Two sermons preached at Thurlow in Suffolk on those words, Rom. 6.13 "Yield your…

And indeed the claimed Infallibility is by this sufficiently disproved, that there is no imaginable way of proving it. For if there were any such thing, it must be by God's own immediate gift, and vouchsafement; How otherwise should a man be made infallible? And if so, it must be for an end worthy of a wise and a merciful God; whereupon for the same reason, for which he should have made such a man infallible, he should have made it infallibly certain to other men, that he hath made him so. Whereas there is no one point wherein his infallible determination can be pretended to be necessary, against which there is more to be said than against the pretence it self of his Infallibility; Nor for which, less is to be said than can, with any colour, or without highest and most just contempt be ⟨p. 20⟩said for it. The most weighty thing that I have known alleged is, the great expediency of an Infallible Judge. But if we will think that a good way of arguing, that things are in fact so or so, because we can fancy it would be better if they were; we may as well prove that all mankind are sincere Christians, or there is no sin in the World, nor ever was, and a thousand things besides in the natural World, that never were, or will be, because it appears to us 'twould be for the better. So much is the foolishness of man wiser than God.

And indeed the claimed Infallibility is by this sufficiently disprov'd, that there is no imaginable way of proving it. For if there were any such thing, it must be by God's own immediate gift, and vouchsafement; How otherwise should a man be made infallible? And if so, it must be for an end worthy of a wise and a merciful God; whereupon for the same reason, for which he should have made such a man infallible, he should have made it infallibly certain to other men, that he hath made him so. Whereas there is no one point wherein his infallible determination can be pretended to be necessary, against which there is more to be said than against the pretence it self of his Infallibility; Nor for which, less is to be said than can, with any colour, or without highest and most just contempt be ⟨p. 20⟩said for it. The most weighty thing that I have known alledg'd is, the great expediency of an Infallible Judge. But if we will think that a good way of arguing, that things are in fact so or so, because we can fancy it would be better if they were; we may as well prove that all mankind are sincere Christians, or there is no sin in the World, nor ever was, and a thousand things besides in the natural World, that never were, or will be, because it appears to us 'twould be for the better. So much is the follishness of man wiser than God.