Christ's school consisting of four classes of Christians

3. These Babes can eat milk, though nothing but milk; they sucked a year and a half and were not weaned from the breast, but were Babes and Sucklings still. They could eat but milk, their stomachs were not able to bear ⟨p. 64⟩(though their appetite might desire) strong meat. When Christ Jesus was telling his Disciples the offices of the Spirit, he makes a stop and tells them, I have yet many things (more) to say unto you, but you cannot bear them yet (which is the character of these Babes Joh. 16.12. q. d. I could tell you what great things there are in mine and my Fathers heart and purpose concerning you, but you are not in a condition to receive them, till you have received the Spirit, and grown up to another (higher) state than yet you are in. Babes cannot bear the Mathematical and Metaphysical demonstrations, they cannot understand them, but they are for similitudes, illustrations and Parables, and so Christ taught them, Mark 4.33. To tell them that there is joy in Heaven at the conversion of a sinner will not down with them, unless it be taught by the Parable of a lost and afterward found Sheep, &c. Babes are for living by sense more than by Faith. The Hebrews understood but little of the Priest-hood of Christ and his Office, which is the strong meat, no though the Apostle illustrated it by their own (shadowy) Priest-hood, which they had under the Law. So the Apostle Peter speaking of the state of renovation (the new Heavens, and the new Earth) of which his beloved brother Paul had also written in his Epistles; of which (not Epistles, for there is a change of the gender, and 'tis [Greek or Hebrew], and refers to the these things) of which or among which things some are hard to be understood, by whom? viz. by ⟨p. 65⟩the unlearned and unstable, and therefore he) presseth them not only to steadfastness but growth in grace, without which they will not attain to know the things hard to be understood, ¹2 Pet. 3.13,—17. But they cannot eat strong meat, yet they can eat milk; though but milk, yet milk; which implies that they were not only alive, but had some (a very little) strength, and took in some nourishment, and had some experience of the working of grace in them, though 'twere weak and faint.