When these sentiments were uttered Thought was not free it was cribbed, cabined and confined. When it attempted to flutter from its prison it was struck down by the relentless claws of Authority. In the freeing of Thought perhaps no man did more than Francis Bacon. Among his unpublished manuscripts we find a note, "Thought is free" (Promus. 1594). In his Numismata Evelyn states, " By standing up against the dogmatists Bacon emancipated and set free Philosophy. It was recently observed by an Atheneum critic that, "There is still, in spite of all the work that has been done, a lingering superstition that Puritanism was in its essence a movement towards freedom and tolerance so that it is well to have the truth once more stated. Freedom was the result of the internecine quarrels between the sects, or rather of the fact that no one party was able to exterminate the other. It was not the deliberate conquest of a party devoted to reason, but the fruit derived by all parties from the failure of others." Mr W. H. Frere points out in his History of the English Church in the Reigns of Elizabeth and James I. Puritanism was not a movement for liberty of opinion or practice, but merely for the substitution of a new coercive system in place of the old one.

As

It would thus appear that, like the Babes in the Wood, Science and Religion escaped while their jailors were at heart grips; and, as we shall see, the little waifs ran off and took refuge in the Bankside slums.

“If, says the author of The Church under Elizabeth "unpopularity met any man of rank or

mark; if, in the hearing of a spy of Cecil's or of some long-eared and contemptible informer, he uttered a word or sentence which might be twisted and turned against him, or if the Queen found him less pliant or obsequious than she thought he ought to be, he stood henceforth in the greatest danger of liberty, or life. Both those who adhered to the old religion, and those who were for proceeding further along the road of reform alike suffered. "1

Notwithstanding the perils surrounding reformers, the illustrious Bacon drew up (probably some time during 1589) An Advertisement touching the Controversies of The Church of England. This hazardous and futile attempt to throw oil on troubled waters reads like the production of a man of sixty; strangely unlike that of a brilliant and ambitious young courtier of twenty eight.

In later years Bacon again intervened by a second tract, entitled, Certain Considerations touching the better Pacification and Edification of the Church of England, wherein inter alia he attacks non-residence and pluralism.

In his old age we find him writing:

"Remember, O Lord, how Thy servant hath walked before Thee; remember what I have first sought and what hath been principal in my intentions. intentions. I have loved Thy assemblies. I have mourned for the divisions of Thy Church. I have delighted in the brightness of Thy Sanctuary.... The state of the poor and oppressed have been precious in mine eyes. I have 1 Vol I. p. 282.

hated all cruelty and hardness of heart. I have though in a despised weed, procured the good of all men.'

"Controversies on speculative points of theology seem,' says Macaulay, "to have engaged scarcely any portion of his attention. In what he wrote on Church Government he showed, as far as he dared, a tolerant and charitable spirit. He troubled himself not at all about Homoousians, and Homoiousians, Monothelites and Nestorians. He lived in an age in which disputes on the most subtle points of divinity excited an intense interest throughout Europe, and nowhere more than in England. He was placed in the very thick of the conflict. He was in power at the time of the Synod of Dort, and must for months have been daily deafened with talk about Election, Reprobation, and final Perseverance. Yet we do not remember a line in his works from which it can be inferred that he was either a Calvinist or an Arminian. While the world was resounding with the noise of a disputatious Philosophy and a disputatious Theology, the Baconian school like Alworthy seated between Square and Thwackum, preserved a a calm neutrality, half scornful, half benevolent, and, content with adding to the sum of practical good, left the war of words to those who liked it."

In this attitude of scornful, benevolent neutrality, the players were as equally great as Bacon. The creed of Shakespeare has ever been a sphinx to enquirers. There is, I am inclined to assert, not a passage in the works of Shakespeare or throughout the whole Elizabethan drama that would lead anyone to suppose its authors had

ever heard of Election, Predestination, Reprobation, Grace, or any one of the academic questions that perplex Humanity.

The dramatists concurred with Jeremy Taylor that Religion is rather a divine life than a divine knowledge; and with Swedenborg that all Religion has relation to life and that the life of Religion is to do good.

As you have

A soul moulded from Heaven and do desire
To have it made a Star there, make the means
Of your ascent to that celestial height

Virtue winged with brave action. They draw near
The nature and the essence of the Gods
Who imitate their goodness.

MASSINGER (Emperor of the East 1. 2.) 1630-1632.

They taught that :

When our souls shall leave this dwelling,
The glory of one fair and virtuous action
Is above all the scutcheons on our tomb
Or silken banners over us.

SHIRLEY (The Traitor v. 1.) 1631-1635. They persistently reiterated that man must burnish his own soul.

To curse those stars that men say govern us, To rail at Fortune, fall out with my fate, And task the general world will help me nothing. Alas, I am the same still, neither are they Subject to helps or hurts. Our own desires Are our own fates, our own stars, all our fortunes Which as we sway e' en so abuse or bless us. BEAUMONT and FLETCHER (The Chances 11. 3.)

1647.

;

Man is his own Star and the soul that can Render an honest and a perfect man Commands all light, all influence, all fate Nothing to him falls early or too late. Our acts our angels are, or good or ill, Our fatal shadows that walk by us still. FLETCHER (EPI: Honest man's Fortune.) 1613-47. "Good thoughts, say Beaumont and Fletcher, 99 1 are the noblest companions. In Appius and Virginia Webster rounds this off with :So subtle are thy evils

2

In life they'll seem good angels, in death, devils. Students of the occult will endorse the truth of Dekker's information :

I'll thus much tell thee.

Thou never art so

[distant

From an evil spirit but that thy oaths,
Curses and blasphemies pull him to thine elbow.
Thou never tell'st a lie but that a devil
Is within hearing it. Thy evil purposes

Are ever haunted, but when they come to act
He's then within thee.

(Witch of Edmonton) 1658. In the reign of James I players were forbidden under a penalty of £10 to introduce any profane allusions to the Deity. The sublime terms in which the theme is invariably handled would, however, lead one to suppose that never was there the slightest occasion for such a regulation.

Prosper thou Great Existence my endeavours. as they religiously are undertaken and distant 1 Spanish Curate. II, 2. 1622-1647.

2 IV. 1. 1654.