, and what is required of thee, but to do justly, to love mercy,
and to walk humbly with thy God," Micah vi. 8. There is the plain sign of
Christian wisdom, the abridgment of all that is taught in the school of
Christ. Here is the course of moral philosophy, "The grace of God hath
appeared, to teach us to deny ungodliness, and worldly lusts, and to live
soberly, righteously, and godly in this world." And when the scholar is
brought along by these degrees, he is at length laureated(437) in that
great day of our Saviour's appearance. Then he hath the degree of glory
and immortality conferred upon him. He is a candidate of immortality and
felicity, Tit. ii. 12, 13.

We are in the Christian school like many scholars who labour to know so
many things, that indeed they know nothing well; as the stomach that
devours much meat, but digests little, and turns it not into food and
aliment, incorporates it not into the body. We catch at many great points
of truth, and we really drink in none of them; we let none sink into the
heart, and turn into affection and practice. This is the grand disease of
the time, a study to know many things, and no study to love what we know,
or practise any thing. The Christian world is all in a flame, and the
church is rent asunder by the eager pursuit and prosecution of some points
of truth, and this is the clamour of all men, who will show us our light?
Who will discover some new thing unto us? But in the mean time we do not
prove the unquestionable acceptable will of our God; like a fastidious
squeamish stomach, that loathes what it receives, and always longs for
something else. Thus the evil is vented here. Who is a wise man, do ye
think? Not he who knows many things, who hath still a will to controversy,
who hath attained some further light than others of them; not he,
brethren, but he that shows out of a good conversation, his works with
meekness of wisdom, he that proves and practiseth as well as knows, the
good will of God. "For hereby do we know that we know him, if we keep his
commandments. He that saith, I know him, and keeps not his commands, is a
liar, and the truth is not in him," 1 John ii. 3, 4. This proves that
knowledge is not in the head, but in the heart, and that it is not
captivated and shut up in the mind, but that a man is delivered up as a
captive to the truth, Rom. vi. 16.

All men complain of the want of light and knowledge, though perhaps none
think they have much. But is t