About classicists.

I was thinking the other day that classicists are like the catholics of protestant polemic, while historical linguists are like the protestant-heros of protestant polemic:

The classicists worship old dictionaries and grammars, while historical linguists are independent thinkers who abhor that idolatry and think for themselves, and thereby come to the truth.

I also hate how classicists rigidly classify uses of cases. If the uses were so well-defined, how did they ever change? It might be helpful to a certain point for people learning the languages to think like that, but it doesn't necessarily reflect how the language worked, always - cases could blur together, or bear multiple connotations at once.