not a much higher pitch among the unenlightened heathen, than amongst ourselves. But who amongst the heathen could ever find out God ? Who could ever dive into his counsels ? Who could account for the actual state of things as they existed in the world ? Who could tell how a sinful man might he accepted of his God ? Truly, " the world by wisdom knew not God :" this knowledge was " too wonderful and excellent" for unassisted reason to explore : nor can we, even with the Bible in our hands, attain it, unless God by his Spirit open the eyes of our understand- ing, and shine into our hearts to give it us. We are expressly told, that " eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive, the things which God hath prepared for us ;" and the things there spoken of are those which are revealed to us in the Gospel. It is not of heaven that the Apostle speaks, but of the Gospel, and the mysteries contained in it. These are the things which are called in Scripture to fieyaXela tov Qeov, " the wonderful works of Godk." And they are " the things of the Spirit, which the natural man cannot receive, nor even know, because they are spiritually discerned." Well therefore may we covet knowledge which was " hid in God from the foundation of the world," which the wisest philosophers could never attain, which even the learned among ourselves can- not possess, unless God himself be their teacher, and " open their understandings to understand it."
In point of certainty, there is nothing that can be compared with it. There are indeed in it many things which we cannot comprehend : but there is much known, and known on the authority of God himself. Most other knowledge is involved in doubt and obscurity; insomuch that hypotheses which have been established for ages, have yet been overthrown by the penetration of a Copernicus or a Newton : but the truth of God is unchangeable ; and whether viewed in the promise to Adam, or in subsequent
k Acts ii. 11. VOL. XVIII. o