David, a man after God’s own heart, admits as much of himself, Psalm 37:21–22: “I was so foolish and ignorant; I was like a beast before you.” He condemns everyone as foolish in Psalms 93, 32:9, and 49:20, comparing them to beasts, horses, and mules without understanding. The apostle Paul accuses himself similarly, 2 Corinthians 11:21: “I wish you would bear with a little foolishness from me; I speak foolishly.” “The whole head is sick,” says Isaiah, “and the heart is heavy,” chapter 1:5. He makes less of them than of oxen and donkeys: “The ox knows its owner,” and so on. Read Deuteronomy 32:6, Jeremiah 4, Amos 3:1, Ephesians 5:6. “Do not be mad; do not be deceived. Foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you?” How often they are branded as mad and foolish! No word occurs more frequently among the Church Fathers and theologians; you can see their opinion of the world and their estimate of human conduct.

I know we think very differently. We generally consider those in authority—princes, magistrates, rich men—to be wise: they are born wise! All politicians and statesmen must be so, for who dares speak against them? On the other hand, our judgement is so corrupt that we consider wise and honest people fools. Democritus expressed this well in a letter to Hippocrates: “The people of Abdera consider virtue madness”—and so do most people alive.

Shall I tell you why? Fortune and Virtue once competed at the Olympic Games, with Wisdom and Folly as their seconds. Everyone thought Fortune and Folly would lose, and pitied them. But it turned out otherwise. Fortune was blind and cared neither where nor whom she struck, following no rules, “like blindfolded gladiators.” Folly, rash and thoughtless, cared as little what she said or did. Virtue and Wisdom gave way; the crowd hissed and jeered them off. Folly and Fortune were admired, as all their followers have been ever since: rogues and fools generally prosper most and, in worldly people’s eyes and opinions, deserve most.

Many good men fare no better in their own times. Achish, 1 Samuel 21:14, took David for a madman. Elisha and the others were regarded in the same way. David was mocked by the common people, Psalm 9:7: “I have become a monster to many.” Generally, we are considered fools for Christ, 1 Corinthians 14. “We fools thought his life madness, and his end without honour,” Wisdom 5:4. Christ and his apostles were judged similarly: John 10, Mark 3, Acts 26. So were all Christians in Pliny’s time: “There were others too with the same madness,” and so on. Not long afterwards they were called “followers of madness, destroyers of humankind, polluted innovators, fanatics, dogs, evildoers, poisoners, insignificant Galileans,” and so on.

We commonly count honest, devout, orthodox, godly, religious, plain-dealing people as idiots and asses if they cannot or will not lie, dissemble, scheme, flatter, “adapt themselves to the place where they were born,” strike good bargains, push others aside, prosper, “serve patrons, learn the customary ways of rising, duly observe laws, manners, and customs, praise wholeheartedly, defend stoutly, embrace opinions, doubt nothing, believe everything, accept everything, criticize nothing, and do all the other things that bring advancement and security, that unfailingly make a person fortunate and truly wise in our estimation.” They cannot trim their conduct to circumstances as others do, give and take bribes, and so on, but fear God and act conscientiously.

But the Holy Spirit, who knows better how to judge, calls those worldly people fools. “The fool has said in his heart,” Psalm 53:1; “And their ways reveal their folly,” Psalm 49:14. For what could be madder than to bring eternal punishment upon themselves for a little worldly pleasure? As Gregory and others repeatedly teach us.

Yes, even all those great philosophers whom the world has always admired, whose works we value so highly, who gave others rules of wisdom and invented arts and sciences: Socrates, judged by Apollo’s oracle the wisest man of his time, whom his two pupils Plato and Xenophon so greatly praise and exalt with such honourable titles as best and wisest of all mortals, happiest and most just; whom Alcibiades praises as beyond comparison. Achilles was a worthy man, but Brasidas and others were just as worthy; Antenor and Nestor were as good as Pericles, and so with the rest. But no one now, before, or after Socrates—“no one among the ancients or those now living”—ever was, will be, or comes close to his equal.

Those Seven Sages of Greece, those British Druids, Indian Brahmans, Ethiopian naked philosophers, Persian Magi; Apollonius, of whom Philostratus says, “Not taught to be wise, but born wise”—wise from his cradle; Epicurus, so admired by his disciple Lucretius: Who surpassed humankind in intellect, and dazzled all the stars like the rising heavenly sun. Whose wit surpassed the wits of men as far as the rising sun obscures a star. Or that celebrated Empedocles: So that he scarcely seems born of human stock.

All those of whom we read such extravagant praises: Aristotle, for example, said to be wisdom itself in the abstract, a miracle of nature; breathing libraries, as Eunapius calls Longinus; lights of nature, giants of intellect, the pure essence of wit, divine spirits, eagles in the clouds, fallen from heaven, gods, spirits, lamps of the world, dictators— May no future age bring forth such a man: monarchs, miracles, overseers of intellect and learning, an ocean, a phoenix, an Atlas, a marvel, a prodigy of a man, a treasury of the whole world, human nature’s ultimate achievement, nature’s husband— to whom the learned world rightly yields command, lowering its rods of office.

As Aelian wrote of Protagoras and Gorgias, we may say of them all: “They were as far from wise men as boys are from grown men.” By comparison they were children, infants; not eagles but kites; beginners, uneducated, “eunuchs of wisdom.” And although they were the wisest and most admired people of their times, I judge them as he judged Alexander: ten thousand men in his army could have been equally capable commanders, if placed in command, and just as brave. There were countless wiser men in those days, and yet all fell short of what they ought to have been.

In his book on wisdom, Lactantius proves them to be simpletons, fools, asses, and madmen, so full of absurd and ridiculous doctrines and deranged propositions that, in his view, no old woman or sick person ever wandered further in their thinking. Democritus learned everything from Leucippus and, he says, left the inheritance of his folly to Epicurus, “while straying into mad philosophy,” and so on. He thinks the same of Plato, Aristippus, and the rest, finding no difference between them and beasts, except that they could speak.