Neither is this the only place insisted on by Mr B. where the inquiry ascribed unto God, and the trial that he makes, is not in reference to things to come, but punctually to what is present : Deut. viii. 2, xiii. 3, " The Lord your God proveth you, to know whether ye love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul;" 2 Chron. xxxii. 31, " God left him, to try him, that he might know all that was in his heart ;" and Phil. iv. 6, " In every thing let your requests be made known unto God." Let Mr B. tell us now plainly whether he supposes all these things to be spoken properly of God, and that indeed God knows not our hearts, the frame of them, nor what in them we desire and aim at, without some eminent trial and inquiry, or until we ourselves do make known what is in them unto him. If this be the man's mind (as it must be, if he be at any agree- ment with himself in his principles concerning these scriptural attri- butions unto God), for my part I shall be so far from esteeming him eminent as a mere Christian, that I shall scarcely judge him com- parable, as to his apprehensions of God, unto many that lived and died mere Pagans. To this sense also is applied that property of God, that he "trieth the hearts," as it is urged by Mr B. from 1 Thess. ii. 4 ; — that is, he maketli inquiry after what is in them ; which, but upon search and trial, he knoweth not! By what ways and means God accompli sheth this search, and whether hereupon he comes to a perfect understanding of our hearts or no, is not expressed. John tells us that " God is greater than our hearts, and knoweth all things;" and we have thought on that account (with that of such farther discoveries as he hath made of himself and his perfections unto us) that he had been said to search our hearts ; not that himself, for his own information, needs any such formal process by way of trial and inquiry, but because really and indeed he doth that in
' "Contigerat nostras infamia temporis aurcs: Quam cupiens falsam sumnio delabor Olympo, Et Deus humana lustro sub imagine terras." — Ovid. Met. i. 211,
122 VINDICI^ EVANGELIC^.
himself wliicli men aim at in the accomphshment of their most dihgent searches and exactest trials.
And we may, by the way, see a httle of this man's consistency with himself. Christ he denies to be God, — a great part of his religion consists in that negative, — yet of Christ it is said that " he knew all men, and needed not that any should testify of man, for he knew what was in man," John ii. 24, 25 : and this is spoken in reference to that very thing in the hearts of men which he would persuade us that God knows not without inquiry ; that is, upon the account of his not committing himself to those as true believers whom yet, upon the account of the profession they made, the Scripture calls so, and says they "believed in his name, when they saw the miracles which he did," verse 23. Though they had such a veil of profession upon them that the Holy Ghost would have us esteem them as believers, yet Christ could look through it into then- hearts, and discover and know their frame, and whether in sincerity they loved him and believed in his name or no ; but this God cannot do without inquiry ! And yet Christ (if we believe Mr B.) was but a mere man, as he is a "mere Christian/' Farther; it seems, by this gentleman, that unless "we make known our requests to God," he knows not what we will ask. Yet Ave ask nothing but what is in our thoughts ; and in the last query he in- structs us that God knows our thoughts, — and doubtless he knows Mr B.'s to be but folly. Farther yet; if God must be concluded igno- rant of our desires, because we are bid to make our requests known unto him, he may be as well concluded forgetful of what himself hath spoken, because he bids us put him in remembrance, and appoints some to be his remembrancers. But to return: —
This is the aspect of almost one-half of the places produced by Mr B. towards the business in hand. If they are properly spoken of God, in the same sense as they are of man, they conclude him not to know things 'present, the frame of the heart of any man in the world towards himself and his fear, nay, the outward, open, notorious actions of men. So it is in that place of Gen. xviii. 21, insisted on by Crellius, one of Mr B.'s great masters, "I will go down now, and see" (or know) " whether they have done altogether according to the cry of it, which is come unto nie."^ Yea, the places which, in their letter and outward appearance, seem to ascribe that ignorance of things present unto God are far more express and numerous than those that in the least look forward to what is yet for to come, or was so at