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[ 1389] The necessity of using humane Learning in Divinity.
IT was the saying of Menander, that lived 300 years before S. Paul, Evil words corrupt good manners;* 1.1 of Aratus, We are the workmanship of God; and of Epi∣menides,* 1.2 The Cretians are alwayes lyers, evill beasts, slow bellies. All three of them, Men famous in their generations,* 1.3 though such as knew not God, nor had any glimpse of the Gospel of Iesus Christ,* 1.4 yet the great Doctor of the Gentiles scorns not their sayings, but brings them into the Garden of God, and there makes as so many flowers of them:* 1.5 Nay, Christ himself owns Socrates and Plato, the one for that golden rule, Quod tibi non vis fieri, &c. Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you,* 1.6 do ye even so to them. And the other for that excellent caution,* 1.7 Medice cura teipsum, Physitian heal thy self. Vain then must needs be the opinion of such, that think there is nothing to be uttered in Sermons or other divine discourses but Scripture. Alas! they understand not what perfection God requires to be in him that is truly called,* 1.8 A Man of God, one fitted to every good work, that can speak to a Poet after the manner of a Poet; and to a Philosopher in the language of a Philosopher, which unlesse he can do, and so accommodate himself to the party with whom he deals, it is im∣possible he should be a fit and compleat Man in the service of God, the neglect whereof hath been a great inlet to Idlenesse, negligence and ignorance in the study of Divinity.