Therefore it is easy to discern their error, that tell men the light or Spirit within them, is their rule, and a perfect rule, yea, and that it is thus in all men in the world; when God's word and experience flatly contradict it, telling us that infidels and enemies of God, and all the ungodly, are in darkness, and not in the light; and that all that speak not according to this word, (the law and testimony,) have "no light in them;" and therefore no "perfect light to be their rule," Isa. viii. 20. The ministry is sent, to bring them from darkness to light: therefore, they had not a sufficient light in them before, Acts xxvi. 17, 18. "Woe to them that put darkness for light, and light for darkness!" Isa. v. 20: telling the children of darkness, and the haters of the light, that they have a perfect light and rule within them, when God saith, "They have no light in them." See 1 John i. 4-8. "He that saith he is in the light, and hateth his brother, is in darkness even till now," 1 John ii. 9-11. The light within a wicked man, is "darkness" and "blindness," and therefore not his rule, Matt. vi. 23; Eph. v. 8. Even the light that is in godly men, is the knowledge of the rule, and not the rule itself at all, nor ever called so by God. Our rule is perfect; our knowledge is imperfect: for Paul himself saith, "We know in part; but when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away: now we see through a glass darkly," 1 Cor. xiii. 9, 10, 12. "The gospel is hid to them that are lost," being "blinded by Satan," 2 Cor. iv. 3, 4. There is an admirable, unsearchable concurrence of the Spirit, and his appointed means, and the will of man, in the procreation of the new creature, and in all the exercises of grace, as there is of male and female in natural generation; and of the earth, the sun, the rain, the industry of the gardener, and the seminal virtue of life and specification, in the production of plants with their flowers and fruits. And as wise as it would be to say, it is not the male but the female, or not the female but the male that generateth; or to say, it is not the earth but the sun, or not the sun but the rain, or not the rain but the seminal virtue, that causeth plants with flowers and fruits: so wise is it to say, it is not the Spirit but the word and means, or it is not the word and means but the Spirit, or it is not the reason, and will, and industry of man, but the Spirit: or, if we have not wisdom enough to assign to each cause its proper interest in the effect, that therefore we should separate what God hath conjoined, or deny the truth of the causation, because we comprehend not the manner and influence--this is but to choose to be befooled by pride, rather than confess that God is wiser than we.