and artificial; it investigated and stated the duties and offices of man, political, domestic, and personal; it contemplated him in the several relations and employments of life, and prescribed the conduct respectively proper in each. And this surely is true

wisdom; this is the end of all learning. Philosophy, the result of sagacity, reading, and experience, lays down rules and maxims; history furnishes examples; and the system of nature, with the inventions and improvements of art, supplies images and illustrations.

A distinction has been made between divine and human learning, and much has been written upon it. The former has by some been magnified to the contempt and exclusion of the latter, as if that ought not to be brought into the sanctuary; as if any great quantity of it were not only useless but prejudicial; as if science were the death of goodness, and ignorance indeed the mother of devotion. On the other hand, there are who pretty plainly intimate, that they think the name of learning due only to that which we style human; religion, in their opinion, being calculated to engage the attention of none but those whose abilities qualify them not for scholars. In the first of these representations there is a want of judgement; in the second, of piety. The two species of learning differ; but they differ as the MEANS do from the END. Were there no divine learning, human learning would lose great part of its value limited to the present life, it must terminate on the confines of the grave. And had we no human learning, we should not be able to attain to that which is divine. The days of inspiration have

been long since at an end. God has ceased to communicate immediately the treasures of wisdom and knowledge to any man. Modern pretensions to such communications betray some fault either in the hearts or heads of those who make them. These treasures must be sought for, with the blessing of God upon our endeavours, in the ordinary way. All the divine learning upon earth is contained in the books of the Old and New Testament, which are written in Hebrew and Greek. Those languages, therefore, with the Latin, must be studied; and the study of them falls within the department of human learning.

Enough, perhaps it will be urged, may be gathered from translations, for all the purposes required. But to whom are we indebted for translations, unless to those who by good and sufficient learning became qualified for the work? And as they, however worthy and able, were yet very far from infallible, it will frequently happen, in points of difficulty, that we can neither sufficiently establish our own faith, nor confute the arguments of the adversary, without recurring to the originals. The adversary, to serve his turn, will recur to them; and what will become of us, if we are not able to follow him?

The history of the people of God cannot be understood, without taking with us that of pagan states, particularly of the Assyrian, Persian, Grecian, and Roman empires. An exact acquaintance with what has been passing in the world since the extinction of the last, cannot be dispensed with in a commentator on the prophecies, particularly those in the Revelation. To adjust the situation of places and the

succession of times, we must call to our assistance the sciences of geography, chronology, and astronomy. Nor can the proportions of the temple and its furniture, described in the books of Kings and Chronicles, and afterwards referred to by Ezekiel and St. John, be well comprehended and ascertained, without something of mathematics and mechanics. Thus necessary is a knowledge of languages and sciences to interpret the letter of Scripture, the source of doctrines and precepts, the foundation of all improvements, moral and spiritual; and they must ever be the best interpreters who have the largest share of it. The advantages of a superior skill in the Greek language, as exercised on passages in the New Testament and the early ecclesiastical writers, has been eminently displayed in a controversy now subsisting, the subject of which is of the highest importance.

Less, indeed, of human learning was needed by the clergy when the world around them had none, as was the case in the dark ages preceding the reformation. To the clergy, however, of those very ages are unbelievers indebted for the preservation of that learning which, since the reformation, they have employed in vain against Christianity. From the clergy in modern times have proceeded nine in ten of the books written to facilitate the progress of literature, and disseminate every species of it through the world. Enemies to false philosophy, they have ever proved themselves the

a See the late Dr. Jortin's admirable Charge, upon the subject, at the end of his Sermons.

Yet a

friends and promoters of that which is true. certain author having very innocently mentioned "a "philosophical divine," as a character that might be supposed to exist, without any contradiction implied, the historian of the Roman empire is pleased to represent such a supposed being as a STRANGECENTAUR, a composition absurd and monstrous, half man and half brute. According to his own ideas, however, the representation may be just enough; for a philosopher, as we have too much reason to apprehend, in his acceptation of the word, is an unbeliever; a divine is (and, let us hope, will always continue to be) a believer. Wisdom, it seems, was born with the infidel, and will die with him. We will take the liberty, notwithstanding, to say-because it is true-that whatever learning may at any time have been brought to the attack, there has never hitherto been found a deficiency of it for the defence of religion; neither will there be found any such deficiency, we trust, in time to come, while our schools and universities, (chiefly under the management and direction of clergymen) shall continue to exist and flourish. From considering the nature of that wisdom we are in the text exhorted to acquire, this leads us to bestow some reflections,

Secondly, on the best method of acquiring it.

Learning is that which may be learned. As wisdom is not communicated by inspiration, so neither is it born with us. We come into the world without principles of any kind, because without ideas of any kind. This opinion was long controverted, as being

Vol. ii. p. 369.

thought to militate against religion. But the apprehension appears to have been groundless. The doctrine is established, and religion has received no detriment.

It is still, nevertheless, imagined that a man may make wonderful discoveries by the exercise of his own powers. But the first step in the process has been sometimes unaccountably overlooked. It has been forgotten, that those powers must be elicited and formed by cultivation; that every man must be taught by some one how to use them, or that he will discover nothing. A truth, when it has been proposed and explained to us, appears clear and evident; all the truths contained in the propositions of Euclid appear so: but surely it follows not that, without information, we should have discovered them, or have once thought concerning them. This is a fallacy, by which mankind of late have been greatly misled. No instance can be produced, from Adam to the present hour, of a single human being, brought up apart from all instructors, who ever spoke or reasoned. The state indeed is unnatural, and one into which man cannot fall but by accident. In the common course of things, Providence has been pleased to ordain that he should be born in society, and have those about him, who never fail to teach him as much as they themselves know; their language, and the notions current among them. These he learns; and if he be taught no more, he knows no more.

Our countrymen sent, in quest of a new continent, to visit the extremities of the old ones, and

VOL. IV,

D