LETTERS FROM THE BACONIANA. TRANSLATION OF THE ANSWER OF THE LORD in heaven. It was at a time when the great desoBACON, THEN ATTORNEY-GENERAL, TO THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE, WHEN HE WAS YOUR letters were very acceptable to me; and lation of the plague was in the city, and when myself was ill of a dangerous and tedious sickness. The first time that I found any degree of health, nothing came sooner to my mind than to acknowledge your majesty's great favour by my most humble thanks. And because I see your majesty taketh delight in my writings, and, to say truth, they are the best fruits I now yield, I presume to send your majesty a little discourse of mine, touching a war with Spain, which I writ about two years since, which the king, your brother, liked well. It is written without bitterness or invective, as kings' affairs ought to be carried: but, if I be not deceived, it hath edge enough. I have yet some spirits left, and remnant of experience, which I consecrate to the king's service and your majesty's; for whom I pour out my daily prayers to God, that he would give your majesty a fortune worthy your rare virtues; which some good spirit tells me will be in the end. I do in all reverence kiss your majesty's hands, ever resting now am in; by unwearied study, and perpetual watchfulness, and pure affection, to promote the public good. Now, among the parts of the commonwealth, there are none dearer to me than the universities and learning. And this, my manner of life hitherto, and my writings do both declare. If, therefore, any good fortune befalls me, you may look upon it as an accession to yourselves. Neither are you to believe, that my patronage is either quite removed from you, or so much as diminished. For that part of an advocate which concerneth the giving of counsel in causes remaineth entire. Also, (if any thing more weighty and urgent falleth out,) the very office of pleading (the king's leave being obtained) is still allowed me. And whatsoever shall be found wanting in my juridical patronage will be compensated by my more ample authority. My wishes are, that as I am translated from the business of private men and particular clients, to the government of the commonwealth; so the TRANSLATION OF A LETTER OF THE LORD BAlatter part of my age (if my life be continued to me) may, from the public cares, be translated to leisure and study. Also, this thought comes often into my mind, amidst so many businesses and of such moment, every year to lay aside some days to think on you that so, having the greater insight into your matters, I may the better consult your advantage. Your most faithful and kind friend, July the 5th, 1616. THE LORD CHANCELLOR BACON'S LETTER TO FROM HER MAJESTY, AND UPON SENDING TO I have received your majesty's gracious letter from Mr. Secretary Morton, who is now a saint A. D. 1625 Your majesty's most humble CON'S TO THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE Francis, Baron of Verulam, and Viscount of St. I HERE repay you, according to my ability, the debts of a son. I exhort you, also, to do the same thing with myself: that is, to bend your whole might towards the advancement of the sciences, and to retain freedom of thought, together with humility of mind; and not to suffer the talent which the ancients have deposited with you, to lie dead in a napkin. Doubtless, the favour of the Divine light will be present and shine amongst you, if, philosophy being submitted to religion, you lawfully and dexterously use the keys of sense; and if, all study of opposition being laid aside, every one of you so dispute with another as if he were arguing with himself. Fare ye well. SEEING I am your son, and your disciple, it will much please me to repose in your bosom the issue which I have lately brought forth into the world; for, otherwise, I should look upon it as an exposed child. Let it not trouble you that the way in which I go is new: such things will, of necessity, happen in the revolutions of several ages. However, the honour of the ancients is secured that, I mean, which is due to their wit. For, faith is only due to the word of God, and to experience. Now, for bringing back the sciences to experience is not a thing to be done: but to raise them anew from experience, is indeed a very difficult and laborious, but not a hopeless undertaking. God prosper you and your studies. Your most loving son, FRANCIS VERULAM, Chancel. I find that the ancients (as Cicero, Demosthenes, Plinius Secundus, and others) have preserved both their orations and their epistles. In imitation of whom, I have done the like to my own, which, nevertheless, I will not publish while I live; but I have been bold to bequeath them to your lordship, and Mr. Chancellor of the Duchy. My speeches, perhaps, you will think fit to publish. The letters, many of them, touch too much upon late matters of state to be published; yet, I was willing they should not be lost. I have, also, by my will, erected two lectures in perpetuity, in either university; one with an endowment of £200 per annum, apiece. They are to be for natural philosophy, and the sciences thereupon depending; which foundations I have required my executors to order by the advice and direction of your lordship, and my Lord Bishop of Coventry and Litchfield. These be my thoughts now. I rest Your lordship's most affectionate to do you service. TRANSLATION OF A LETTER OF THE LORD BA CON'S, WRITTEN TO TRINITY COLLEGE, IN CAMBRIDGE, UPON HIS SENDING TO THEM HIS BOOK OF THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING. Francis, Baron of Verulam, Viscount of St. Albans, to the most famous College of the Holy and Undivided Trinity in Cambridge, health. THE progress of things, together with themselves, are to be ascribed to their originals. Wherefore, seeing I have derived from your fountains my first beginnings in the sciences, I thought fit to repay to you the increases of them. I hope, also, it may so happen that these things of ours may the more prosperously thrive among you, being replanted in their native soil. Therefore, I likewise exhort you that ye yourselves, so far as is consistent with all due modesty and reverence to the ancients, be not wanting to the advancement of the sciences: but that, next to the study of those sacred volumes of God, the holy Scriptures, ye turn over that great volume of the works of God, his creatures, with the utmost diligence, and before all other books, which ought to be looked on only as commentaries on those texts. Farewell THE LORD CHANCELLOR BACON'S LETTER TO DR. WILLIAMS, THEN LORD BISHOP OF LINCOLN, CONCERNING HIS SPEECHES, &c. MY VERY GOOD LORD, 1 am much bound to your lordship for your honourable promise to Dr. Rawley. He chooseth rather to depend upon the same in general than to pitch upon any particular; which modesty of choice I commend. A LETTER WRITTEN IN LATIN BY THE LORD VERULAM, TO FATHER FULGENTIO, THE VENETIAN, CONCERNING HIS WRITINGS; AND NOW TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH BY THE PUBLISHER. MOST REVEREND Father, I must confess myself to be a letter in your debt; but the excuse which I have, is too, too just. For I was kept from doing you right by a very sore disease, from which I am not yet perfectly delivered. I am now desirous to communicate to your fatherhood the designs I have touching those writings which I form in my head, and begin; not with hope of bringing them to perfection, but out of desire to make experiment, and because I am a servant to posterity; for these things require some ages for the ripening of them. I judged it most convenient to have them translated in the Latin tongue, and to divide them into certain tomes. The first tome consisteth of the books of the Advancement of Learning, which, as you understand, are already finished and published; and contain the Partition of Sciences, which is the first part of my Instauration. The Novum Organum should have immediately followed, but I interposed my moral and political writings, because they were more in readiness. And for them, they are these following. The first is, The History of Henry the 7th, King of England. Then follows that book which you have called in your tongue, "Saggi Morali." But I give a graver name to that book; and it is to go under the title of Sermones Fideles, [faithful sayings,] or Interiora Rerum, [the inside of chings.] Those Essays will be increased in their number, and enlarged in the handling of them. Also that tome will contain the book of the Wisdom of the Ancients. And this tome (as I said) doth, as it were interlope, and doth not stand in the order of the Instauration. After these shall follow the Organum Novum, to which a second part is yet to be added which I have already comprised and measured in the idea of it. And thus the second part of my Instauration will be finished. Secondly, I am thus persuaded because of its infinite usefulness; for which reason it may be ascribed to divine encouragement. I pray your fatherhood to commend me to that most excellent man, Signor Molines, to whose most delightful and prudent letters I will return answer shortly, if God permit. Farewell, most reverend father. Your most assured friend, FRANCIS ST. ALBAN. As for the third part of the Instauration, that is to say, the Natural History, it is plainly a work TRANSLATION OF A LETTER OF THE LORD BAfor a king or a pope, or for some college or order; and cannot be by personal industry performed as it ought. Those portions of it, which have already seen the light, to wit, concerning winds, and touching life and death, they are not pure history, by reason of the axioms and larger observations which are interposed. But they are a kind of mixed writings, composed of natural history, and a rude and imperfect instrument, or help, of the understanding. And this is the fourth part of the Instauration. Wherefore that fourth part shall follow, and shall contain many examples of that instrument, more exact, and much more fitted to rules of induction. Fifthly, there shall follow a book to be entitled by us, Prodromus Philosophia Secundæ, [the forerunner of Secondary Philosophy.] This shall contain our inventions about new axioms to be raised from the experiments themselves, that they which were before as pillars lying uselessly along may be raised up. And this we resolve on for the fifth part of our Instauration. Lastly, there is yet behind the Secondary Philosophy itself, which is the sixth part of the In CON'S, IN FRENCH, TO THE MARQUESS FIAT, RELATING TO HIS ESSAYS. MY LORD AMBASSADOR, MY SON, Seeing that your excellency makes and treats of marriages, not only betwixt the princes of France and England, but also betwixt their languages, (for you have caused my book of the Advancement of Learning to be translated into French,) I was much inclined to make you a present of the last book which I published, and which I had in readiness for you. I was sometimes in doubt whether I ought to have sent it to you, because it was written in the English tongue. But now, for that very reason 1 send it to you. It is a recompilement of my Essays, Moral and Civil; but in such manner enlarged and enriched both in number and weight, that it is in effect a new work. I kiss your hands, and remain Your most affectionate and most humble servant, etc. SITY OF OXFORD TO THE LORD BACON, UPON HIS SENDING TO THEM HIS BOOK DE AUGMENTIS SCIENTIARUM. stauration. Of the perfecting this I have cast TRANSLATION OF A LETTER FROM THE UNIVERaway all hopes; but in future ages perhaps the design may bud again. Notwithstanding, in our Prodromie, [or prefatory works,] such I mean only, which touch almost the universals of nature, there will be laid no inconsiderable foundations of this matter. Our meanness, you see, attempteth great things; placing our hopes only in this, that they seem to proceed from the providence and immense goodness of God. And I am by two arguments thus persuaded. First, I think thus, from that zeal and constancy of my mind, which has not waxed old in this design, nor after so many years grown cold and indifferent. I remember that about forty years ago I composed a juvenile work about these things, which with great confidence and a pompous title, I called Temporis Partum Maximum,* [or the most considerable birth of time.] * Or, it may be Masculum, as I find it read elsewhere. VOL. III.-9 Most noble, and (—) MOST LEARNED Viscount, Your honour could have given nothing more agreeable, and the University could have received nothing more acceptable than the sciences. And those sciences which she formerly sent forth poor, of low stature, unpolished, she hath received elegant, tall, and, by the supplies of your wit, by which alone they could have been advanced, most rich in dowry. She esteemeth it an extraordinary favour to have a return with usury, made of that by a stranger, if so near a relation may be called a stranger, which she bestows as a patrimony upon her children. And she readily acknowledgeth, that though the muses are born in Ox ford they grow elsewhere. Grown they are, and under your pen, who, like some mighty Hercules, in learning have by your own hand further advanced those pillars in the learned world, which F 2 by the rest of that world were supposed immo- | was slain before all worlds; without which etervable. We congratulate you, you most accomplished combatant, who, by your most diligent patronage of the virtues of others, have overcome other patrons; and, by your own writings, yourself. For, by the eminent height of your honour, you advanced only learned men, now at last, O ravishing prodigy! you have also advanced learning itself. nal counsel of his, it was impossible for him to have descended to any work of creation; but he should have enjoyed the blessed and individual society of Three Persons in Godhead, only, forever." * This point I have heard some divines question, whether God, without Christ, did pour his love upon the creature? and I had sometime a dispute with Dr. Sharp, of your university, who held, that the emanation of the Father's love to the creature, was immediate. His reason, amongst others, was taken from that text, "So God loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son." Something of that point I have written amongst my papers, which on the sudden I cannot light upon. But I remember that I held the point in the negative; and that St. Austin, in his comment on the fifth chapter to the Romans, gathered by Beda, is strong that way. In page 2, line the 9th to the 13th,† are these words: The ample munificence of this gift lays a burden upon your clients, in the receiving of which we have the honour; but, in the enjoying of it, the emolument will descend to late posterity. If, therefore, we are not able of ourselves to return sufficient and suitable thanks, our nephews of the next age ought to give their assistance, and pay the remainder, if not to yourself, to the honour of your name. Happy they, but we, how much more happy, &c., to whom you have pleased to do the honour of sending a letter, written by no other than by your own hand. To whom you have pleased to send the clearest instructions for "God, by the reconcilement of the Medireading [your works,] and for concord in ourator, turning his countenance towards his creastudies, in the front of your book; as if it were a tures, (though not in equal light and degree,) small thing for your lordship to enrich the muses made way unto the dispensation of his most holy out of your own stock, unless you taught them and secret will, whereby some of his creatures also a method of getting wealth. Wherefore this might stand and keep their state; others might, most accurate pledge of your understanding has possibly, fall and be restored; and others might been, with the most solemn reverence, received fall, and not be restored in their estate, but yet in a very full congregation, both by the doctors remain in being, though under wrath and corrupand masters; and that which the common vote tion, all with respect to the Mediator; which is hath placed in our public library, every single the great mystery, and perfect centre of all God's person has gratefully deposited in his memory. ways with his creatures, and unto which all his Your lordship's most devoted servant, other works and wonders do but serve and refer." The University of Oxford. A LETTER WRITTEN BY DR ROGER MAYNWAR- BACON'S CONFESSION OF FAITH. SIR,—I have, at your command, surveyed this deep and devout tract of your deceased lord, and send back a few notes upon it. In the first page, line 7,* are these words: "I believe that God is so holy, pure, and jealous, that it is impossible for him to be pleased in any creature, though the work of his own hands; so that neither angel, man, nor world, could stand, or can stand, one moment in his eyes, without beholding the same in the face of a Mediator; and, therefore, that before him, with whom all things are present, the Lamb of God That is in Resuscitatio, p. 117, 1. 8, to "forever," in p. 118. Here absolute reprobation seems to be defended, in that the will of God is made the reason of the non-restitution of some; at leastwise his lordship seems to say, that 'twas God's will that some should fall; unless that may be meant of voluntas permissiva, [his will of permission.] In page the second, at the end, 66 where he saith, Amongst the generations of men, he elected a small flock," if that were added, "of fallen men," it would not be amiss; lest any should conceive that his lordship had meant, the decree had passed on massa incorrupta, [on mankind considered before the fall.] In page the 4th, lines the 13th and 14th,§ are these words: "Man made a total defection from God, presuming to imagine, that the commandments and prohibitions of God were not the rules of good and evil, but that good and evil had their own principles and beginnings." The same, I think, who was committed to the Tower having taught Hoskins his Allusion to the Sicilian Vespers See Reliqu. Wootton, p. 434. That is, in Resuscitatio, p. 118, 1. 9, to "refer." Consider whether this be a rule universal, that the commands and prohibitions of God are the rules of good and evil: for, as St. Austin saith, many things are prohibita quia mala, [for that reason forbidden because they are evil,] as those sins which the schools call specifical. In page 7, lines the 23d and 24th,* are these words: serving you upon all occasions, and in performing towards you all offices, either of friendship or observance. I will, to the utmost of my power, take care to publish the [remaining] labours of that illustrious hero, the Lord Verulam, esteeming it my greatest happiness to have formerly served him, and still to do so. And that I may avoid all suspicion of being worse than ny word, I will perform my promise with all convenient speed. I desire that this friendship and mutual inwardness begun betwixt us may always continue, "The three heavenly unities exceed all natural unities; that is to say, the unity of the three Persons in Godhead; the unity of God and man in Christ, and the unity of Christ and the church, the Holy Ghost being the worker of both these | and, if you please, live and flourish by letters, latter unitics; for, by the Holy Ghost was Christ incarnate, and quickened in flesh; and by the Holy Ghost is man regenerate, and quickened in spirit." Here two of the unities are ascribed to the Holy Ghost. The first seems excluded; yet divines say, that "Spiritus Sanctus est amor, et vinculum Patris et Filii;" [the Holy Ghost is the love and the bond of the Father and the Son.] In page 3, line the 13th,† are these words: "Christ accomplished the whole work of the redemption and restitution of man, to a state superior to the angels." This [superior] seems to hit upon that place, Loúyyε20, which argues but equality. Suarez (De Angelis, lib. 1, cap. 1) saith, that angels are superior to men, "Quod gradum intellectualem, et quoad immediatam habitationem ad Deum," [both in respect of the degree of their intellectual nature, and of the nearness of their habitation to God.] Yet, St. Austin affirmeth, Naturam humanam in Christo perfectiorem esse angelicâ," [that the human nature in Christ is more perfect than the angelical.] Consider of this. And thus far, not as a critic or corrector, but as a learner; for, "Corrigere, res est tantò magis ardua, quantô Your servant, ROGER MAYNWARING. TRANSLATION OF A LETTER WRITTEN BY DR. RAWLEY, TO MONSIEUR DEODATE, CONCERNING HIS PUBLISHING OF THE LORD BACON'S WORKS. MOST NOBLE and Dear Sir, I am now at last in the country, the spring and Lent coming on. I am sorry that I had not the opportunity of waiting on you before I left the town; but I am sure I shall never be wanting in * That is, in Resuscitatio, p. 120, 1. 40, 41, &c. Luke xx. 36. the badges and nourishers of it, even when you are at Paris; a place which, if ever I be so hap py, I will see for your sake, as well as for other reasons. Pray think not that I am free of my words and frugal of my deeds, but rather that my thick and very troublesome occasions, whilst I was in the city, would not suffer me to kiss your hands. It remains that I heartily honour you, and retaliate your love, and wish you all the good in the world, as being, Sir, Your most faithful servant, and constant friend, WILLIAM RAWLEY. March the 9th, 1632. TRANSLATION OF A LETTER WRITTEN BY MONSIEUR ÆLIUS DEODATE, TO DR. RAWLEY, IN ANSWER TO HIS OF MARCH THE 9th, 1632, TOUCHING HIS PUBLISHING THE LORD BACON'S WORKS. To the reverend his most honoured friend, William Rawley, Doctor of Divinity, and Chaplain to the King's Majesty. Reverend and most dear Sir, A few days ago, I received your most acceptable and most desired letter, in which, to confort me for the loss of your most agreeable company, (of which I was deprived by your sudden leaving the town,) you make me a new promise of a near and lasting friendship. Nothing could have happened to me more pleasing than this kindness, (which I shall diligently endeavour, to the utmost of my power, by all ways of love and observance, to deserve;) so much I value your own worth and the ever estimable memory of our most illustrious hero, a portion of whose spirit resides in your breast. I so greedily expect the speedy edition of his works, which you have promised, that I have already almost devoured the whole of it in my hopes. Suffer not, I beseech you, any delay by any means to obstruct this my earnest desire: seeing, especially, it much concerns yourself, as you confess, upon many accounts, to promote it with all expedition. |