Secondly, we may answer, That Christianity itself has very much suffered by being blended up with Gentile philosophy.  The Platonic system, first taken into religion, was thought to have given matter for some early heresies in the Church.  When disputes began to arise, the Peripatetic forms were introduced by Scotus, as best fitted for controversy.  And, however this may now have become necessary, it was surely the author of a litigious vein, which has since occasioned very pernicious consequences, stopped the progress of Christianity, and been a great promoter of vice, verifying that sentence given by St James, and mentioned before, “Where envying and strife is, there is confusion, and every evil work.”  This was the fatal stop to the Grecians, in their progress both of arts and arms:  Their wise men were divided under several sects, and their governments under several commonwealths, all in opposition to each other; which engaged them in eternal quarrels among themselves, while they should have been armed against the common enemy.  And I wish we had no other examples from the like causes, less foreign or ancient than that.  Diogenes said Socrates was a madman; the disciples of Zeno and Epicurus, nay of Plato and Aristotle, were engaged in fierce disputes about the most insignificant trifles.  And, if this be the present language and practice among us Christians, no wonder that Christianity does not still produce the same effects which it did at first, when it was received and embraced in its utmost purity and perfection.  For such a wisdom as this cannot “descend from above,” but must be “earthly, sensual, devilish; full of confusion and every evil work”:  Whereas “the wisdom from above, is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be intreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy.”  This is the true heavenly wisdom, which Christianity only can boast of, and which the greatest of the heathen wise men could never arrive at.

Now to God the Father, &c. &c.

DOING GOOD: 

A SERMON, ON THE OCCASION OF WOOD’S PROJECT.[1]

[Footnote 1:  “I did very lately, as I thought it my duty, preach to the people under my inspection, upon the subject of Mr. Wood’s coin; and although I never heard that my sermon gave the least offence, as I am sure none was intended; yet, if it were now printed and published, I cannot say, I would insure it from the hands of the common hangman; or my own person from those of a messenger.”  See “The Drapier’s Letters,” No.  VI.

“‘I never’ (said the Dean in a jocular conversation), ’preached but twice in my life; and then they were not sermons, but pamphlets.’  Being asked on what subject, he replied, ’They were against Wood’s halfpence.’”—­Pilkington’s Memoirs, vol. i. p. 56.