What you find suiting with the scriptures, take, though it should not suit with authors; but that which you find against the scriptures, slight, though it should be confirmed by multitudes of them.  Yea, further, where you find the scriptures and your authors agree, yet believe it for the sake of scripture’s authority.  I honor the godly as Christians, but I prefer the Bible before them; and having that still with me, I count myself far better furnished than if I had, without it, all the libraries of the two universities.  Besides, I am for drinking water out of my own cistern:  what God makes mine by the evidence of his word and Spirit, that I dare make bold with.  Wherefore, seeing, though I am without their learned lines, yet well furnished with the words of God, I mean the Bible, I have contented myself with what I have there found; and having set it before your eyes,

I pray read and take, sir, what you like best; And that which you like not, leave for the rest.

Read, and read again, and do not despair of help to understand something of the will and mind of God, though you think they are fast locked up from you.  Neither trouble your heads though you have not commentaries and expositions; pray and read, and read and pray; for a little from God is better than a great deal from men:  also what is from men is uncertain, and is often lost and tumbled over and over by men; but what is from God is fixed as a nail in a sure place.  There is nothing that so abides with us, as what we receive from God; and the reason why Christians at this day are at such a loss as to some things, is because they are content with what comes from men’s mouths, without searching and kneeling before God to know of him the truth of things.  Things that we receive at God’s hand come to us as things from the minting-house, though old in themselves, yet new to us.  Old truths are always new to us, if they come to us with the smell of heaven upon them.

IV.  MAN.

The image of god.

Man is God’s image, and to curse wickedly the image of God, is to curse God himself.  Suppose that a man should say with his mouth, I wish that the king’s picture were burned; would not this man’s so saying render him as an enemy to the person of the king?  Even so it is with them that by cursing wish evil to their neighbors or themselves; they contemn the image of God himself.

This world, as it dropped from the fingers of God, was far more glorious than it is now.

Value of the soul.

The soul is a thing, though of most worth, least minded by most.  The souls of most lie waste, while all other things are inclosed.

Soul-concerns are concerns of the highest nature, and concerns that arise from thoughts most deep and ponderous.  He never yet knew what belonged to great and deep thoughts, that is a stranger to soul-concerns.