2. When any thing is borne in upon their spirit as a truth to be received, or as an error to be rejected, more immediately, they should beware of admitting of every such thing without trial and examination; for we are expressly forbidden to believe every spirit, and commanded to try them whether they are of God or not, 1 John iv. 1. The Lord will not take it ill that even his own immediate motions and revelations be tried and examined by the word; because the word is given us for this end, to be our test and standard of truth. The way of immediate revelation is not the ordinary way now of God's manifesting his mind to his people. He hath now chosen another way, and given us a more sure word of prophesy than was, "even a voice from heaven," as Peter saith, 2 Pet. i. 18, 19. It is commended in the Bereans, Acts xvii. 11, who upon this account were "more noble than those of Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the Scriptures daily, whether those things were so." Even Paul's words, though he was an authorised and an infallible apostle of Christ's, are here put to the touch-stone of the word. "Many false prophets may go out, and deceive many, and speak great swelling words of vanity," 1 John iv. 1; 2 Pet. ii. 18; and the devil can transchange himself into an angel of light, 2 Cor. xi. 14; and though an angel out of heaven should preach any other thing than what is in the written word, we ought not to receive his doctrine, but to reject it, and to account him accursed, Gal. i. 8. So that the written word must be much studied by us; and by it must we try all motions, all doctrines, all inspirations, all revelations, and all manifestations.