TO what purpose then do I glory in my natural accomplishments?§1 Though I have a better nature than some others have,1 yet it is a cursed nature still. These sweet qualities and excellent gifts, do only hide, but not kill the corruption of nature. I am but a rotten post gilded over, and all my duties but hedge fruit, which God makes no account of. O cutting thought! that the unlearned shall rise and take heaven, when I with all my excellent gifts shall descend into hell. Heaven was not made for Scholars, as such, but for believers; as one said, when they comforted him upon his death-bed, that he was a knowing man, a Doctor of Divinity: O, said he, I shall not appear before God as a Doctor, but as a man; I shall stand upon a level with the most illiterate, in the day of judgment; what doth it avail me that I have a nimble with, whilst I have none to do my self good? Will my Judge be charmed with a rhetorical tongue? Things will not be carried in that world, as they are in this. If I could with Berengarius discourse de omni scibile, of every thing that is knowable; or with Solomon unravel nature, from the Cedar to the Hyssop, what would this advantage me, as long as I am ignorant of Christ, and the mystery of Regeneration? My head hath often ached with study, but when did my heart ache for sin? Methinks, O my soul, thou trimmest up thy self in these natural ornaments to appear before God, much as that delicate Agag did, when he was to come before Samuel, and fondly conceitest that these things will procure favour, or (at least) pity from him? but yet, think not for all that, the bitterness of death is past; say not within thy self, Will God cast such a one as a I into hell? Shall a man of such ⟨p. 178⟩parts be damned? Alas! justice will hew thee to pieces, as Samuel did that spruce King, and not abate thee the least, for these things; many thousand branches of nature, as fair and fruitful as thy self, are now blazing in hell, because not transplanted by regeneration into Christ; and if he spared not them, neither will he spare thee.
TO what purpose then do I glory in my natural accomplishments?§1 Though I have a better nature than some others have,1 yet it is a cursed nature still. These sweet qualities and excellent gifts, do only hide, but not kill the corruption of nature. I am but a rotten post gilded over, and all my duties but hedge fruit, which God makes no account of. O cutting thought! that the unlearned shall rise and take heaven, when I with all my excellent gifts shall descend into hell. Heaven was not made for Scholars, as such, but for believers; as one said, when they comforted him upon his death-bed, that he was a knowing man, a Doctor of Divinity: O, said he, I shall not appear before God as a Doctor, but as a man; I shall stand upon a level with the most illiterate, in the day of judgment; what doth it avail me that I have a nimble with, whilst I have none to do my self good? Will my Iudge be charm'd with a rhetorical tongue? Things will not be carried in that world, as they are in this. If I could with Berengarius discourse de omni scibile, of every thing that is knowable; or with Solomon unravel nature, from the Cedar to the Hysop, what would this advantage me, as long as I am ignorant of Christ, and the mystery of Regeneration? My head hath often aked with study, but when did my heart ake for sin? Methinks, O my soul, thou trimmest up thy self in these natural ornaments to appear before God, much as that delicate Agag did, when he was to come before Samuel, and fondly conceitest that these things will procure favour, or (at least) pity from him? but yet, think not for all that, the bitterness of death is past; say not within thy self, Will God cast such a one as a I into hell? Shall a man of such ⟨p. 178⟩parts be damned? Alas! justice will hew thee to pieces, as Samuel did that spruce King, and not abate thee the least, for these things; many thousand branches of nature, as fair and fruitful as thy self, are now blazing in hell, because not transplanted by regeneration into Christ; and if he spared not them, neither will he spare thee.
- 1A reflection for an accomplished Naturalist.
