Heb. V. 11 — 14. TFe have many th'mgs to say, and hard to be tittered, seeing ye are dull of hearing. For when for the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need that one teach you again lohich be the first principles of the oracles of God; and are become such as have need of milk, and not of strong meat. For every one that useth milk is unskilful in the loord of righteousness : for he is a babe. But strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age, even those ivho by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil.
THERE is in the Holy Scriptures a great diversity of truths suited to the various states and capacities of men. There are some so plain and simple, that " he who runs may read " and understand them : there are others so deep and mysterious, that persons of the strongest intellect and most extensive erudition are utterly lost in the contemplation of them. In human sciences, men of genius and penetration have a great advantage over those of a less cultivated and comprehensive mind ; because the strength of their faculties enables them to prosecute their researches to a far greater extent than the others can : but in divine knowledge, it is not the most learned, but the most humble and heavenly-minded, person, that will make the greatest progress. Ignorance in divine things (especially among those who enjoy a faithful ministration of the Gospel) springs from wilful re- missness, rather than from any want of capacity ; and involves the offender in very deep guilt. It is on this ground that the Apostle reproves the Hebrews for their inability to receive what he had to say respecting Melchizedec and Christ. He represents their infantile state as the consequence of their own sloth, and as an occasion of considerable embar- rassment to himself, since he knew not how to open to them the sublimer truths of Christianity, be- cause they were yet so ill-instructed in its very first principles.