God said to Moses, 'put off thy shoes, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground.' Now this which God said to Moses, is only that very same thing, which circumcision, the law, sacrifices, and sacraments say to man. They are in themselves nothing else but outward significations of inward impurity, and lost holiness, and can do no more in themselves, but intimate, point and direct to an inward life, and new birth from above, that is to be sought after.

But here lies the great mistake, or rather idolatrous abuse of all God's outward dispensations. They are taken for the thing itself, for the truth and essence of religion. That which the learned Jews did with the outward letter of their law, that same do learned Christians do with the outward letter of their gospel. Why did the Jewish church so furiously and obstinately cry out against Christ, let him be crucified? It was because their letter-learned ears, their worldly spirit, and temple orthodoxy, would not bear to hear an inward Saviour, not bear to hear of being born again of his spirit, of eating his flesh and drinking his blood, of his dwelling in them and they in him. To have their law of ordinances, their temple pomp sunk into such a fulfilling Saviour as this, was such enthusiastic jargon to their ears, as forced their sober, rational theology, to call Christ Beelzebub, his doctrine blasphemy, and all for the sake of Moses and rabbinic orthodoxy.

Need it now be asked, whether the true Christ of the gospel be less blasphemed, less crucified by that Christian theology which rejects an inward Christ, a Saviour living and working in the soul, as its inward light and life, generating his own nature and spirit in it, as its only redemption; whether that which rejects all this as mystic madness, be not that very same old Jewish wisdom, sprung up in Christian theology, which said of Christ, when teaching these very things, He is mad, why hear ye him? Our blessed Lord in a parable sets forth the blind Jews, as saying of himself, we will not have this man to reign over us.'

The

sober minded Christian scholar has none of this Jew. ish blindness, he only saith of Christ, we will not have this man to reign in us, and so keeps clear of such mystic absurdity as St. Paul fell into, when he enthusiastically said, Yet not I, but Christ that liveth in me.'

Christian doctors reproach the old learned Rabbies, for their vain faith and carnal desire of a glorious, temporal, outward Christ, who should set up their temple worship all over the world. Vanity indeed, and learned blindness enough!

But nevertheless, in these condemners of rabbinic blindness, St. Paul's words are remarkably verified, viz. Wherein thou judgest another, thou condemnest thyself, for thou that judgest doest the same thing." For take away all that from Christ, which Christian doctors call enthusiasm; suppose him not to be an inward birth, a new life and spirit within us, but only an outward, separate, distant, heavenly prince, no more really in us, than our high cathedrals are in the third heavens, but only by an invisible hand from his throne on high, some way or other helping and raising great scholars, or great temporal powers, to make a rock in every nation for his church to stand upon; suppose all this (which is the very marrow of modern divinity) and then you have that very outward Christ, and that very outward kingdom, which the carnal Jew dreamed of, and for the sake of which the spiritual Christ was then nailed to the cross, and is still crucified by the new risen Jew in the Christian church. If it now be asked, whence or from what comes all this spiritual blindness, which from age to age thus mistakes and defeats all the gracious designs of God towards fallen mankind? Look at the origin of the first sin, and you see it all. Had Eve desired no knowledge, but what came from God, Paradise had been the habitation of her and all her offspring. If after paradise lost, Jews and Christians had desired no knowledge but what came from God, the law and prophets had kept the Jew close to the first tree of life; and the Christian church had been a kingdom of God, and communion of Saints to this day.

But now corruption, sin, death, and every evil of the world, have entered into the church, the spouse of Christ, just as they entered into Eve, the spouse of Adam in Paradise, in the same way, and from the same cause, viz. a desire of more or other knowledge, than that which comes from God alone. This desire is the serpent's voice within every man, which does all that to him, and in him, which the serpent at the tree did to Eve. It carries on the first deceit; it shews and recommends to him that same beautiful tree of own will, own wit, and own wisdom, springing up within him, which Eve saw in the garden; and yet so blind is this love of wisdom, as not to see that his eating of it is, in the strictest truth, his eating of the same forbidden fruits as Eve did, and keeping up in himself all that death and separation from God, which the first knowledge-hunger brought forth.

Let then the eager searcher into words for wisdom, the book-devourer, the opinion-broker, the exalter of human reason, and every projecting builder of religious systems, be told this, that the thirst and pride of being learnedly wise in the things of God, is keeping up the grossest ignorance of them, and is nothing else but Eve's old serpent, and Eve's evil birth within them, and does no better work in the church of Christ, than her thirst after wisdom did in the Paradise of God. 6 Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth,' is the one only way by which any man ever did, or ever can attain divine knowledge and divine goodness. To knock at any other door but this, is but like asking life of that which is itself dead, or praying to him for bread, who has nothing but stones to give.

6

Now strange as all this may seem to the labourlearned professor of far-fetched book riches, yet it is saying no more, nor any thing else, but that which Christ said in these words, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye cannot enter into the kingdom of God.' For if classic gospellers, linguist critics, scripture logicians, salvation orators, able dealers in the grammatic powers of Hebrew, Greek

and Roman phrases, idioms, tropes, figures, &c. &c. can shew, that by raising themselves high in these attainments, they are the very men that are sunk down from themselves into Christ's little children of the kingdom of God, then it may be also said, that he who is labouring, scheming and fighting for all the riches he can get from both the Indies, is the very man that hath left all to follow Christ, the very man that laboureth not for the meat that perisheth.

Shew me a man, whose heart has no desire or prayer in it, but to love God with his whole soul and spirit, and his neighbour as himself, and then you have shewn me the man who knows Christ, and is known of him-the best and wisest man in the world, in whom the first paradisical wisdom and goodness is come to life. Not a single precept in the gospel, but is the precept of his own heart, and the joy of that new-born heavenly love, which is the life and light of his soul. In this man, all that came from the old serpent is trod under his feet, not a spark of self, of pride, of wrath, of envy, of covetousness, or worldly wisdom, can have the least abode in him, because that love, which fulfilleth the whole law and the prophets, that love which is God and Christ, both in angels and men, is the love that gives birth and life, and growth to every thing that is either thoughts, or words, or actions in him. And if he has no share or part with foolish errors, cannot be tossed about with every wind of doctrine, it is because to be always governed by this love, is the same thing as to be always taught of God.

On the other hand, shew me a scholar as full of learning, as the Vatican is of books, and he will be just as likely to give all that he hath for the gospelpearl, as he would be if he was as rich as Cræsus. Let no one here imagine, that I am writing against all human literature, arts and sciences, or that I wish the world to be without them. I am no more an enemy to them, than to the common useful labours of life. It is literal learning, verbal contention, and critical strife about the things of God, that I charge with folly

and mischief to religion. And in this I have all learned Christendom, both Popish and Protestant on my side. For they both agree in charging each other with a bad and false gospel-state, because of that which their learning, logic and criticism do for them. Say not then, that it is only the illiterate enthusiast that condemns human learning in the gospel kingdom of God. For when he condemns the blindness and mischief of Popish logic and criticism, he has all the learned Protestant world with him; and when he lays the same charge to Protestant learning, he has a much larger kingdom of Popish great scholars, logically and learnedly affirming the same thing. So that the private person, charging human learning with so much mischief to the church, is so far from being led by enthusiasm, that he is led by all the church learning that is in the world,

Again, all learned Christendom agrees in the same charge against temporal power in the church, as hurtful to the very being and progress of a salvationkingdom that is not of this world, as supporting doctrines that human learning has brought into it. And true it is, and must be, that human power can only support and help forward human things. The Protestant brings proof from a thousand years learning and doctrines, that the Pope is an unjust usurper of temporal power in the church, which is Christ's spiritual spouse. The Papist brings the learning of as many ages to shew, that a temporal head of the church is an antichristian usurpation. And yet he who holds Christ to be the one only head, heart and life of the Church, and that no man can call Jesus Lord, but by the Holy Ghost, passes with the learned of both these people as a brain-sick enthusiast. Is it not then high time to look out for some better ground to stand upon, than such learning as this? Now look where you will, through all the whole nature of things, no divine wisdom, knowledge, goodness, and deliverance from sin, are any where to be found for fallen man, but in these two points: 1. A total, entire entrance into the whole