Note 254 — QUARRELS OF AUTHORS; (continued 2)

Sprat makes an ingenious observation on the notion of those who declared that “the most learned ages are still the most atheistical, and the ignorant the most devout.” He says this had become almost proverbial, but he shows that piety is little beholden to those who make this distinction. “The Jewish law forbids us to offer up to God a sacrifice that has a blemish; but these men bestow the most excellent of men on the devil, and only assign to religion those men and those times which have the greatest blemish of human nature, even a defect in their knowledge and understanding.”—History of the Royal Society, p. 356.