Obs. I. There are revealed in the Scripture sundry deep and mys- terious truths, which require a peculiar diligence in our attendance unto their declaration, that we may rightly understand them or re- ceive them in a due manner. To evince this proposition, I shall lay down and confirm the ensuing observations :—
1. There are some things or truths revealed in the Scripture which
550 AN EXPOSITION OF THE [CHAP. V.
have a peculiar remark put upon them, as those which are deep and mysterious. See 1 Tim. iii 16; Eph. v. 32; 1 Cor. i, 6-8, xv. 51; Eph. iii. 4, 5.
2. The doctrines concerning these things are not dark and ob- scure, but clear, evident, and perspicuous. We may safely grant that what is not clearly delivered in the Scripture is of no indispen- sable necessity to be known and believed. And there are reasons innumerable why God would not leave any important truth under an obscure revelation. And none pretend they are so but those who first reject the things revealed; then all things spoken of them seem dark and obscure unto them. There are two practices about these things that are equally pernicious:—(1.) A pretence of things mysterious, that are not clearly revealed. This the apostle calls a curious prying or “intruding into things which we have not seen;” which who so do are “ vainly puffed up by their fleshly mind,” Col. ii, 18; and which he cautioneth us against, Rom. xu. 3. The mys- teries that are clearly revealed in the Scripture, as to the doctrine of them, are sufficient to exercise the utmost of our sober inquiries and humble speculations. To create heavenly mysteries, like the pretended Areopagite, in our own imaginations,—to squeeze them out of single letters, words, or expressions, like the cabbalistical Jews,—to vent our own fancies for mysteries,—or to cover plain and sober truths with raw and uncouth terms, that they may put on the vizard of being mysterious,—is to forsake the word, and to give up ourselves to the conduct of our own imaginations. (2.) A neglect and contempt of clear, open revelations, because the things revealed are mysterious. And as this is the foundation of the most outrageous errors that at this day infest Christian religion, as in the Socinians and others, so it is that poison which secretly influenceth many amongst ourselves to an open contempt of the most important truths of the gospel. They will not, indeed, declare them to be false; but they judge it meet that they should be let alone where they are, as things not by us to be understood.
3. The depths and mystery of the things intended lie in them- selves and their own nature. They are effects of divine wisdom, yea, the greatest which ever God will either work or declare. Hence the doctrine of them is called his “ wisdom,” 1 Cor. ii, 7; his “ma- nifold wisdom,” Eph. iii. 10; as having put the most eminent cha- racters of infinite wisdom upon them. We can see other things by the light of the sun better than we can see the sun itself; not be- cause the sun is less visible and discernible in itself, but because our visive faculty is too weak to bear its resplendent light. So is it with these mysterious things: they are great, glorious, true, evi- dent in themselves; but our understandings are weak, and unable fully to comprehend them,
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4. The principal of these mysteries concern the person, offices, and grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. So as to his person, it is de- clared by our apostle, 1 Tim. iii. 16; as to his work and office, Phil. ii. 7-11; and as to his grace, Eph. iii 8-11. And therefore,—
5. Of all things which we are to learn in the dispensation of the word, these are we with most diligence to attend unto, Phil. ii. 8-10, as those wherein the glory of God and our own obedience are most concerned. Some suppose that we should wholly content ourselves with the plain lessons of morality, without any further diligent in- quiry into these mysteries; which is at once to reject, if not the whole, yet the principal part of the gospel, and that without which what remains will not be available. Sad indeed would be the con- dition of the church of God, if preachers and hearers should agree in the neglect and contempt of the mysteries of the gospel. These, I say, are the things which our utmost diligence, in reading, hear- ing, and meditating on the word, in prayer and holy supplications for light and wisdom, that we may know them, and grow in the knowledge of them, is indispensably required of us.
Obs. II. It is necessary for the ministers of the gospel sometimes to insist on the most abstruse and difficult truths, that are revealed for our edification.
The apostle doth not only insist upon the sacerdotal office of Christ, the nature and exercise of it in his own person, but he judgeth it necessary to explain the mystical prefiguration of it in the priesthood of Melchisedee. Why might not that have been omitted, seeing he expressly acknowledgeth that the things con- cerning it were hard and difficult in the sense before explained, and the doctrine which he proposed in general might be declared and taught without it? Is not this a needless curiosity, and such as tended rather to the amusing and perplexing of his disciples than their edification? ‘No,’ saith he; ‘there may be curiosity in the manner, but there can be none in the matter, when we declare and expound only what is revealed in the Scripture. It was not in vain that the Holy Ghost recorded these things concerning the per- son and office of Melchisedec. The faith and obedience of the church are concerned in the due understanding of them; and there- fore this explanation is not to be neglected.’ Wherefore, to clear and direct our duty in this matter, we may consider,—1. That it ought to be the design of every faithful minister, in the course of his ministry, to withhold nothing from those committed unto his charge that belongs unto their edification, as do all things that are written in the Scripture, but to declare unto them “the whole counsel of God,” so far as he himself hath attained, Acts xx. 20, 27, To give times and seasons unto especial truths, doctrines, exposi- tions, is committed unto his own prudence by Him by whom he is