by ridiculing a faith and hope, that look _wholly_ to his continual, immediate operations, for all that can be holy and good in us? This is the end of all scripture; for all that is there said, however learnedly read, or studied by _Hebrew_ or _Greek_ skill, fails of its end, till it brings us to feel all that the scriptures speak of God and man, verified in our own souls. For all is within man, that can be either good or evil to him: God _within him_, is his divine life; Satan _within him_ is his life of _earthly wisdom_, of diabolical falseness, wrath, pride, and vanity of every kind. There is no middle-way, he that is not under the power of the one, is under the power of the other; so far therefore as man loses this life of God, so far he falls under the power of _Satan_ and _worldly wisdom_. When St. _Peter_, full of an _human_ love to Christ, advised him to avoid his sufferings, Christ rejected him with _Get thee behind me, Satan_; and only gave this reason for it, thou _savourest not the things that be of God, but the things that be of men_. A plain proof that whatever is not from the Holy Spirit of God, however plausible it may seem to men, is yet in itself, nothing else but the power of Satan in us. *Christians, seeking any thing else, but to be inspired by the _Spirit_ of God, will bring forth a _Christendom_, that in the sight of God will have no other name, than a spiritual _Babylon_, a spiritual _Egypt_, a scarlet _whore_, a devouring _beast_, and _red dragon_. For all these names belong to all men, however learned, and to all churches, whether greater or less, in which the spirit of this world hath any share of power. This was the fall of the _whole church_, soon after the apostolic ages; and all _human reformations_, begun by ecclesiastical _learning_, and supported by civil power, will signify little or nothing, till all churches dying to their own will, wisdom, and own advancement, seek for no reforming power, but from that Spirit of God, which converted Sinners, Publicans, Harlots, Jews and Heathens, into an holy, apostolical church, a church, which knew they were of God, that they belonged to God, by that spirit which he had given them, and which worked in them.