Certainly these tremendous Mysteries, are not by us willingly to be exposed, or prostituted to the Cavils of every perverse querist, and disputer; those [Greek or Hebrew]; whose pretended Wisdom, indeed ignorance, darkness and folly, God hath designed to confound and destroy in them and by them. ⟨image 5⟩For my part, I can assure thee, Reader, I have no mind to contend and dispute about these things which I humbly adore and believe as they are revealed. It is the Importunity of Adversaries, in their Attempts to draw and seduce the souls of men from the Truth and Simplicity of the Gospel in these great Fundamentals of it, that alone can justify any to debate upon, or eristically to handle these awful Mysteries. This renders it our Duty, and that indispensably, in as much as we are required to contend earnestly for the Faith once delivered unto the Saints. But yet also when this necessity is imposed on us, we are by no means discharged from that ⟨image 6⟩humble Reverence of mind, wherewith we ought always to be conversant about them; nor from that regard unto the way and manner of their Revelation in the Scripture, which may preserve us from all unnecessary intermixture of litigious or exotic Phrases and Expressions, in their Assertion and declaration. I know our Adversaries would upon the matter decry any thing peculiarly Mysterious in these things; although they are frequently, and emphatically in the Scriptures affirmed so to be. But whilst they deny the Mysteries of the things themselves, which are such as every may become the glorious Being and Wisdom of God, they are ⟨image 6⟩forced to assign such an enigmatical sense unto the Words, Expressions and Propositions wherein they are revealed and declared in the scripture, as to turn almost the whole Gospel into an Allegory, wherein nothing is properly expressed, but in some kind of Allusion unto what is so elsewhere; which irrational way of proceeding, leaving nothing certain in what is or may be expressed by Word or Writing, is covered over with a pretence of Right Reason, which utterly refuseth to be so employed. These things the Reader will find afterwards made manifest, so far as the nature of this brief discourse will bear. And I shall only ⟨image 7⟩desire these few things of him that intends its perusal. First, That he would not look on the subject here treated of, as the matter of an ordinary Controversy in Religion.
Certainly these tremendous Mysteries, are not by us willingly to be exposed, or prostituted to the Cavils of every perverse querist, and disputer; those 〈non-Latin alphabet〉; whose pretended Wisdom, indeed ignorance, darkness and folly, God hath designed to confound and destroy in them and by them. ⟨image 5⟩For my part, I can assure thee, Reader, I have no mind to contend and dispute about these things which I humbly adore and believe as they are revealed. It is the Importunity of Adversaries, in their Attempts to draw and seduce the souls of men from the Truth and Simplicity of the Gospel in these great Fundamentals of it, that alone can justifie any to debate upon, or eristically to handle these awful Mysteries. This renders it our Duty, and that indispensibly, in as much as we are required to contend earnestly for the Faith once delivered unto the Saints. But yet also when this necessity is imposed on us, we are by no means discharged from that ⟨image 6⟩humble Reverence of mind, wherewith we ought alwayes to be conversant about them; nor from that regard unto the way and manner of their Revelation in the Scripture, which may preserve us from all unnecessary intermixture of litigious or exotick Phrases and Expressions, in their Assertion and declaration. I know our Adversaries would upon the matter decry any thing peculiarly Mysterious in these things; although they are frequently, and emphatically in the Scriptures affirmed so to be. But whilest they deny the Mysteries of the things themselves, which are such as every may become the glorious Being and Wisdom of God, they are ⟨image 6⟩forced to a•sign such an aenigmatical sense unto the Words, Expressions and Propositions wherein they are revealed and declared in the scripture, as to turn almost the whole Gospel into an Allegory, wherein nothing is properly expressed, but in some kind of Allusion unto what is so elsewhere; which irrational way of proceeding, leaving nothing certain in what is or may be expressed by Word or Writing, is covered over with a pretence of Right Reason, which utterly refuseth to be so employed. These things the Reader will find afterwards made manifest, so far as the nature of this brief discourse will bear. And I shall only ⟨image 7⟩desire these few things of him that intends its perusal. First, That he would not look on the subject here treated of, as the matter of an ordinary Controversie in Religion.
