hould have made this
world, and the mysteries of it, the subject of all his lessons, the more
to illustrate his own glorious power and wisdom? And yet behold, they who
had come into his school and heard this Master and Doctor teach his
scholars, they who had been invited to come, through the fame and report
of his name, would have stood astonished and surprised to hear the subject
of his doctrine; one come from on high to teach so low things as these,
"Learn of me, I am meek and lowly." Other men that are masters of
professions, and authors of sects or orders, do aspire unto some
singularity in doctrine to make them famous. But behold our Lord and
Master, this is the doctrine he vents! It hath nothing in it that sounds
high, and looks big in the estimation of the world. In regard of the
wisdom of the world, it is foolishness, a doctrine of humility from the
most High! A lesson of lowliness and meekness from the Lord and Maker of
all! There seems, at first, nothing in it to allure any to follow it. Who
would travel so far as the college of Christianity to learn no more but
this, when every man pretends to be a teacher of it?

But truly there is a majesty in this lowliness and there is a singularity
in this commonness. If ye would stay and hear a little longer, and enter
into a deep search of this doctrine, we would be surcharged and overcome
with wonders. It seems shallow till ye enter but it has no bottom.
Christianity makes no great noise, but it runs the deeper. It is a light
and overly knowledge of it, a small smattering of the doctrine of it, that
makes men despise it and prefer other things, but the deep and solid
apprehension of it will make us adore and admire, and drive us to an _O
altitudo!_ "O the depth both of the wisdom and knowledge of God!" Rom. xi.
33. As the superficial knowledge of nature makes men atheists, but the
profound understanding of it makes men pious so all other things,
_vilescit scientia_, "grow more contemptible by the knowledge of them." It
is ignorance of them which is the mother of that devout admiration we bear
to them. But Christianity only, _vilescit ignorantia, clarescit scientia_,
is common and base, because not known. And that is no disparagement at all
unto it, that there is none despises it, but he that knoweth it not, and
none can do any thing, but despise all besides it that once knows it. That
is the proper excellency and glory of it.

All arts and sciences have their principl