“This wisdom descendeth not from above, but is earthly, sensual,
devilish.
“For where envying and strife is, there is confusion and every evil work.
“But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle,
and easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without
partiality and without hypocrisy.”
“The wisdom from above is first pure.” This purity of the mind and
spirit is peculiar to the Gospel. Our Saviour says, “Blessed are the
pure in heart, for they shall see God.” A mind free from all pollution
of lusts shall have a daily vision of God, whereof unrevealed religion
can form no notion. This is it that keeps us unspotted from the world,
and hereby many have been prevailed upon to live in the practice of all
purity, holiness, and righteousness, far beyond the examples of the most
celebrated philosophers.
It is “peaceable, gentle, and easy to be entreated.” The Christian
doctrine teacheth us all those dispositions that make us affable and
courteous, gentle and kind, without any morose leaven of pride or vanity,
which entered into the composition of most heathen schemes: so we are
taught to be meek and lowly. Our Saviour’s last legacy was peace, and He
commands us to forgive our offending brother unto seventy times seven.
Christian wisdom is full of mercy and good works, teaching the height of
all moral virtues, of which the heathens fell infinitely short. Plato
indeed (and it is worth observing) has somewhere a dialogue, or part of
one, about forgiving our enemies, which was perhaps the highest strain
ever reached by man without Divine assistance; yet how little is that to
what our Saviour commands us, “To love them that hate us, to bless them
that curse us, and to do good to them that despitefully use us.”
Christian wisdom is “without partiality;” it is not calculated for this
or that nation of people, but the whole race of mankind. Not so the
philosophical schemes, which were narrow and confined, adapted to their
peculiar towns, governments, or sects; but “in every nation, he that
feareth God and worketh righteousness is accepted with Him.”
Lastly, It is “without hypocrisy;” it appears to be what it really is; it
is all of a piece. By the doctrines of the Gospel we are so far from
being allowed to publish to the world those virtues we have not, that we
are commanded to hide even from ourselves those we really have, and not
to let our right hand know what our left hand does, unlike several
branches of the heathen wisdom, which pretended to teach insensibility
and indifference, magnanimity and contempt of life, while at the same
time, in other parts, it belied its own doctrines.
I come now, in the last place, to show that the great examples of wisdom
and virtue among the Grecian sages were produced by personal merit; and
not influenced by the doctrine of any particular sect, whereas in
Christianity it is quite the contrary.
The two virtues most celebrated by ancient moralists were fortitude and
temperance, as relating to the government of man in his private capacity,
to which their schemes were generally addressed and confined, and the two
instances wherein those virtues arrived at the greatest height were
Socrates and Cato. But neither these, nor any other virtues possessed by
these two, were at all owing to any lessons or doctrines of a sect. For
Socrates himself was of none at all; and although Cato was called a
Stoic, it was more from a resemblance of manners in his worst qualities,
than that he avowed himself one of their disciples. The same may be
affirmed of many other great men of antiquity. Whence I infer that those
who were renowned for virtue among them were more obliged to the good
natural dispositions of their own minds than to the doctrines of any sect
they pretended to follow.
On the other side, as the examples of fortitude and patience among the
primitive Christians have been infinitely greater, and more numerous, so
they were altogether the product of their principles and doctrine, and
were such as the same persons, without those aids, would never have
arrived to. Of this truth most of the Apostles, with many thousand
martyrs, are a cloud of witnesses beyond exception. Having, therefore,
spoken so largely upon the former heads, I shall dwell no longer upon
this.
And if it should here be objected, Why does not Christianity still
produce the same effects? it is easy to answer, first, that, although the
number of pretended Christians be great, yet that of true believers, in
proportion to the other, was never so small; and it is a true lively
faith alone that, by the assistance of God’s grace, can influence our
practice.
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 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 entreated, 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.