The Scripture directory for church-officers and people, or, A practical commentary upon the whole…

Thus the Apostle, I have fed you with milk. Children, as they speak like children, think like children, and do like children (as the Apostle in another case, 1 Cor. 13.) so they have meat fit for children. And this point is of great consequence. For how universal and damnable is the ignorance of most, who have not yet learned the Alphabet of Religion, scarce have heard whether there be an Holy Ghost or no? Who, though they have Christ often in their mouths, yet know not what Christ was, and thereupon may justly have that doom upon them, which our Saviour passeth upon the woman of Samaria, Ye worship ye know not what; Joh. 4.22. To open this Doctrine,

Consider first, And bewail the miserable atheism, ignorance, and blindness that every man naturally is born in, about Religion and divine truths. ¹Hence Eph 5.8. they are called darkness it self, in the abstract, and the natural man cannot receive the spiritual things of God, 1 Cor. 2. Zophar compareth every man by his birth to the wild Asses colt, Job 11.12. What is more brutish then that? Now there are thousands of people, and those living in the Church of God, who are not yet come out of this brutish ignorance, men that never felt this Sun, or day-star of the Gospel arising in their hearts. Thus as God promised, knowledge should cover the face of the earth, as waters do the seas, Isa. 11.9. Darkness covers our Congregations, as it did the chaos at first.

Consider first, And bewail the miserable atheisme, ignorance, and blindness that every man naturally is born in, about Religion and divine truths. ¹