XI. And the truth is, he came to level their honour, to overthrow their Rabbiship, and by his grace to bring the people to that inward knowledge of God, which they, by transgression, were departed from; that so they might see the deceitfulness of their blind guides, who by their vain traditions had made void the righteousness of the law: and who were so far from being the true doctors and lively expounders of it, that in reality they were the children of the devil, who was a proud liar and cruel murderer from the beginning. XII. Their pride in false knowledge having made them incapable of receiving the simplicity of the gospel, Christ thanks his Father, that he had hid the mysteries of it from the wise and prudent, and revealed them to babes. (Matt. xi. 25.) It was this false wisdom swelled the minds of the Athenians to that degree, that they despised the preaching of the apostle Paul as a vain and foolish thing. But that apostle who, of all the rest, had an education in the learning of those times, bitterly reflects on that wisdom, so much valued by Jews and Greeks; "Where," says he, "is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this world? Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?" (1 Cor. i. 20.) And he gives a good reason for it, "That no flesh should glory in his presence." (Verse 29.) Which is to say, God will stain the pride of man in false knowledge, that he should have nothing on this occasion to be proud of: it should be owing only to the revelation of the Spirit of God. The apostle goes further, and affirms, "That the world by wisdom knew not God:" (verse 21:) that is, it was so far from a help, that as men use it, it was a hindrance to the true knowledge of God. And in his first epistle to his beloved Timothy, he concludes thus: "O Timothy! keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science, falsely so called." (Tim. vi. 20.) This was the sense of apostolical times, when the divine grace gave the true knowledge of God, and was the guide of Christians.