Contentedly ignorant – Thomas Brooks
Curiosity is one of the most dangerous engines, which the devil uses to undo souls with. When Satan observes that men do in good earnest set themselves to the obtaining of knowledge, then he strives to turn them to vain inquiries and curious speculations; so that he may keep them busied about unprofitable curiosities.
The way to make us mere fools, is to attempt to know more than God would have us to know. Adam’s tree of knowledge made him and his posterity fools, Gen. 3:5-6. Curiosity was the bait whereby the devil caught our first parents and undid us all! Adam had a mind to know as much of God as God Himself; and by this means he came to know nothing. Curiosity is that sickness of the soul, whereby it longs for novelties, and loathes sound and wholesome truths; it is the epidemic distemper of this age. (Basil says that multitudes of questions may be made about ‘a fly’ which no philosopher is ever able to answer; how much more about heaven, hell, or the work of grace!)
Ah! how many are there who spend their precious time in inscrutable and curious questions! Ah, what did
Christ dispute of, among the doctors?
Where did Paradise stand?
In what part of the world is local hell?
What fruit was it that Adam ate, and ruined us all?
What became of Moses‘ body?
How many orders and degrees of elect angels are there? etc.
Oh, that we could learn to be contentedly ignorant, where God would not have us knowing! Let us not account it any disparagement to acknowledge some depths in God’s counsels, purposes, decrees, and judgments which our shallow reason cannot fathom, Romans 11:33.
It is sad when men will be wise above what is written, and love to pry into God’s secrets, and scan the mysteries of religion by carnal reason. God often plagues such pride and curiosity by leaving that sort of men to strange and fearful falls.
When a curious inquisitor asked Austin what God did before He created the world, Austin told him that “God was making hell for such busy questionists, for such curious inquirers into God’s secrets!” Such sharp replies are the best answers to men of curious minds.
Though I ought piously to reverence the wonderful wisdom of God, and to wonder at his unsearchable judgments yet I ought not curiously and profanely to search beyond the compass of that which God has revealed to us in His word.