I know
not, indeed, whether men of the greatest faculties of mind are not the
most subject to it. Such men feel themselves seated upon an eminence.
Looking down from their height upon the follies of mankind, they behold
contending tenets wasting their idle strength upon one another with the
common disdain of the absurdity of them all. This habit of thought,
however comfortable to the mind which entertain it, or however natural
to great parts, is extremely dangerous; and more apt than almost any
other disposition to produce hasty and contemptuous, and, by
consequence, erroneous judgments, both of persons and opinions.
Fourthly; We need not be surprised at many writers of that age not
mentioning Christianity at all, when they who did mention it appear to
have entirely misconceived its nature and character; and, in consequence
of this misconception, to have regarded it with negligence and contempt.
To the knowledge of the greatest part of the learned heathens, the facts
of the Christian history could only come by report. The books, probably,
they had never looked into. The settled habit of their minds was, and
long had been, an indiscriminate rejection of all reports of the kind.
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