Heavenly merchandiseHeavenly merchandize

2. I may descend to lay down some more ⟨p. 110⟩particular help for the finding out of the truth, to which end take these following Rules.

1. Be much in prayer to God for the illumination of his Spirit: It is not enough to be much in reading and studying of the Scriptures, though that also must be attended; for if we go about it with a proud confidence, leaning to our own Understandings, we expose our selves to be lost: It is easy for us to be deluded, and we know that the vilest Heretics have sought to make the Word of God to patronize their most absurd opinions and none that labour so much as they to fill up their pages with Scripture citations, which they put upon the rack, hoping to make them confess their lies to be true. None knows the mind of God in the Scripture but his own Spirit, and such to whom he will reveal it, 1 Cor. 2. 12, 13. and such as would be best informed, must ask his Illumination; Luther's been Orasse, been studuisse, belongs not to Ministers […] but also to all Christians. The Word indeed is a Lamp, and the Law is light, but the misery is, our eyes are out, and it is not this light will open them of it self, but only the author of it. As our dependence upon the teachings of the Spirit ought not to encourage our neglect of the reading of the Word of ⟨p. 111⟩God, and attending upon those helps to acquaint our selves with it which God affords us in the Public Ministry; so neither should we confide in our own pains, or be satisfied with our skill: we have David here for a pattern, who professeth Gods Law to be his meditation day and night, and declares that this meditation was an help to his gaining of more skill than the ancients; yet how often have we him at prayer earnestly begging, for skill, teaching, illumination, so acknowledging the subordination of his endeavours,