Wherefore is it then that physicians have lain under the reproach of irreligion, who of all men best know how fearfully and wonderfully we are made, and who it might be thought would be rendered by the scenes at which they are continually called upon to assist, of all men the most religious? Sir Thomas Brown acknowledges that this was the general scandal of his profession, and his commentator Sir Kenelm Digby observes upon the passage, that “Physicians do commonly hear ill in this behalf,” and that “it is a common speech (but,” he parenthesizes, “only amongst the unlearned sort) _ubi tres medici duo athei_.” Rabelais defines a Physician to be _animal incombustible propter reliqionem_. “As some mathematicians,” says an old Preacher, “deal so much in Jacob's staff that they forget Jacob's ladder, so some Physicians (God decrease the number!) are so deep naturalists that they are very shallow Christians. With us, Grace waits at the heels of Nature, and they dive so deep into the secrets of philosophy that they never look up to the mysteries of Divinity.” Old Adam Littleton who looked at every thing in its best light, took a different view of the effect of medical studies, in his sermon upon St. Luke's day. “His character of Physician,” said he, “certainly gave him no mean advantage, not only in the exercise of his ministry by an acceptable address and easy admission which men of that profession every where find among persons of any civility; but even to his understanding of Christian truths and to the apprehending the mysteries of faith. “For having as that study directed him, gone orderly over all the links of that chain by which natural causes are mutually tied to one another, till he found God the supreme cause and first mover at the top; having traced the footsteps of Divine Goodness through all the most minute productions of his handmaid Nature, and yet finding human reason puzzled and at a loss in giving an account of his almighty power and infinite wisdom in the least and meanest of his works; with what pious humility must he needs entertain supernatural truths, when upon trial he had found every the plainest thing in common nature itself was mystery, and saw he had as much reason for his believing these proposals of faith, as he had for trusting the operations of sense, or the collections of reason itself.