A band of sophists, all equipped.”
Of these and the like, who devote their attention to empty words, the divine Scripture most excellently says, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent.”[839]
CHAPTER IV.
HUMAN ARTS AS WELL AS DIVINE KNOWLEDGE PROCEED FROM GOD.
Homer calls an artificer wise; and of Margites, if that is his work, he thus writes:
“Him, then, the gods made neither a delver nor a ploughman,
Nor in any other respect wise; but he missed every art.”
Hesiod further said the musician Linus was “skilled in all manner of wisdom;” and does not hesitate to call a mariner wise, seeing he writes:
“Having no wisdom in navigation.”
And Daniel the prophet says, “The mystery which the king asks, it is not in the power of the wise, the Magi, the diviners, the Gazarenes, to tell the king; but it is God in heaven who revealeth it.”[840]