A sermon touching the use of humane learning preached in Mercers-Chapel at the funeral…A sermon touching the use of humane learning preached in Mercers-Chappel at the funeral…

First, Though there be excellent use to be made of Humane Learning, yet it is to be used with much caution, as Physicians use Opium, or other dangerous things with their due correctives.

First, Though there be excellent use to be made of Humane Learning, yet it is to be used with much caution, as Physitians use Opium, or other dangerous things with their due correctives.

1. Use it, not unnecessarily where the nature of the matter doth not rationally call for it. ⟨p. 20⟩Some learned men have upon this account blamed some of the Ancients,¹ Origen, Justin, Clemens Alexandrinus and others, for mixing Philosophy with Theology, out of an opinion thereby the easier to gain the Gentiles unto the Christian faith. But none have been more blame-worthy in this case then the old Schoolmen, of whom Melanchthon saith, that their doctrine is chiefly made up of two things, Philosophy and Superstition; and therefore it is well observed by a learned man that School-men and Canonists have been the fountains of that corruption which hath infected the Church of Christ; the School-men in doctrine, by opinions of Popery; and the Canonists in Discipline by the state of the Papacy, of which the main cause hath been the admitting of Aristotle and his Philosophy, In ipsa adyta & penetralia Ecclesiarum, as H•spinian speaketh. We find even amongst the Heathens, men were punished for presuming to dispute of heavenly things, in the same manner as they did of natural causes; and for the like reason Aetius the Heretic being given to an er•stical and contentious way of arguing in divine things, as one much addicted to Aristotelical learning, thereby purchased unto himself the Title of Atheist, as Socrates and Sozomen tell us.

1. Use it, not unnecessarily where the nature of the matter doth not rationally call for it.