Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 10.djvu/154

146 these two, were at all owing to any lessons or doctrines of a sect. For Socrates himself was of none at all: and although Cato was called a stoick, it was more from a resemblance of manners in his worst qualities, than that he avowed himself one of their disciples. The same may be affirmed of many other great men of antiquity. Whence I infer, that those who were renowned for virtue among them, were more obliged to the good natural dispositions of their own minds, than to the doctrines of any sect they pretended to follow.

On the other side, as the examples of fortitude and patience among the primitive Christians, have been infinitely greater and more numerous, so they were altogether the product of their principles and doctrine; and were such as the same persons, without those aids, would never have arrived to. Of this truth most of the apostles, with many thousand martyrs, are a cloud of witnesses beyond exception. Having therefore spoken so largely upon the former heads, I shall dwell no longer upon this.

And, if it should here be objected, Why does not Christianity still produce the same effects? it is easy to answer. First, That although the number of pretended Christians be great, yet that of true believers, in proportion to the other, was never so small; and it is a true lively faith alone, that, by the assistance of God's grace, can influence our practice.

Secondly, We may answer, that Christianity itself has very much suffered, by being blended up with Gentile philosophy. The Platonick system, first taken into religion, was thought to have given matter for some early heresies in the church. When disputes began to arise, the peripatetick forms were introduced by