Page:Reflections upon ancient and modern learning (IA b3032449x).pdf/57

 why others, who for many Ages met with no Foreign Enemies that could overturn their Constitutions, should be capable of improving this part of Knowledge as far as unassisted Reason was able to carry it.

For, after all, how weak the Knowledge of the ancient Heathens was, even here, will appear by comparing the Writings of the old Philosophers, with those Moral Rules which Solomon left us in the Old Testament, and which our Blessed Saviour and his Apostles laid down in the New. Rules so well suited to the Reason of Man, so well adapted to civilize the World, and to introduce that true Happiness which the old Philosophers so vainly strove to find, that the more they are considered, the more they will be valued: and accordingly, they have extorted even from those who did not believe the Christian Religion, just Applauses, which were certainly unbiassed, because, not being led by the Rewards which it proposes, nor deterred by the Punishments which it threatens, they could have no Motive to commend them but their own native Excellency. So that one may justly wonder why Sir W. T. should give us an Account of Mahomet's Life, and that so minutely, as not to omit the Sergian Monk,