s a
further revelation of his religious views, and his Christian spirit.
He pleads for freedom and for variety in religious life and thought.
God does not want one fixed and unvarying Christian form or doctrine;
He wants variety in the spiritual life as He has arranged for variety
in the external world of nature: "As in the world all men are not of an
equall height and stature of body, but some taller, some shorter; some
weaker, some stronger: so neither are all of one just and even
proportion in spiritual light and strength of faith in the kingdome of
Christ, some are dwarfs of Zacheus his pitch, some {259} againe of
Saul's port, taller by his head and shoulders than his brethren; so, in
the kingdome of Christ, some are babes, some are young men, some are
fathers, every one according to the measure of the gift of Christ."
God has something in His kingdom that fits each spiritual stature,
something suited to each intellectual capacity. He does not want one
and the same note struck by all--"harping blindly on one string." He
does not want men to be "tyed to one forme and kept forever to one
lesson, unable to top up their work"--He wants men to "go from strength
to strength, from faith to faith and from height to height."

Randall declares that he has observed with deep sorrow "the
_non-proficiency_ of many ingenuous spirits who through the policie of
others and the too too much modesty and timerity of themselves" have
failed to progress "to the top and pitch" of their possible
perfection--"poore soules after many years travelling being found in
the same place and going the same pace!" He hopes that this book on
Perfection which he is now giving "common vulgar people in their own
mother tongue," though it is a way that is "high and hard and almost
unheard of amongst us," may help men to grow up into their full stature
and to come to "the uttermost steps of Jacob's Ladder which reacheth
into the heavens." The lower stages of the religious life consist (1)
of external practices and exercises in conformity to the law of God,
and (2) interior contemplation and meditation of a God thought of as
outside and beyond the soul's real possession. But the true spiritual
life, and "Sabbath rest of the soul," is reached only when God becomes
the inner Life of our lives, when Christ is formed within and we see
Light and have our wisdom through His divine anointing. At the highest
stage of spiritual life man finds himself by ceasin