Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 5.djvu/107

Rh cant, of taking all occasions to disparage the heathen philosophers, I hope you will differ from some of your brethren, by first inquiring what those philosophers can say for themselves. The system of morality to be gathered out of the writings or sayings of those ancient sages, falls undoubtedly very short of that delivered in the Gospel, and wants, besides, the divine sanction which our Saviour gave his. Whatever is farther related by the evangelists, contains chiefly matters of fact, and consequently of faith; such as the birth of Christ, his being the Messiah, his miracles, his death, resurrection, and ascension: none of which can properly come under the appellation of human wisdom, being intended only to make us wise unto salvation. And therefore in this point, nothing can be justly laid to the charge of the philosophers, farther than that they were ignorant of certain facts, which happened long after their death. But I am deceived, if a better comment could be any where collected upon the moral part of the Gospel, than from the writings of those excellent men; even that divine precept of loving our enemies, is at large insisted on by Plato, who puts it, as I remember, into the mouth of Socrates. And as to the reproach of heathenism, I doubt they had less of it than the corrupted Jews, in whose time they lived. For it is a gross piece of ignorance among us, to conceive, that in those polite and learned ages, even persons of any tolerable education, much less the wisest philosophers, did acknowledge or worship any more than one almighty power, under several denominations, to whom they allowed all those attributes we ascribe to the divinity; and as I take it, human comprehension reaches Rh