A supplement to The Morning-exercise at Cripple-Gate, or, Several more cases of conscience practically…

¹1. By how much the better means men have for the getting of knowledge, so much the more they ought to know. There is more knowledge required in them ⟨p. 111⟩that have more means, than in them that have less. Every servant's improvement is to be according to his talent; and the gain of one is not sufficient for him that hath received five, nor the gain of five for him that hath received ten. According to the means men have, so their duty is to be judged of, and their accounts will be expected. I suppose it can scarce be doubted but that,

1. 1Rule.

1. They that live under the Gospel since Christ's coming in the flesh, ought to abound more in Spiritual knowledge, than they that lived before his coming, and that for this very reason, because the means of knowledge have been greater since his coming, than before it, not only as to the extensiveness of them in the publication of the truth in those places, where it was not heard before, but as to the efficacy of the means themselves, and the more clear revelation of the will of God in some things, which were formerly, but less clearly, revealed. The pouring out of the Spirit was not only for the further spreading of the truth, but for the more plain and full manifestation of it. The great mysteries of Religion, which under the Old Testament dispensation were more obscure, (as being wrapped up in types and figures, which were, though a shadowing of them out, yet a kind of covering to them) are now under the Gospel more clearly set forth without those veils in their native lustre and brightness. What was then future, is now come to pass; What then was Prophecy, is now become History: So that there being, as to the means, more advantages for our knowledge, than there was for theirs who lived in those ages, we are engaged to labour after more. And excepting Prophecies and immediate Revelations, I see no reason, why vulgar Saints may not now know more than Patriarchs did then; And if they may, I dare say they should.