A Short Word to Church Ministers for Youth
14.
A Short Word to Church Ministers for Youth What are men's duties to each other as elder and younger.
SECT. 1. It is most clear in Scripture and reason that there are many special duties, which the elder and younger, as such, owe to each other. The elder are bound, 1. To be wiser than the younger, as having longer time, and so to be their instructors in their several places.
2. And especially, to deliver down to them the sacred Scripture which they received, and the memorials of God's works done for his church in their days, and which they received from their fathers.
3. And to go before them in the example of a holy and heavenly life; Job xxxii. 4; viii. 8; Heb. v. 14; Tit. ii. 2, 3; 1 John ii. 13, 14; Judges vi. 13; Psal. xliv. 1; lxxviii. 3, 5; Deut. i. 21; Exod. xii. 26; Deut. xi.
19; Josh. iv. 6, 21, 22; Joel i. 3.
Sect. 2. And nature and Scripture tells us, that the younger owe much duty to the elder, summed up, "Ye younger, submit yourselves to the elder," 1 Peter v. 5. This submission includes especially, a reverence to their judgments, preferring them before their own, and supposing that ordinarily they are wiser than the younger, and therefore living towards their elders in a humble, learning
disposition, and not proudly setting their unfurnished wits against their greater experience without very evident reason. For the understanding of which, note, Sect. 3. 1. That it is certain that mere age doth not make men wise or good: none are more sottishly and uncurably ignorant, than the aged ignorants; and few so bad, as the old, obstinate sinners. For they grow worse, deceiving and being deceived, and more and more abuse God's mercy, and are still going further from him, as the faithful are growing better and nearer to him.
2. And it is certain that God greatly blesses some young men's understandings, and maketh them wiser than the aged and their teachers.
3. And such a one is not bound to think, that he knows not what he knows; nor to believe, that every old man is wiser than he; all this we grant.
Sect. 4. But though "Better is a poor and wise child than an old and foolish king who will no more be admonished," (Eccles. iv. 13,) yet,
1. It is certain that knowledge cometh much by experience; and long experience and use is far more powerful than the short; and time and converse are necessary to it. Naturally or ordinarily, long learning and use increase knowledge. Do not all take it for granted, that, usually, the boys who have been many years at school, are better
scholars than beginners? And so in all other acquisitions. Therefore it was the elders that were commonly the rulers of the people in church and commonwealth; and the pastors and rulers are thence called elders: and if they were not ordinarily the wisest, why did not God make the children the ordinary teachers and rulers of their parents, but the parents of the children? Old men may be ignorant and erroneous, as well as wicked; but young men cannot be ripe in wisdom without a miracle. We are not, therefore, now to suppose unusual things to be usual. Ordinarily, youth is ignorant and raw; their conceptions undigested, not well fixed or improved: it is but few things that they know; and their ignorance of the rest maketh them liable to many errors. "For the time, ye ought to have been teachers," Heb. v. 12; fitness to teach supposes time; the young cannot digest strong meats. A novice must not be a bishop; the reason may seem strange, "Lest he be lift up with pride, and fall into the condemnation of the devil," 1 Tim. iii. 6. One would think youth should be most humble, as conscious of defectiveness. But because the ignorant know not that more is to be known than ever they attained, therefore they know not their own ignorance.
2. And this proud ignorance is so odious a sin, and the nurse of so many more, and so great an enemy to wisdom and all good, that it is no wonder that it is the way to "the condemnation of the devil."
Sect. 5. Therefore though young men should not receive any falsehood, heresy, or ill example from the aged, yet they should still
remember, that, caeteris paribus, age hath the great advantage for knowledge, and youth must needs live in a humble, teachable sense of ignorance; other men's abuse of time, and aged folly, will not prove them miraculously wise. The aged are always the wisest, if they equally improve time and helps.
Sect. 6. It is so odious a sin for lads and young students to be selfconceited and unteachable, and set up their apprehensions with ungrounded confidence against their elders, that all should be very fearful of that guilt, and have such humble thoughts of their own understandings, as to be jealous of their conceptions. For all these vices make up their self-conceited prejudence:
1. It is both a great IGNORANCE of the darkness of men's understanding, and great ignorance of themselves, to be ignorant that they are ignorant, and to think they are sure of that which they know not 2. It is an odious sort of PRIDE, to overvalue an ignorant understanding, and to be proudly confident of that which they have not.
3. It is FOLLY, to think that truth can be known, without sufficient time and trial, and contrary to the world's continual experience.
4. It is as absurd and inhuman a SUBVERTING OF THE ORDER OF THE WORLD, for lads to set up their wits by groundless self-
conceitedness against their elders, as for subjects to set their wills against rulers.
5. It is a continual unrighteousness; there is a justice required in our common private judging, as well as in judges' public judgment. And all should be heard and tried before we peremptorily judge.
6. It is a nest of continual ERROR in the mind, which is the soul's deformity, and contrary to nature's love of truth.
Sect. 7. And it hath abundance of mischievous effects.
1. lt keeps out that truth or knowledge which should be received. It obstinately resists necessary teaching, whereas the willingest entertainment is little enough to get true knowledge, even by slow degrees. As God giveth birds an instinct to feed their young, so the young ones by instinct hunger, and open their mouths. But if they abhorred their meat, and must be crammed, they would commonly perish; that knowledge that such get, must be from themselves, in their own thinking and observation only; where their minds are yet unfurnished with those truths that must let in more, and daily objects will occasion error or confusion in the minds that are unprepared to improve them; and their own lusts will pervert them, and one error draw in more; whereas the help of those that by long and successful study have rightly ordered and digested their conceptions, might be an exceeding help to willing learners.
2. And such by pride do forfeit the grace of God which he giveth to the humble, "and resists the proud;" and are oft given up to the selfconceitedness which they so defend, till their own counsels and ways be their confusion.
3. And the devil hath advantage to set in and even possess such proud, prepared, ignorant minds, and become their teacher, and lead them almost to what he will, against truth, and the church, and themselves, and God.
4. And self-conceit and hasty confidence maketh them continual liars; even while they rage for what they say as true: for being usually mistaken for want of patient trial, they say what they think, and are not to be much believed in their preference.
Sect. 8. But seeing many old men are ignorant and erroneous, and some young men have sounder understandings, how shall I know when I am guilty of pride, self-conceit, and prefidence, and refusing others' judgment? Answ. 1. When you rashly neglect their judgment and counsel, who have had as good helps and parts as you, and far longer time and experience, without so much as hearing what they have to say, and taking time to try the cause according to its weight, especially if they be such as nature, or relation obliged you to learn of. 2. When you easilier suspect such than your own understandings.
3. When your confidence of your understandings is so unproportionable to your time and studies, that you must suppose
you know by a miracle or some rare capacity and wit; as if you had got more in a few years than the rest of mankind doth in many. 4.
When you judge suddenly before you take time to think and may know that you never heard what may be said against you.
5. When you talk most in a bold asserting or a teaching way, as if you were oracles to be heard and reverenced; and not in a humble, inquiring way, with that necessary doubting which beseems learners.
"Except ye become as little children" in teachable humility, you are not fit for the school of Christ, Matt. xviii. 3. Even he that is a teacher, must be a learner still, as conscious of his remaining ignorance, and not think himself above it, nor set himself to dispute against all that he understands not, but continue humbly to search and try. 6. When those reasons of your own seem good and cogent, which are sufficiently confuted, and you cannot see it, or which men of the most approved learning and fitness to judge, do judge to be but folly; and when other men's soundest reasons seem light to you, because you judge by a proud and selfish understanding, confident and tenacious of all that is your own, and contemning that which is against you.
7. When you can too easily without certain cogent reason dissent from the judgment, not only of those whose light and integrity hath by self-manifestation convinced the world, but also from the generality of such as are commonly known to be the wise, godly, and impartial; yea, perhaps from all the church of Christ.
8. When the most and wisest men that know you, think you not so wise as you think yourselves, nor your reason so good, but pity your self-conceitedness, and yet this brings you not to suspect and try.
9. When you are hardly and rarely brought to a humble confession of your errors, but in all debates you seem still, whatever the cause be, to be in the right, and when you have once said it, you will stand to it, and justify untruths, or extenuate and excuse them.
10. When you too much affect the esteem of wisdom, and love to have your judgments a rule to others, and are unfit for true subjection.
In a word, when instead of being "swift to hear, slow to speak, and slow to wrath," you are swift to speak and dictate, slow to hear and learn, and swift to wrathful censure of dissenters.
Sect. 9. So common and hurtful is this sin in mankind, that you should still be duly fearful of it. Error, I fear, taketh up the greater half of the thoughts of men, and most are rather deceived than in the right; and man's mind in flesh is in great darkness and therefore
PROUD IGNORANCE is a monstrous and pernicious vice; and most of the confusion and miseries of the world, of kingdoms, churches, and all societies, come from it. Yea, though it seems quite contrary to skepticism, it tends at last to infidelity or atheism. For when experience hath convinced such, that their most confident rage
was but a mistake, they turn to think that there is nothing certain and deny the greatest truths. It is by this one sin of proud selfconceitedness in false thoughts that kingdoms, churches, and the world, by obstinacy, seem remediless, and the wisest men that would cure them can do no good, but on themselves and few.
Sect. 10. But it is nowhere more unnatural than in children against their parents' counsel, and scholars against their tutors, and ignorant persons against the common consent of the most able, godly pastors.
What an odious thing is it to see an ignorant lad run against all his father's words and think that he is wiser and always in the right; and to hear ignorant persons magisterially judge and despise their wise and faithful teachers, before they are capable to understand them, or the matter of which they talk of! Oh! how happily might parents, and pastors, and wise men, promote knowledge and goodness in the world, were it not for this selfish prefidence, which shuts the door against their necessary helps.