reputation at that time in the heathen world, as we find by
Diodorus, Justin, Longinus, and other authors; for the rest, the
wisest among them laid aside all notions after a deity as a
disquisition vain and fruitless, which indeed it was upon unrevealed
principles; and those who ventured to engage too far fell into
incoherence and confusion.

Fourthly, Those among them who had the justest conceptions of a
Divine power, and did also admit a providence, had no notion at all
of entirely relying and depending upon either; they trusted in
themselves for all things, but as for a trust or dependence upon
God, they would not have understood the phrase; it made no part of
the profane style.

Therefore it was that, in all issues and events which they could not
reconcile to their own sentiments of reason and justice, they were
quite disconcerted; they had no retreat, but upon every blow of
adverse fortune, either affected to be indifferent, or grew sullen
and severe, or else yielded and sunk like other men.


Having now produced certain points wherein the wisdom and virtue of
all unrevealed philosophy fell short and was very imperfect, I go
on, in the second place, to show, in several instances, where some
of the most renowned philosophers have been grossly defective in
their lessons of morality.

Thales, the founder of the Ionic sect, so celebrated for morality,
being asked how a man might bear ill-fortune with greatest ease,
answered, "By seeing his enemies in a worse condition." An answer