512                                        OF THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD.                                                            Book I.

become past feeling, and insensible to the distinction of
good and evil, Isa. v. 20.
stMy, There is in many an affected ignorance, which
is very criminal; they are willingly ignorant, as the
apostle says of the senfrets who shall arise in the last
time, or rather they are unwilling to understand what
they might, they know not, nor will they understand,
they walk on in. darkness; they do not choose to make
use of but shun the means of knowledge, and shut
their eyes against all light and conviction; they do not
care to come to the light, and love darkness rather than
light; they do not desire to know God and his ways,
but rather that he would depart from them; with such
as these wisdom expostulates, saying, How long, ye
simple ones, will ye love simplicity ?           and fools hate
knowledge ? Prov. i. 21. see 2 Pet. iii. & Psalm lxxxii.
5. John iii. 19. Job xxi. 14.
6thly, Some, because of their sinful lusts they in-
dulge themselves in, and their contempt of the means
of light and knowledge, and the stubborn choice they
make of error and falsehood, are given up to .judicial
blindness and hardness of heart; as many among the
heathens, who because they liked not to retain God in
their knowledge, were given up to a reprobate mind,
or to a mind void of judgment, and so imbibed notions
and performed actions not convenient, Rom. i. 28.
and the Jews, who rejected Jesus the Messiah against
all light and evidence, had a spirit of slumber given
them, eyes that they should not see, and ears that they
should not hear, nor understand with their hearts, John
xii. 40. Rom. xi. 8. and the followers of Antichrist,
who received not the love of the truth, had a strong
delusion sent them to believe a lie, 2 Thess. ii. 10, 11.
others have been left under the power of Satan, the
same with the power of darkness, who is the god of
this world, and who is suffered to blind the eyes of
them who believe not, lest the light of the glorious
gospel of Christ should shine unto them, 2 Cot. iv. 4.
Now whilst men are in an unrenewed state, and in
such a state of darkness and blindness, they are igno-
rant,       1. Of God, of his nature and perfections;
for though they m.ay by the light of nature, and from
the works of ereanon, know that there is a God, and
some of his perfections, as his wisdom, power, and
goodness, which manifestly appear in them; yet not
so as to glorify him as God, nor so as to preserve them
from the worship of other gods besides him: indeed
their knowledge of him is so dim and obscure, that
after all they are said by their wisdom not to know
God, the true-God, this was the case of the Gentiles;
and as for the Jews who had a revelation, yet they were
ignorant of the righteousness of God, which was the
ground of their capital mistake in going about to
establish their owu righteousness and reject the right-
eousness of Christ. And carnal men are very apt to
think that God is such an one as themselves, and they
measure him by themselves, and fancy that what is
agreeable to the reasonjags of their minds is approved
of by him; or that he takes no notice of men and their
actions, but leaves them to act as they please; that
the Lord hath forsaken the earth, and the Lord seeth not,
Ezek. ix. 9. and thus they live without God, or as
atheists in the world; or they think that God is a God

of mercy, and will have mercy on them at last, but
never think of his justice and holiness.--2. They
are ignorant of Christ, of his person and offices, and
of the way of life and salvation by him; as they know
neither the Father nor the Son, nor the distinction be-
tween them, so not the concern that each have in the
salvation of men. The way of peace they know not,
how God was in Christ reconciling the world to him-
self, forming the plan and scheme of reconciliation,
and how Christ has made peace by the blood of his
cross..- -3. They are ignorant of. the Spirit of God;
The world seeth him not, neither knoweth him, John
xiv-. 17. neither his person nor his office, as a sanctifier
and comforter; not the operations of his grace on the
souls of men; Nicodemus, a master in Israel, could
not conceive how it should be that a man should be
born again of water and of the Spirit, John iii. 8, 9.
Nor can a natural man either receive or know the
things of the Spirit of God, because they are spiritually
discerned, and he has not a spiritual visive faculty to
discern them, I Cor. ii. 14. . 4. They are ignorant
of themselves, and of their state and condition by
nature; they think themselves rich and increased with
goods, when they are wretched, miserable, poor, and
blind, and naked; they fancy themselves whole, sound
and healthful, and need not a physician for their souls,
when they are sadly diseased and distempered with
.sin; they reckon themselves alive without the law,
in a good condition, and in a fair way for life, heaven,
and happiness, till the law enters them, and cuts off all
their hopes of salvation by the works of it. They are
upon the brink of ruin, like a man on the top of the
mast of a ship asleep, or in the midst of the sea, insen-
sible of their danger; they rush into sin like the horse
into the battle, and hasten like a bird to the snare,
whch knows not it is for its life. -..5. They are igno-
rant of sin and the sad effects of it; if they have any
notion of the grosser sins of life, and the evil of them,
they do not know that lust in the heart is sin; not the
evil of indwelling sin and corrupt nature; nor con-
siderthat the wages of sin is death, eternal death; they
are not sensible of their own insufficiency and inability
to make atonement for their sins, nor to work out a
righteousness that will justify them from their sins.
--6. They are ignorant of the sacred scriptures,
and the truths contained in them; though they are
plain to them that understand, and right to them that
find knowledge, Prov. viii. 9. yet they are like a sealed
book to carnal men, whether learned or unlearned;
the one cannot read them because sealed, and the
other because he is not learned, Isa. xxix. 11,12. The
mysteries of the kingdom are delivered to them in
parables, and they are riddles, enigmas, and dark say-
ing to them; the gospel, and the doctrines of it, are
hid from the wise and prudent; they cannot under-
stand them, they are foolishness to them, and they
pronounce them such. But,
Secondly, In every renewed person there is a know-
ledge of God and of divine things; the new creature
or new-man is renewed in knowledge, after the image
of him that created him, Col. iii. 10. Spiritual and
divine knowledge is a part of the new man, which is
no other than au assemblage of grace consisting of