It would be easy to shew how the leaven of that sect works among us, just as it did among them. _Have any of the rulers believed on him?_ was the orthodox question of the antient Pharisees. Now we readily condemn the folly of that question; and yet who does not see, that, for the most part, both priest and people, in every Christian country, live and govern themselves by the folly of the very same spirit which put that question: for when God, as he has always done from the beginning of the world, rises up private and illiterate persons, full of light and wisdom from above, so as to be able to discover the workings of the mystery of iniquity, and to open the absolute necessity of such an inward spirit and life of Christ, as carnal wisdom, and worldly policy have departed from; when this is done, by the weakest instruments in such simplicity and fulness, as may be justly deemed a miracle: do not clergy and laity get rid of it all, merely by the strength of the good old question, “_Have any of the rulers believed_ and taught these things? Hath the church in council or convocation? Hath _Calvin_, _Luther_, _Zuinglius_, or any of our renowned system-makers, ever taught or asserted these matters?” But hear what our blessed Lord saith, of the place and origin of truth: he refers us not to the current doctrines of the times: _My sheep_, says he, _hear my voice_. Here the whole matter is determined, both where truth is, and who they are that can have any knowledge of it. Heavenly truth is no where spoke but by the voice of Christ, nor heard but by a power of Christ in the hearer. As he is the only word of God, that speaks forth all the wisdom, and wonders of God; so he alone is the word, that speaks forth all the life, wisdom, and goodness, that can be in any creature; it can have none but what it has in him and from him: this is the one unchangeable boundary of truth, goodness, and every perfection of men on earth, or angels in heaven. Literary learning, from the beginning to the end of time, will have no more of heavenly wisdom, nor any less of worldly foolishness in it, at one time than at another; its nature is the same through all ages; what it was in the _Jew_, that same it is in the Christian. Its name, as well as nature, is unalterable, viz. foolishness with God. *I shall add no more, but the two or three following words. I. Receive every inward and outward trouble, every disappointment, pain, uneasiness, temptation, with both thy hands, as a blessed occasion of dying to thyself, and entering into a fuller fellowship with thy self-denying, suffering Saviour. II. Look at no inward or outward trouble, in any other view; reject every other thought about it; and then every kind of trial and distress will become the blessed day of thy prosperity.