Walter Marshall (The Gospel Mystery of Sanctification, pp. 242-243):
[L]et me caution you, lest, instead of gaining Christ by your knowledge, you rather lose him, by putting your knowledge in the place of Christ, and trusting on it for your salvation. One cause of the Jews perishing was, that “they rested in a form of knowledge, and of the truth in the law,” Rom. 2:20. And doubtless, all that many Christians will by their knowledge in the end, will only be, to be beaten with, more stripes; because they place their religion and salvation chiefly in the knowledge of their Lord’s will, and in their ability to talk and dispute of it, “without preparing themselves to do according thereunto,” Luke 12:47. Much less are you to place your religion and hope of salvation, in a daily task of reading chapters, or repeating sermons, without understanding more than the papists do their latin mass lessons, and canonical hours; as sad experience sheweth, that many seemingly devout and frequent hearers of the word, do notwithstanding remain in lamentable and wonderful ignorance of the saving truth. And in them is fulfiled the prophecy of Esaias, “that in hearing they shall hear, and not understand; and, in seeing, they shall see, and not perceive,” Mat. 13:14, 15.
