Whence is it, that we see genius and natural abilities to be equally pleased with, and equally contending for the errors and absurdities of every system of religion, under which they are educated? It is because genius and natural abilities are just the same things, and must have the same nature now, as they had in the ancient schools of the peripatetic, academic, stoic, and atheistical philosophers. "The temptation of honor, which the academic exercise of wit" (as Dr. W. says) "was supposed to bring to its professor," {Divine Legation of Moses, Book I., page 33.} has still its power among church disputants. Nor can it possibly ever be otherwise, till parts and genius, do, as the blind, the deaf, the dumb, and lepers formerly did, go to be healed of their natural disorders by the inspiration of that oracle, who said, "I am the light of the world, he that followeth me, walketh not in darkness." "No man cometh unto the Father but by me." Well therefore might St. Paul say, "I have determined to know nothing among you, but Christ, and him crucified." And had it not been for this determination, he had never known, what he then knew, when he said, "The life that I now live, is not mine, but Christ's that liveth in me." Now did the apostle here overstretch the matter? Was it a spirit of enthusiasm, and not of Christ living in him, that made this declaration? Was he here making way for ignorance and darkness to extinguish the light that came down from heaven, and was the light of the world? Did he here undermine the true ground and rock on which the church of Christ was to stand, and prevail against the gates of hell? Did he by setting up this knowledge, as the best and only knowledge that an apostle need to have, break down the fences of Christ's vineyard, rob the church of all its strong holds, leave it defenseless, without a pale, and a ready prey to infidels? Who can say this, but that "spirit of anti-Christ, that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh?" For, as Christ's intending nothing, knowing nothing, willing nothing, but purely and solely the whole course of his crucifying process, was the whole truth of his being come in the flesh, was his doing the whole will of him that sent him, was his overcoming the world, death, and hell, so he that embraces this process, as Christ embraces it, who is wholly given up to it, as Christ was, he has the will of Christ, and the mind of Christ, and therefore may well desire to know nothing else. To this man alone, is the world, death, and hell, known to be overcome in him, as they were in Christ; to him alone is Christ become the resurrection and the life; and he that knows this, he knows with St. Paul that all other knowledge may, and will be cast away as dung. Now if St. Paul, having rejected all other knowledge but that of a crucified savior, which to the Jew was a stumbling-block, and to the Greek foolishness, if he had afterwards wrote three such Legation-volumes as the doctor has done, for the food and nourishment of Christ's sheep, who can have no life in them but by eating the true bread that came down from heaven, must they not have been called Paul's full recantation of all that he had taught of a Christ crucified?