Nay, if those antient sages were to start up among us with their divine wisdom, they would bid fair to be treated by the sons of the gospel, if not by some fathers of the church, as dreaming enthusiasts.
But, _Academicus_, this is a standing truth, the world can only love its own, and wisdom can only be justified of her children. The heaven-born _Epictetus_ told one of his scholars, that _then_ he might _first_ look upon himself, as having made _some true_ proficiency in virtue, when the world took him for a _fool_; an oracle like that, which said, _The wisdom of this world is foolishness with God_.
If you was to ask me, whence is all the degeneracy of the present Christian church, I should place it all in a _worldly spirit_. If here you see open wickedness, there only forms of godliness; if here superficial holiness, political piety, crafty prudence; there haughty sanctity, partial zeal, envious orthodoxy; if almost every where you see a _Jewish_ blindness, and hardness of heart, and the church trading with the gospel, as visibly, as the old _Jews_ bought and sold beasts in their temple; all this is only so many forms and proper fruits of the worldly spirit. This is the great _net_, with which the devil becomes a fisher of men; and be assured of this, that every son of man is in this _net_, till, thro’ the Spirit of Christ, he breaks out of it.
I say the _Spirit_ of Christ, for nothing else can deliver him from it. Trust to any kind, or form of religious observances, to any number of the most plausible virtues, to any kinds of learning, or efforts of human prudence, and I will tell you what your case will be; you will overcome _one_ temper of the world, _merely_ by cleaving to another. For nothing leaves the world, nothing can possibly overcome it, but the Spirit of Christ. Hence it is, that many learned men, with all the rich furniture of their brain, live and die slaves to the spirit of this world; and can only differ from gross worldlings, as the _Scribes_ and _Pharisees_ differ from _Publicans_ and _Sinners_: it is because the Spirit of Christ is not the _one_ thing that is the _desire_ of their hearts; and therefore their learning only works with the spirit of this world, and becomes itself no small part of the _vanity of vanities_. Would you farther know, the evil effects of a worldly spirit, you need only look at the blessed effects of the _spirit of prayer_; for the one goes downwards with the same strength as the other goes upwards; the one weds you to an earthly nature, as the other unites you to Christ, and God, and heaven. The spirit of prayer is a _pressing forth_ of the soul out of this earthly life; it is a stretching with all its desire after the life of God; it is a leaving, as far as it can, all its _own spirit_, to receive a spirit from above, to be one life, one love, one Spirit with Christ in God. This prayer, which is an emptying itself of all its own natural tempers, and an opening itself for the love of God to enter into it, is the prayer in _the name of Christ_, to which nothing is denied. For the love which God bears to the soul, his eternal, never-ceasing desire to enter into it, dwell in it, stays no longer, than till the door of the heart opens for him. For nothing can keep God out of the soul, or hinder his union with it, but the _desire_ of the heart turned from him.
A will, given up to earthly goods, is at grass with _Nebuchadnezzar_, and has one life with the beasts of the field: for earthly desires keep up the _same life_ in a man and an ox. When therefore a man wholly turneth his will to earthly desires, he dies to the excellency of his natural state, and may be said only to live, and move, and have his being in the life of this world, as the beasts have. Earthy food, only desired and used for the support of the earthly body, is suitable to a man’s present condition, and the order of nature: but when the desire of the soul is set upon earthly things, then the humanity is degraded, is fallen from God; and the life of the soul is made as _earthly_ and _bestial_, as the life of the body.
*And this is to be noted well, that death can make no alteration in this state of the will; it only takes off the outward covering of flesh and blood, and forces the soul to see, and feel, and know, what a life, what a state, _food_, _body_, and _habitation_, its own will has brought forth for it. Oh _Academicus_, stop awhile, and let your hearing be turned into feeling. Tell me, is there any thing in life that deserves a thought, but how to keep our will in a right state, and to get that _purity_ of heart, which alone can see, and know, and find, and possess God? Is there any thing so frightful as this worldly spirit, which turns the soul from God, makes it an house of darkness, and feeds it with the food of time, at the expence of all the riches of eternity.