Page:A Dissertation on Reading the Classics and Forming a Just Style.djvu/216

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
172
Christian Orators.

were more practised and enforced, I believe it would produce wonderful Effects among those who are not wanting in the Knowledge of their Duty, nor yet in the Conviction of its Truth, but are backward in their Practice of it, and forward to transgress it.

I cannot leave this Argument without one Observation more, that if we will write of Morality only upon the Heathen Plan, and enforce it only from their Topics, we shall find all our Essays too weak, and demonstrate to the World, that a meer moral Christian is as much below a Pagan, as a Divine or Believing Christian is above him.

I