pted to human discourse; that it is a fault
much more often observed that the divines write too humanly, than that
the humanists write not theologically enough. Philosophy, says St.
Chrysostom, has long been banished the holy schools, as an handmaid
altogether useless and thought unworthy to look, so much as in passing
by the door, into the sanctuary of the holy treasures of the celestial
doctrine; that the human way of speaking is of a much lower form and
ought not to adopt for herself the dignity and majesty of divine
eloquence. Let who will 'verbis indisciplinatis' talk of fortune,
destiny, accident, good and evil hap, and other suchlike phrases,
according to his own humour; I for my part propose fancies merely human
and merely my own, and that simply as human fancies, and separately
considered, not as determined by any decree from heaven, incapable of
doubt or dispute; matter of opinion, not matter of faith; things which I
discourse of according to my own notions, not as I believe, according to
God; after a laical, not clerical, and yet always after a very religious
manner, as children prepare their exercises, not to instruct but to be
instructed.

And might it not be said, that an edict enjoining all people but such as
are public professors of divinity, to be very reserved in writing of
religion, would carry with it a very good colour of utility and justice
--and to me, amongst the rest peradventure, to hold my prating? I have
been told that even those who are not of our Church nevertheless amongst
themselves expressly forbid the name of God to be used in common
discourse, nor so much even by way of interjection, exclamation,
assertion of a truth, or comparison; and I think them in the right: upon
what occasion soever we call upon God to accompany and assist us, it
ought always to be done with the greatest reverence and devotion.

There is, as I remember, a passage in Xenophon where he tells us that we
ought so much the more seldom to call upon God, by how much it is hard to
compose our souls to such a degree of calmness, patience, and devotion as
it ought to be in at such a time; otherwise our prayers are not only vain
and fruitless, but vicious: "forgive us," we say, "our trespasses, as we
forgive them that trespass against us"; what do we mean by this petition
but that we present to God a soul free from all rancour and revenge? And
yet we make nothing of invoking God's assistance in our vices, and
inviting