But now, what follows from this new risen light? Why _Aristotle_’s atheism, _Cicero_’s height of pride and depth of dissimulation, and every refined or gross species of _Greek_ and _Roman_ vices, are as glaring in this new enlightened Christian church, as ever they were in old pagan _Greece_, or _Rome_. Would you find a _gospel Christian_, in all this _mid-day glory_ of learning, you may light a candle, as the philosopher did in the mid-day sun, to find an honest man. How poorly was the gospel at first preached, if the wisdom of words, and if wit and imagination had been its genuine helps? But alas they stand in the same contrariety to one another, as self-denial and self-gratification. To know the truth of gospel-salvation, is to know that man’s natural _wisdom_ is to be equally sacrificed with his natural _folly_: for they are but one and the same thing, only called sometimes by one name, and sometimes by the other. His intellectual faculties are, by the _fall_, in a much worse state than his natural animal appetites, and want a much greater self-denial. And when our own _will_, our own _understanding_ and _imagination_ have their natural strength indulged, and are made rich and honourable with the treasures acquired from a study of the _Belles Lettres_, they will just as much help poor fallen men to be _like-minded_ with Christ, as the _art_ of _cookery_, well and daily studied, will help a professor of the gospel, to the spirit and practice of Christian abstinence. Who then can enough wonder at that bulk of libraries, which has taken place of the short gospel? Or at that number of champion disputants, who from age to age have been all in arms to support a set of opinions and practices, all which may be most cordially embraced without the least degree of self-denial, and most firmly held without _the least degree_ of humility. What a grossness of ignorance, both of man and his Saviour, to run to Greek and Roman schools, to learn how to put off _Adam_, and to put on Christ? To drink at the fountains of Pagan poets and orators, in order more divinely to drink of the cup that Christ drank of?――――What can come of all this, but that which is already too much come, a _Ciceronian_ gospeller, instead of a gospel _penitent_? This will be more or less the case with all the doctrines of Christ, whilst under classical acquisition, and administration. Those divine truths, which are no farther good and redeeming, but as they are spirit and life in us, will serve only to help _classic painters_ (as Dr. W.¹ calls them) to lavish out their colours on their own paper monuments of lifeless virtues.