A Christian Directory

§. 33. Direct. 11. Do not censure every man to be wilful or obstinate, who is not of your opinion, ¹when he hath heard your reasons, how clear soever they may may seem to you. Alas, how many things are there besides wilful obstinacy, to hinder one man from being as wi•e as another! If a few times repeating over the Reasons of an opinion, is enough to implant it in all the hearers, why do your Children go so long to School, and after that to the Universities? and why are you so long Preaching to all your Parishioners? Sure you preach not novelties to them as long as you live! And yet thirty or forty years painful preaching, even of the same fundamentals of Religion, shall leave many ignorant of them in the best Parishes in the Land. There must be a right and ripe disposition in the hearers, or else the clearest reasoning may be uneffectual! A disused or unfurnished mind, that hath not received all the truths, which are presupposed to those which you deliver, or hath not digested them into a clear understanding may long hear the truest reasons and never apprehend their weight: There is need of more ado than a bare unfolding of the truth, to make a man receive it in its proper evidence! Perhaps he hath been long pre-possessed with contrary opinions, which are not easily rooted out? Or if he be but confident of the truth of some one opinion, which is inconsistent with yours, no wonder if he cannot receive that which is contrary, to what he so verily believeth to be the truth. There is a marvellous variety of mens apprehensions, of the same opinions or reasons, as they are variously represented to men, and variously pondered, and as the natural capacity of men is various, and as the whole course of their lives, their education, company and conversation, have variously formed their minds. It is like the setting together all the parts of Watch when it is in pieces: If any one part of many be misplaced, it may necessitate the misplacing of those that follow, without any wilful obstinacy in him that doth it. If in the whole frame of sacred Truth, there be but some one misunderstood, it may bring in other mistakes and keep out many truths, even from an honest willing mind! And who is there that can say, he is free from error?

§. 33. Direct. 11. Do not censure every man to be wilful or obstinate, who is not of your opinion, ¹when he hath heard your reasons, how clear soever they may may seem to you. Alas, how many things are there besides wilful obstinacy, to hinder one man from being as wie as another! If a few times repeating over the Reasons of an opinion, is enough to implant it in all the hearers, why do your Children go so long to School, and after that to the Universities? and why are you so long Preaching to all your Parishioners? Sure you preach not novelties to them as long as you live! And yet thirty or fourty years painful preaching, even of the same fundamentals of Religion, shall leave many ignorant of them in the best Parishes in the Land. There must be a right and ripe disposition in the hearers, or else the clearest reasoning may be uneffectual! A disused or unfurnished mind, that hath not received all the truths, which are presupposed to those which you deliver, or hath not digested them into a clear understanding may long hear the truest reasons and never apprehend their weight: There is need of more adoe than a bare unfolding of the truth, to make a man receive it in its proper evidence! Perhaps he hath been long pre-possessed with contrary opinions, which are not easily rooted out? Or if he be but confident of the truth of some one opinion, which is inconsistent with yours, no wonder if he cannot receive that which is contrary, to what he so verily believeth to be the truth. There is a marvellous variety of mens apprehensions, of the same opinions or reasons, as they are variously represented to men, and variously pondered, and as the natural capacity of men is various, and as the whole course of their lives, their education, company and conversation, have variously formed their minds. It is like the setting together all the parts of Watch when it is in pieces: If any one part of many be misplaced, it may necessitate the misplacing of those that follow, without any wilful obstinacy in him that doth it. If in the whole frame of sacred Truth, there be but some one misunderstood, it may bring in other mistakes and keep out many truths, even from an honest willing mind! And who is there that can say, he is free from errour?