Academic Exercise on the Abstinence of the Early Christians from Reading Profane Books

it is written: you shall meditate on the law day and night. They indeed devoted to public curses both the man who would raise a pig and the man who would instruct his son in Greek learning. For from the time they began to lack the direct word of God and the gift of prophecy, they devoted their efforts primarily to the Cabala The Kabbalah, a traditional system of Jewish mystical and esoteric biblical interpretation.. In this way, they rushed headlong into thick darkness, as they not only rejected the excellent works on the philosophical sciences by outside philosophers original: τῶν ἔξω (tōn exō), a term used to describe those outside the faith, such as pagan Greeks, but they even scorned the writings produced by their own kinsmen.

Th. X.

Let us also briefly touch upon more recent times. Cornelius Agrippa (1486–1535) A German polymath and occult writer known for his skeptical stance toward formal academia. wrote a book On the Vanity of the Sciences. In this work, let others judge whether he intended to scrub away the abuses and follies of the sciences with satirical wit, or whether he looked down upon them with a haughty brow as if they were vain and useless. As for the opinion of Henricus Ernstius (1603–1665) A German-Danish jurist and scholar known for his works on ethics and law. regarding secular ethics,

z) A wise man who is not wise original: Σοφὸς ἄσοφος.