canvass its doctrines with all the subtilty and knowledge they were
masters of, and in the end freely acknowledge that to be the true
wisdom only "which cometh from above."

However, to make a further inquiry into the truth of this
observation, I doubt not but there is reason to think that a great
many of those encomiums given to ancient philosophers are taken upon
trust, and by a sort of men who are not very likely to be at the
pains of an inquiry that would employ so much time and thinking.
For the usual ends why men affect this kind of discourse appear
generally to be either out of ostentation, that they may pass upon
the world for persons of great knowledge and observation, or, what
is worse, there are some who highly exalt the wisdom of those
Gentile sages, thereby obliquely to glance at and traduce Divine
revelation, and more especially that of the Gospel; for the
consequence they would have us draw is this: that since those
ancient philosophers rose to a greater pitch of wisdom and virtue
than was ever known among Christians, and all this purely upon the
strength of their own reason and liberty of thinking; therefore it
must follow that either all revelation is false, or, what is worse,
that it has depraved the nature of man, and left him worse than it
found him.

But this high opinion of heathen wisdom is not very ancient in the
world, nor at all countenanced from primitive times. Our Saviour
had but a low esteem of it, as appears by His treatment of the
Pharisees and Sadducees, who followed the doctrines of Plato and
Epicurus. St. Paul likewise, who was well versed in all the Grecian
literature, seems very much to despise their philosophy, as we find
in his writings, cautioning the Colossians to "beware lest any man