Scripture: to say otherwise would imply that the ancients had failed universally in _necessaries_, which is morally absurd.” {36b} The canon thus explained may be thought appropriate to preachers and ministers alone, exclusively of their people; but though the latter cannot, it is true, directly apply this regulation to themselves, they nevertheless may indirectly derive advantage from it. They will be prepared to perceive at once when any minister proposes to their acceptance some doctrine or exposition of Scripture, for which he can produce no ancient authority—and which he declares to be _new_, yet at the same time _important_—he declares himself, by this dangerous and un-canonical proceeding, unworthy of their confidence. But perhaps the greatest and most alarming mistake to be avoided by all inquirers, ecclesiastical or laical, is the application of their minds to religious researches rather for the sake of curious information and philosophical entertainment, than for purposes of saving knowledge, and of sure, efficacious, practical direction. The Holy Scriptures, no doubt, are written for our learning, not however merely for such learning as consists in literary, critical, and speculative exercises of our ingenuity; but for our advancement in the school of Christian wisdom, of that wisdom from above which unites and perfects all the higher capacities of our nature, moral, intellectual, or spiritual—that wisdom which, (far removed from the jealousies and the wranglings and the violences of factious controversy,) is anxious only for the interests of truth and virtue—that wisdom which is “first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy.” {37a}