Nor do we understand hereby, that God has given us an account of all his secret counsels and purposes relating to the event of things, or the final estate of particular persons, abstracted from those marks on which our hope of salvation is founded, or their outward condition, or the good or bad success that shall attend their undertakings in the world, or the time of their living therein: these, and many more events of the like nature, are secrets which we are not to enquire into, God having not thought fit to reveal them in his word, for wise ends best known to himself, which shews his sovereignty, with respect to the matter of revelation; _Secret things belong unto the Lord our God; but those things which are revealed belong unto us, and to our children_, Deut. xxix. 29. When Peter was over-curious in enquiring concerning the future estate or condition of John, our Saviour gives him this tacit reproof, _What is that to thee?_ John xxi. 21, 22. Nor are we to suppose that the divine perfections, which are infinite, are fully and adequately revealed to man, since it is impossible that they should, from the nature of the thing; for that which is in itself incomprehensible, cannot be so revealed that we should be able fully to comprehend it, though that which is possible, or at least necessary, to be known of God, is clearly revealed to us. Again, we do not suppose that every doctrine, that is to be assented to as an article of faith, is revealed in express words in scripture, since many truths are to be deduced from it by just and necessary consequences, which thereby become a rule of faith. Nor are we to suppose that every part of scripture fully and clearly discovers all those things which are contained in the whole of it, since there was farther light given to the church, by degrees, in succeeding ages, as it grew up, from its infant-state, to a state of perfect manhood; therefore there is a clearer and fuller revelation of the glorious mysteries of the gospel, under the New Testament-dispensation, than there was before it. The apostle uses the same metaphorical way of speaking, when he compares the state of the church, under the ceremonial law, to that of an heir under age, or of children under the direction of tutors and governors, whose instruction and advances in knowledge are proportioned to their age; so God revealed his word at _sundry times_, as well as in _divers manners_, Gal. iv. 1, 3. Heb. i. 1.