An error then is any departure or deviation in our opinions or judgments from the perfect rule of the Divine law; and to this/ all men, by nature, are not only liable, but inclinable. Indeed man, by nature, can do nothing else but err ; Psal. Ivii. 3. He goeth astray as soon as horn ; makes not one true step till renewed by grace, and many false ones after his renovation. The life of the holiest man is a book with many errata's ; but the whole edition of a wicked man's life, is but one continued error ; he that thinks he cannot err, manifestly errs in so thinking. The Pope's sup- posed and pretended infallibility hath made him the great deceiver of the world. A good man may err, but is willing to know his error ; and will not obstinately maintain it, when he once plainly discerns it.
Error and heresy, among other things differ in this : heresy is accompaoied with pertinacy, and therefore the heretic is a-jlox.alaKP/log, self-condemned ; his own conscience condemns him, whilst men labour in vain to convince him. He doth not formally, and in terms, condemn himself; but he doth so equivalently, whilst he continues to own and maintain doctrines and opinions which he
* n^U; Shagah. t nri3 Tagnah in Hiph.
426 A BLOW AT THE ROOT; OE,
finds himself unable to defend against the evidence of truth. Hu- man frailty may lead a man into the first, but devilish pride fixes him in the last.
The word of God, which is our rule, must therefore be the only test and touchstone to try and discover errors ; for regula est index sui 4* ohliqui. It is not enough to convince a man of error, that his judgment differs from other men's; you must bring it to the word, and try how it agrees or disagrees therewith ; else he that charges another with error, may be found in as great or greater an error himself. None are more disposed easily to receive, and tenaciously to defend errors, than those who are the Antesignani, heads or leaders of erroneous sects; especially after they have fought in the defence of bad causes, and deeply engaged their re- putation.
The following discourse justly entitles itself, A Blow at the Root. And though you ^vill here find the roots of many errors laid bare and open, which, comparatively, are of far different de- grees of danger and malignity; which I here mention together, many of them springing from the same root : Yet I am far from censuring them alike ; nor would I have any that are concerned in lesser errors to be exasperated, because their lesser mistakes are men- tioned with greater and more pernicious ones ; this candour I not only intreat, but justly challenge from my reader.
And because there are many general and very useful observa- tions about errors, which will not so conveniently come under the laws of that method which governs the main part of this discourse, viz. CAUSES and cures of error : I have therefore sorted them by themselves, and premised them to the following part in twenty ob- servations next ensuing.
Twenty general Observations about the Rise and In- crease of the Errors of the Times.
A RUTH is the proper object, the natural and pleasant food of the understanding. Job xii. 11. Doth not the ear (th.-it is, the understanding by the ear) ii-y words, as the inoiith tasteth meat ? Knowledge is the assimilation of the understanding to the truths received by it. Nothing is more natural to man, than a desire to know : knowledge never cloys the mind, as food doth the natural appetite; but as the one increaseth, the other is proportionably sharpened and provoked. The minds of all (that are not wholly
THE CAUSES AND CURE OF MENTAL Er.RORS. 427
immersed in sensuality) spend their strength in the laborious search and pursuit of truth : sometimes climbing up from the effects to the causes, and then descending again from the causes to the effects ; and all to discover truth. Fervent prayer, sedulous study, fixed meditations, are the labours of inquisitive souls after truth. All the objections and counter-arguments the mind meets in its way, are but the pauses and hesitations of a bivious soul, not able to determine whether truth hes upon this side, or upon that.
Answerable to the sharpness of the mind's appetite, is the fine edge of pleasure and delight it feels in the discovery and acquisition of truth. When it liath racked and tortured itself upon knotty problems, and at last discovered the truth it sought for, with what joy doth the soul dilate itself, and run (as it were with open anus) to clasp and welcome it ?
The understanding of man, at first, was perspicacious and clear ; all truths lay obvious in their comely order and ravishing beauty before it : God made man tipright, Eccl. vii. 29. This rectitude of his mind consisted in light and knowledge, as appears by the pre- scribed method of his recovery. Col. iii. 10. Reneiced in knozcledge, after the image of him that created him. Truth in the mind, or the mind's union with truth, being part of the Divine image in man, dis- covers to us the sin and mischief of error, which is a defacing (so far as it prevails) of the image of God.
No sooner was man created but by the exercise of knowledge he soon discovered God's image in him ; and by his ambition after more, lost what he had. So that now there is an haziness or cloud spread over truth by ignorance and error, the sad effects of the fall.
Observ. 2. Of knowledge there are divers sorts and kinds : some is human and some divine ; some specidative, and some practical ; some ingrcifted as the notions of morality^ and some acquired by painful search and study : but of all knowledge, none like that Divine and supernatural knowledge of saving truths revealed by Christ in the scriptures. Hence ariseth the different degrees both of the sinfulness and danger of errors, those errors being always the worst, which are committed against the most important truths re- vealed in the gospel.
These truths lie enfolded either in the plain words, or in the evident and necessary consequences from the words of the Holy Scripture ; scripture-consequences are of great use for the refutation of errors : it was by a scripture-consequence that Christ successfully proved the resurrection against the Sadducees, Mat. xxii. The Arians, and other heretics, rejected consequential proofs, and required the express words of Scripture only ; hoping that way to defend and
428 A BLOW AT THE ROOT ; OR,
secure their errors against the arguments and assaults of the or- thodox.