SHINE IN OUR WORKS. 479 die ;" Prov. xv. 5 -10. As ready, humble, penitent confession of sin doth tend to our pardon fromGod, so doth it tend to our ac- ceptation with. man. Wheit God and man willcondemn the Phar- isee, that justifies himself till confession be extorted from him. XIII. It is another very honorable fruit of humility to have a learning disposition, and not to be magisterial ; and to be swift to hear, and slow to speak. All Çhrist's disciples must be as little children, (Matt. xviii. 3, 4.) especially in a learning, teachable disposition, a child doth not use to set his wit against his master's, or any other that will teach him, nor to rise up against instruction, as a disputer that must have the better, and be accounted the wi- sest, but his daily business :is submissively to learn. A genuine Christian is indeed communicative, and willing that others should partake with him in the wisdom and happiness which God hath re- vealed to him. But he is ready first to learn himself, and know - eth that he must receive before he can communicate: and there is none,so far below him but he is willing to hear and learn of; but especially among his equals he is readier to hear and learn than to teach,. because he is still conscious ofhis ignorance, and honoreth the'gifts of God in others, vihich the proud despise; Jam. iii. 1. and. i. 19. But the scandalous Christian is so wise in ltis own eyes, that he is ever of a teaching humor, and thoseplease him best that will sit and hear, and reverence him as an oracle, and magnifyevery word that drops from his lips. He is so full of himself, that he bath scarce the patience to observe well what another speaks orwriteth ; and so valueth' his own conceptions, that he thinks they should be valued by the hearers: and so scandalous is the teaching humor of some learned men, that they have not the common good man- ners or civility to suffer another to speak to the end, but theymust needs interrupt him, that they may speak, as being more worthy. They take other men's speeches to be so tedious, that their pa- tience cannot holdout the length of.them. I mean not that a wise man is bound to lose his time in hearing every self-conceited per- son talk ; but when men are engaged in conference, or disputes, for a man to have such list to speak, that he cannot stay till an- other (though long) come to the end, is a scandalous incivility; yea, some can scarce stay till two or. -three sentences be uttered, but their haste niust tell you that theyy take themselves to be much the wiser, and to be fitter to teach than to hear and learn. And they are so overladen with their own conceited wisdom, that they cancarry it no longer without some vent; and so full of their own, that they have no room to receive any more from others ; and be- ing all masters, they receive from God and man the greater con- demnation ; James iii. 1. Prov. xii. 17. and i. 5. and xviii. 13.
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