Reformed Covenanter
Cancelled Commissioner
... That the difficulty of Scripture doth so much require study, that none, but by serious study, can perceive its difficulty:- as the philosopher could not so much as imagine, how hard it was to define God, till he set seriously to study upon the matter; and then he found it. The farther you go in Ezekiel’s waters, the deeper you go; and the more you study the Scriptures seriously, the more cause you will still find to study them seriously. And it is not the least cause of their error, that hold the explaining of Scripture is so very easy, that they have not attained to so much skill in the study of the Scriptures as to see their hardness. And I doubt not, but I could show them scores, nay, hundreds, of very hard and obscure places, which they had never eyes to see: and I doubt as little, that they would find as little eyesight to resolve them, if they saw them.
II. The Holy Ghost bath purposely penned the Scriptures so as to challenge all serious study of them. Else, what think you is the meaning of that, “He that readeth, let him understand?” Peter tells us, that there are divers things in Paul’s Epistles hard to be understood; and why did the Holy Ghost dictate them so hard by Paul? and why did not Peter explain them, who had the same Spirit? As to that passage of Peter, you may very well remember the parable of the wounded man betwixt Jerusalem and Jericho. The priest and Levite pass by, look on him, but afford him no help. And why does Peter so by those hard places, and afford them no explication? Because the Holy Ghost hath penned Scripture so as to challenge all serious study. He could have penned all so plain, that he that runneth, might have read them; but he hath penned them in such a style, that he that will read them, must not run and read, but sit down and study. ...
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II. The Holy Ghost bath purposely penned the Scriptures so as to challenge all serious study of them. Else, what think you is the meaning of that, “He that readeth, let him understand?” Peter tells us, that there are divers things in Paul’s Epistles hard to be understood; and why did the Holy Ghost dictate them so hard by Paul? and why did not Peter explain them, who had the same Spirit? As to that passage of Peter, you may very well remember the parable of the wounded man betwixt Jerusalem and Jericho. The priest and Levite pass by, look on him, but afford him no help. And why does Peter so by those hard places, and afford them no explication? Because the Holy Ghost hath penned Scripture so as to challenge all serious study. He could have penned all so plain, that he that runneth, might have read them; but he hath penned them in such a style, that he that will read them, must not run and read, but sit down and study. ...
For more, see:
John Lightfoot on the difficulty of scriptural study
The style and difficulty of Scripture requires all sober and serious study of it. – The thing that I assert, will, on the one hand, please the Romanist, if he may limit it to his sense; but, …
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