CAUTIONS AND DIRECTIONS.

For further clearing of this matter, we shall hint at some cautions and further directions useful here:  such as,

1.  They should beware of thinking that God should come to them with light and instruction in an extraordinary manner, and reveal the truth of the question controverted somewhat immediately:  for this were a manifest tempting and limiting of the Holy One of Israel.  We must be satisfied with the means of instruction which he hath provided, and run to the law and to the testimony.  We have the Scriptures, which are able to make the man of God perfect and “thoroughly furnished unto all good works,” 2 Tim. iii. 16, 17; and to “make wise unto salvation,” ver. 15.  There must we see light; and there must we wait for the breathings of his Spirit with life, and coming with light to clear up truth to us:  for they are the scriptures of truth, Dan. x. 21; and the law of the Lord, which is “perfect, converting the soul;” and the commandment of the Lord, that is pure, “enlightening the eyes,” Psalm xix. 7, 8.  We have the ministry which God hath also appointed for this end, to make known unto us his mind; there must we wait for him and his light.  Thus must we wait at the posts of wisdom’s doors; and wait for the king of light in his own way wherein he hath appointed us to wait for him.  And if he think good to come another way more immediate, let him always be welcome; but let not us limit him nor prescribe ways to him, but follow his directions.

2.  When any thing is borne in upon their spirit as a truth to be received, or as an error to be rejected, more immediately, they should beware of admitting of every such thing without trial and examination; for we are expressly forbidden to believe every spirit, and commanded to try them whether they are of God or not, 1 John iv. 1.  The Lord will not take it ill that even his own immediate motions and revelations be tried and examined by the word; because the word is given us for this end, to be our test and standard of truth.  The way of immediate revelation is not the ordinary way now of God’s manifesting his mind to his people.  He hath now chosen another way, and given us a more sure word of prophesy than was, “even a voice from heaven,” as Peter saith, 2 Pet. i. 18, 19.  It is commended in the Bereans, Acts xvii. 11, who upon this account were “more noble than those of Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the Scriptures daily, whether those things were so.”  Even Paul’s words, though he was an authorised and an infallible apostle of Christ’s, are here put to the touch-stone of the word.  “Many false prophets may go out, and deceive many, and speak great swelling words of vanity,” 1 John iv. 1; 2 Pet. ii. 18; and the devil can transchange himself into an angel of light, 2 Cor. xi. 14; and though an angel out of heaven should preach any other thing than what is in the written word, we ought not to receive his doctrine, but to reject it, and to account him accursed, Gal. i. 8.  So that the written word must be much studied by us; and by it must we try all motions, all doctrines, all inspirations, all revelations, and all manifestations.