42. What again of those who come with no
private idea, or form of words, better or worse, in regard to God, but
listen to all kinds of doctrines and teachers, with the intention of
selecting from all what is best and safest, in reliance upon no better
judges of the truth than themselves? They are, in consequence,
borne and turned about hither and thither by one plausible idea after
another, and, after being deluged and trodden down by all kinds of
doctrine, Eph. iv. 14. and having rung the
changes on a long succession of teachers and formulæ, which they
throw to the winds as readily as dust, their ears and minds at last are
wearied out, and, O what folly! they become equally disgusted with all
forms of doctrine, and assume the wretched character of deriding and
despising our faith as unstable and unsound; passing in their ignorance
from the teachers to the doctrine: as if anyone whose eyes were
diseased, or whose ears had been injured, were to complain of the sun
for being dim and not shining, or of sounds for being inharmonious and
feeble.