“Let no man, upon a weak conceit of sobriety or an ill-applied moderation, think or maintain that a man can search too far or be too well studied either in the book of God’s word or the book of God’s works.” Well advised! But then he goes on to warn men that they do not “unwisely mingle or confound their learnings together:” mischievous this contradistinction between God’s word and God’s works; since both, if emanating from him, must be equally true. And if there be one truth, then, to borrow his own words in another place, “the voice of nature will consent, whether the voice of man do so or not.”
46.
Apropos to education—here is a good illustration: “Were it not better for a man in a fair room to set up one great light or branching candlestick of lights, than to go about with a rushlight into every dark corner?”
And here is another: “It is one thing to set forth what ground lieth unmanured, and another to correct ill husbandry in that which is manured.”
47.
“It is without all controversy that learning doth make the minds of men gentle and generous, amiable, and pliant to government, whereas ignorance maketh them churlish, thwarting, and mutinous.”
48.
“An impatience of doubt and an unadvised haste to assertion without due and mature suspension of the judgment, is an error in the conduct of the understanding.”
“In contemplation, if a man begin with certainties he shall end in doubts, but if he will be content to begin with doubts he shall end in certainties.” Well said and profoundly true.