You come to me with a great opinion of my wisdom, and you expect that I should inform and instruct you in all things, yea, even in the greatest mysteries: but you are much mistaken in me; I am as ignorant and foolish as other men generally are, yea, more than many others; which he utters either,
1. From a deep sense of the common corruption of human nature, and of the blindness of men's minds in things concerning God and their own duty, and of the necessity of instruction from God's word, and of illumination from his Spirit, without which they can never understand these matters. Or,
2. From a modest and humble apprehension of his own ignorance, which hath extorted such-like expressions even from heathen philosophers; whence Pythagoras rejected the title of a wise man when it was ascribed to him; and Socrates, though reputed the wisest man of his age, professed that he knew nothing but this, that he knew nothing.