_Academics_, _Stoics_, _Peripatetics_, _&c._ were termed by the names of so many several heresies. All men, you know, are subject to error, and the ways of error very different; and therefore it is no wonder if these wise and diligent searchers of the truth did, notwithstanding their excellent parts, differ in many points amongst themselves. But this laudable custom of great wealthy persons to have their children at any price to learn philosophy, suggested to many idle and needy fellows an easy and compendious way of maintenance; which was to teach the philosophy, some of Plato, some of Aristotle, &c: whose books to that end they read over, but without capacity or much endeavour to examine the reasons of their doctrines, taking only the conclusions, as they lay. And setting up with this, they soon professed themselves philosophers, and got to be the school-masters to the youth of Greece. But by competition for such employment, they hated and reviled one another with all the bitter terms they could invent; and very often, when upon occasion they were in civil company, fell first to disputation, and then to blows, to the great trouble of the company and their own shame. Yet amongst all their reproachful words, the name of _heretic_ came never in, because they were all equally heretics, their doctrine not being theirs, but taken upon trust from the aforesaid authors. So that though we find heresy often mentioned in Lucian and other heathen authors, yet we shall not find in any of them _hæreticus_ for a heretic. And this disorder among the philosophers continued a long time in Greece, and infecting also the Romans, was at the greatest in the times of the apostles and in the primitive Church, till the time of the Nicene Council, and somewhat after. But at last the authority of the Stoics and Epicureans was not much esteemed, only Plato’s and Aristotle’s philosophy were much in credit; Plato’s with the better sort, that founded their doctrine upon the conceptions and ideas of things, and Aristotle’s with those that reasoned only from the names of things, according to the scale of the _categories_. Nevertheless, there were always, though not new sects of philosophy, yet new opinions continually arising. _L._ But how came the word heretic to be a reproach?