself to be really deceived, the only relief that remains to him, is to cover the report of it, and to get companions in the deception.

If what has been hitherto said does not satisfy, I can only take sanctuary in this; that the same was Solomon's judgment: and I desire to know, whether those philosophers, who so profusely commend learning, knew more than he, and saw that worth in knowledge which he did? As for Aristotle, who for these many ages has carried the repute of philosophy from all the rest, he certainly was not wiser than Solomon; for he is reported to have stolen most of his philosophy out of Solomon's writings, and to have suppressed them from the view of posterity.

I proceed therefore, and take up my assertion upon the warrant of his judgment, whom God has hitherto vouched the wisest of men; and therefore see no reason to alter it, till I am convinced by a wiser.

But before I make any further progress, I must premise this; that both in what has, and what shall be said by me, I design not the patronage of ignorance, especially in things spiritual: for, in this respect, we know, and are assured by the Spirit of God, that this is the condemnation of the world, that men love darkness rather than light; and that the blind must needs fall into the ditch: and for

any man to expect to be saved, or to be happy, without the knowledge of the revealed will of God, in things necessary to salvation, is as great an absurdity, as to expect to see without eyes: and therefore, in these matters, he that increases ignorance increases the means of his damnation; he increases the shadow of death, adds darkness to darkness, and passes by the darkness of ignorance, to the darkness of hell and damnation.

But if any thing is indeed said against knowledge, it is against that only that is so much adored by the world, and falsely called philosophy; and yet more significantly surnamed by the apostle vain philosophy; and that too with no other intent, than to dash the overweening pride of those that have it, and to divert the admiration of those that have it not, to some better and more deserving object.

But as for those parts of knowledge that are either instrumental to our knowledge of the will of God, or conduce to the good and support of society, in the state that mankind now is, I must not be thought therefore to speak against them, if from the text I impartially shew those infelicities, those miseries and sorrows, that, through our sin and weakness, they are attended with. It is the effect of sin that duty is accompanied with sorrow; and that, by such an unfortunate necessity of grief, we cannot attain the joy and happiness we design to ourselves in the end, unless for a time we quit it in the use of the

means.

Now the design of this portion of scripture is to rectify the absurd opinions of the world concerning the great idol of mankind, knowledge; and to take