Devotion therefore is the greatest sign of a great and noble genius; it supposes a soul in its highest state of knowledge; and none but little and blinded minds, that are sunk into ignorance and vanity, are destitute of it.
8. If a human spirit should imagine some mighty prince to be greater than God, we should take it for a poor ignorant creature; all people would acknowledge such an imagination to be the height of stupidity.
But if this same human spirit should think it better to be devoted to some mighty prince, than to be devoted to God, would not this still be a greater proof of a poor, ignorant, and blinded nature?
Yet this is what all people do, who think any thing better, greater, or wiser than a devout life.
So that which way soever we consider this matter, it plainly appears, that devotion is an instance of great judgment, of an elevated nature; and the want of devotion is a certain proof of the want of understanding.
The greatest spirits of the Heathen world, such as Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, Epictetus, Marcus Antoninus, owed all their greatness to the spirit of devotion.
They were full of God; their wisdom and deep contemplations tended only to deliver men from the vanity of the world, the slavery of bodily passions, that they might act as spirits that came from God, and were soon to return to him.
9. Let libertines but grant that there is a God, and a providence, and then they have granted enough to justify the wisdom, and support the honour of devotion.
For if there is an infinitely wise and good Creator, in whom we live, move, and have our being, whose providence governs all things in all places, surely it must be the highest act of our understanding to conceive rightly of him; it must be the noblest instance of judgment, the most exalted temper of our nature, to worship and adore this universal providence, to conform to its laws, to study its wisdom, and to live and act every where, as in the presence of this infinitely good and wise Creator.
Now he that lives thus, lives in the spirit of devotion.