But there are many among those who pretend to vindicate the ways of God, who are scarcely less worthy of reproof than those who presume to condemn them. There are many who speak of " the deep things of God," as if they were as plain and easy and intelligible as the simplest truth that can be mentioned. They dwell exclusively on these great and hidden mysteries, and leave all the plainer doctrines of repentance, faith, and obedience, as loiv matters, unworthy of their attention, and as unprofitable to any good end. Nothing pleases them but what brings immediately to their view the Divine decrees : and of these they speak in a way that the Scriptures by no means authorize. They draw conclusions from partial statements, without giving due weight to things which God himself has spoken on the opposite side : and then they vindicate with un- hallowed boldness and confidence what they themselves have put, as it were, into the mouth of God. This was the vei*y conduct of Job's friends ; and justly were they rebuked by God for their presumption. They took partial declarations of God, and then put their oivn unqualified construction upon them, and deduced from them inferences which they ivere never intended to bear. In this way they bore down righteous Job as an ignorant self-deceiver. But God declared that they had not spoken the thing that was right, as his servant Job had done; and required them to humble themselves for their folly and impiety. Let not any of you ever subject yourselves to the same reproof: for "Woe to him," saith God, " that striveth with his Maker'." It becomes you, doubtless, to investigate, and as far as possible to understand, every truth of God : but, in things so infinitely beyond the reach of human intellect, it becomes you to be humble, modest, diffident : and in things respecting which the most pious men may differ in their judg-
f Job. xl. 2. s Job xl. 8. h Job xl. 5. > Isai. xlv. 9.