An expository comment, doctrinal, controversial, and practical upon the whole first chapter to the…An expository comment, doctrinal, controversal, and practical upon the whole first chapter to the…

Secondly, This saving experimental knowledge doth differ in its whole kind, ¹and is of another nature in a moral consideration, from a mere Orthodox, or bare speculative knowledge. I shall not enter into a large dispute concerning the difference between illumination in a temporary believer, (although now we are not so much speaking of the habitus fidei, as Theologiae, which may be in learned knowing men) and that which is in a true convert: We shall suppose it for a truth from Heb. 6. That those who were enlightened, yea and had some experimental workings, (of which a non) yet they had not [Greek or Hebrew], they had not the things that hold fast salvation; and therefore the Apostle hoped for better things. They therefore so differ, that take a man who doth only know divine things by Books, by Sermons, by reading of Authors, and was not at all acquainted with the Spirits effectual teaching by the Word; and let him at last come to have these things set home upon him by an effectual demonstration of Gods Spirit; let him know these things as the truth is in Jesus, which the Apostle mentioneth Eph. 4. and he will then cry out, acknowledging that he never knew any thing till then: That he was in the dark; that he had but a learned kind of folly; that he spoke of these things, as men do of Countries which they see in Maps, only by a general knowledge, having never travelled to see the Countries themselves. There is such a fuller power accompanying this practical knowledge, that the former was but a shadow to this substance. Observe many men, Do they not read the Scripture? Do not they go from Chapter to Chapter? But till it be the ingrafted Word in them, they have the images and pictures of things, not the things themselves.²

Secondly, This saving experimental knowledge doth differ in its whole kind, ¹and is of another nature in a moral consideration, from a meer Orthodox, or bare speculative knowledge. I shall not enter into a large dispute concerning the difference between illumination in a temporary believer, (although now we are not so much speaking of the habitus fidei, as Theologiae, which may be in learned knowing men) and that which is in a true convert: We shall suppose it for a truth from