(13) So in the election of those instruments, which it pleased God
to use for the plantation of the faith, notwithstanding that at the
first He did employ persons altogether unlearned, otherwise than by
inspiration, more evidently to declare His immediate working, and to
abase all human wisdom or knowledge; yet nevertheless that counsel
of His was no sooner performed, but in the next vicissitude and
succession He did send His divine truth into the world, waited on
with other learnings, as with servants or handmaids: for so we see
St. Paul, who was only learned amongst the Apostles, had his pen
most used in the Scriptures of the New Testament.
(14) So again we find that many of the ancient bishops and fathers
of the Church were excellently read and studied in all the learning
of this heathen; insomuch that the edict of the Emperor Julianus
(whereby it was interdicted unto Christians to be admitted into
schools, lectures, or exercises of learning) was esteemed and
accounted a more pernicious engine and machination against the
Christian Faith than were all the sanguinary prosecutions of his
predecessors; neither could the emulation and jealousy of Gregory,
the first of that name, Bishop of Rome, ever obtain the opinion of
piety or devotion; but contrariwise received the censure of humour,
malignity, and pusillanimity, even amongst holy men; in that he
designed to obliterate and extinguish the memory of heathen
antiquity and authors.
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