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be good and necessary in their own place for public orators,[1] yet, with respect to the things of the spirit of God, which require a man not only to be a spiritual man, but to walk after the spirit, and not after the flesh, this appears in general foolishness to them, and the man doing so an enthusiast. For if the eye be single in this respect, the body shall be full of light, by that spirit of God enabling them to see many things they never could perceive by human learning, and to prove many things even of God's word, that are not to be believed according to the general acceptation of commentators on God's word. Cor. ii. 5. "That your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God." Verse 7, "But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom which God ordained before the world, unto our glory."
It is a very erroneous and general idea of God's word, in the mouth of mostly all professors I have talked with, that because God hath sealed up his word that none shall add to it or diminish from it, he hath also sealed up that spirit from men by which the Scriptures were written, and no extraordinary gifts of God's spirit is now either to be expected or believed. So that hereby the tradition of the Doctors of this day is as effectually opposed to the spirit of God, as was that of the Rabbies to the person of Christ — that no good thing should come out of Nazareth.
The reign of King Jesus with his people upon earth, though many eminent commentators, of whom I am far from undervaluing, yet of those,
- ↑ But, alas! for the oratory of Doctors in these times, when it would bury all truth and principle, and allow Christians to be any thing — Papists, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, or Dissenters of any kind. Such sermons, in my opinion, in place of being four times preached or read, and then printed, had better never seen the light.
