who tended to the same end, but in a more dark | I may condemn with like reason as Machiavel and dissembling manner, as Tacitus saith of him, "Occultior, non melior," wherein Sallust concurreth, "ore probo, animo inverecundo," made it his design, by infinite secret engines to cast the state into an absolute anarchy and confusion, that the state might cast itself into his arms for necessity and protection, and so the sovereign power be put upon him, and he never seen in it: and when he had brought it, as he thought, to that point, when he was chosen consul alone, as never any was, yet he could make no great matter of it, because men understood him not; but was fain, in the end, to go the beaten track of getting arms into his hands, by colour of the doubt of Cæsar's designs: so tedious, casual, and unfortunate are these deep dissimulations: whereof, it seemeth, Tacitus made his judgment, that they were a cunning of an inferior form in regard of true policy; attributing the one to Augustus, the other to Tiberius; where, speaking of Livia, he saith," Et cum artibus mariti simulatione filii bene composita:" for surely the continual habit of dissimulation is but a weak and sluggish cunning, and not greatly politic.

Another precept of this architecture of fortune is, to accustom our minds to judge of the proportion or value of things, as they conduce and are material to our particular ends; and that to do substantially, and not superficially. For we shall find the logical part, as I may term it, of some men's minds good, but the mathematical part erroneous; that is, they can well judge of consequences, but not of proportions and comparasons, preferring things of show and sense before things of substance and effect. So some fall in love with access to princes, others with popular fame and applause, supposing they are things of great purchase: when in many cases they are but matters of envy, peril, and impediment.

So some measure things according to the labour and difficulty, or assiduity, which are spent about them; and think, if they be ever moving, that they must needs advance and proceed: as Cæsar saith in a despising manner of Cato the Second, when he describeth how laborious and indefatigable he was to no great purpose; "Hæc omnia magno studio agebat." So in most things men are ready to abuse themselves in thinking the greatest means to be best, when it should be the fittest.

As for the true marshalling of men's pursuits towards their fortune, as they are more or less material, I hold them to stand thus: first the amendment of their own minds; for the remove of the impediments of the mind will sooner clear the passages of fortune than the obtaining fortune will remove the impediments of the mind. In the second place I set down wealth and means, which I know most men would have placed first; because of the general use which it beareth to wards all variety of occasions: but that opinion,

doth that other, that moneys were the sinews of the wars; whereas, saith he, the true sinews of the wars are the sinews of men's arms, that is, a valiant, populous, and military nation: and he voucheth aptly the authority of Solon, who, when Croesus showed him his treasury of gold, said to him, that if another came that had better iron, he would be master of his gold. In like manner it may be truly affirmed, that it is not moneys that are the sinews of fortune, but it is the sinews and steel of men's minds, wit, courage, audacity, resolution, temper, industry, and the like. In the third place I set down reputation, because of the peremptory tides and currents it hath; which, if they be not taken in their due time, are seldom recovered, it being extreme hard to play an aftergame of reputation. And lastly, I place honour, which is more easily won by any of the other three, much more by all, than any of them can be purchased by honour. To conclude this precept, as there is order and priority in matter, so is there in time, the preposterous placing whereof is one of the commonest errors; while men fly to their ends when they should intend their beginnings, and do not take things in order of time as they come on, but marshal them according to greatness, and not according to instance; not observing the good precept, “ Quod nunc instat agamus."

Another precept of this knowledge is, not to embrace any matters which do occupy too great a quantity of time, but to have that sounding in a man's ears, "Sed fugit interea, fugit irreparabile tempus:" and that is the cause why those which take their course of rising by professions of burden, as lawyers, orators, painful divines, and the like, are not commonly so politic for their own fortunes, otherwise than in their ordinary way, because they want time to learn particulars, to wait occasions, and to devise plots.

Another precept of this knowledge is, to imitate nature, which doth nothing in vain; which surely a man may do if he do well interlace his business, and bend not his mind too much upon that which he principally intendeth. For a man ought in every particular action so to carry the motions of his mind, and so to have one thing under another, as if he cannot have that he seeketh in the best degree, yet to have it in a second, or so in a third; and if he can have no part of that which he purposed, yet to turn the use of it t> somewhat else; and if he cannot make any thing of it for the present, yet to make it as a seed of somewhat in time to come; and if he can contrive no effect or substance from it, yet to win some good opinion by it, or the like. So that he should exact account of himself of every action, to reap somewhat, and not to stand amazed and confused if he fail of that he chiefly meant: for nothing is more impolitic than to mind actions wholly one by one; for he that doth so leeseth infinite occa

compensations and satisfactions are good to be used, but never good to be purposed. And lastly, it is not amiss for men, in their race toward their fortune, to cool themselves a little with that conceit which is elegantly expressed by the Emperor Charles the Fifth, in his instructions to the king, his son, that fortune hath somewhat of the nature of a woman, that if she be too much wooed, she is the farther off." But this last is but a remedy for those whose tastes are corrupted: let men rather build upon that foundation which is as a corner-stone of divinity and philosophy, wherein they join close, namely, that same "Primum quærite." For divinity saith, "Primum quærite regnum Dei, et ista omnia adjicientur vobis:" and philosophy saith," Primum quærite bona animi, cætera aut aderunt, aut non oberunt." And although the human foundation hath somewhat of the sands, as we see in M. Brutus, when he brake forth into that speech,

"Te colui, virtus, ut rem; ast tu nomen inane es;"

yet the divine foundation is upon the rock. But this may serve for a taste of that knowledge which

I noted as deficient.

Concerning Government, it is a part of knowledge secret and retired, in both these respects in which things are deemed secret; for some things are secret because they are hard to know, and some because they are not fit to utter. We see all governments are obscure and invisible :

are derived but as streams: and like as waters do

riety of their intelligences, the wisdom of their observations, and the height of their station where they keep sentinel, in great part clear and transparent. Wherefore, considering that I write to a king that is a master of this science, and is so well assisted, I think it decent to pass over this part in silence, as willing to obtain the certificate which one of the ancient philosophers aspired unto; who being silent, when others contended to make demonstration of their abilities by speech, desired it might be certified for his part, "that there was one that knew how to hold his peace." Notwithstanding, for the more public part of government, which is Laws, I think good to note only one deficiency; which is, that all those which have written of laws, have written either as philosophers or as lawyers, and none as statesmen. As for the philosophers, they make imaginary laws for imaginary commonwealths; and their discourses are as the stars, which give little light, because they are so high. For the lawyers, they write according to the states where they live, what is received law, and not what ought to be law for the wisdom of a lawmaker is one, and of a lawyer is another. For there are in nature certain fountains of justice, whence all civil laws take tinctures and tastes from the soils through which they run, so do civil laws vary according to the regions and governments where they are planted, though they proceed from the same fountains. Again, the wisdom of a lawmaker consisteth not only in a platform of justice, but in the application thereof; taking into consideration by what means laws may be made certain, and what are the causes and remedies of the doubtfulness and uncertainty of law; by what means laws may be made apt and easy to be executed, and what are the impediments and remedies in the execution of laws; what influence laws touching private right of meum and tuum have into the public state, and how they may be made apt and agreeable; how laws are to be penned and delivered, whether in texts or in acts, brief or large, with preambles, or without; how they are to be pruned and reformed from time to time, and what is the best means to keep them from being too vast in volumes, or too full of multiplicity and But, contrariwise, in the governors toward the crossness; how they are to be expounded, when governed, all things ought, as far as the frailty of upon causes emergent and judicially discussed, man permitteth, to be manifest and revealed. For and when upon responses and conferences touchso it is expressed in the Scriptures touching the ing general points or questions; how they are to government of God, that this globe, which seem- be pressed, rigorously or tenderly; how they are eth to us a dark and shady body, is in the view to be mitigated by equity and good conscience, of God as crystal: "Et in conspectu sedis tan- and whether discretion and strict law are to be quam mare vitreum simile crystallo." So unto mingled in the same courts, or kept apart in seveprinces and states, especially towards wise se- ral courts; again, how the practice, profession, nates and councils, the natures and dispositions and erudition of law is to be censured and goof the people, their conditions and necessities, verned; and many other points touching the adtheir factions and combinations, their animosities ministration, and, as I may term it, animation of and discontents, ought to be, in regard of the va- laws. Upon which I insist the less, because I

"Totamque infusa per artus

Mens agitat molem, et magno se corpore miscet." Such is the description of governments. We see the government of God over the world is hidden, insomuch as it seemeth to participate of much irregularity and confusion: the government of the soul in moving the body is inward and profound, and the passages thereof hardly to be reduced to demonstration. Again, the wisdom of antiquity, (the shadows whereof are in the poets,) in the description of torments and pains, next unto the crime of rebellion, which was the giants' offence, doth detest the offence of futility, as in Sisyphus and Tantalus. But this was meant of particulars: nevertheless even unto the general rules and discourses of policy and government there is due a reverent and reserved handling.

purpose, if God give me leave, (having begun a | prehension of them, they shall make that ancient work of this nature in aphorisms,) to propound it and patient request, "Verbera, sed audi;" let hereafter, noting it in the mean time for deficient. men reprehend them, so they observe and weigh And for your majesty's laws of England, I could say much of their dignity, and somewhat of their defect; but they cannot but excel the civil laws in fitness for the government: for the civil law was "non hos quæsitum munus in usus ;" it was not made for the countries which it governeth: hereof I cease to speak, because I will not intermingle matter of action with matter of general learning.

them for the appeal is lawful, though it may be it shall not be needful, from the first cogitations of men to their second, and from the nearer times to the times farther off. Now let us come to that learning, which both the former times were not so blessed as to know, sacred and inspired Divinity, the sabbath and port of all men's labours and peregrinations.

THE prerogative of God extendeth as well to the reason as to the will of man; so that as we

in our will, so we are to believe his word, though we find a reluctation in our reason. For if we believe only that which is agreeable to our sense, we give consent to the matter, and not to the author; which is no more than we would do towards a suspected and discredited witness; but that faith which was accounted to Abraham for righteousness was of such a point as whereat Sarah laughed, who therein was an image of natural reason.

THUS have I concluded this portion of learning touching civil knowedge; and with civil know-are to obey his law, though we find a reluctation ledge have concluded human philosophy; and with human philosophy, philosophy in general. And being now at some pause, looking back into that I have passed through, this writing seemeth to me, “si nunquam fallit imago" (as far as a man can judge of his own work,) not much better than that noise or sound which musicians make while they are tuning their instruments; which is nothing pleasant to hear, but yet is a cause why the music is sweeter afterwards: so have I been content to tune the instruments of the muses, that Howbeit, if we will truly consider it, more they may play that have better hands. And sure-worthy it is to believe than to know as we now ly, when I set before me the condition of these know. For in knowledge man's mind suffereth times, in which learning hath made her third from sense; but in belief it suffereth from spirit, visitation or circuit in all the qualities thereof-as such one as it holdeth for more authorized than the excellency and vivacity of the wits of this itself, and so suffereth from the worthier agent. age; the noble helps and lights which we have Otherwise it is of the state of man glorified; for by the travails of ancient writers; the art of print- then faith shall cease, and we shall know as we ing, which communicateth books to men of all are known. fortunes; the openness of the world by navigation, which hath disclosed multitudes of experiments, and a mass of natural history; the leisure wherewith these times abound, not employing men so generally in civil business, as the states of Græcia did, in respect of their popularity, and the states of Rome, in respect of the greatness of their monarchy; the present disposition of these times at this instant to peace; the consumption of all that ever can be said in controversies of religion, which have so much diverted men from other sciences; the perfection of your majesty's learning, which as a phoenix may call whole vollies of wits to follow you; and the inseparable propriety of time, which is ever more and more to disclose truth-I cannot but be raised to this persuasion, that this third period of time will far surpass that of the Grecian and Roman learning: only if men will know their own strength, and their own weakness both; and take one from the other, light of invention, and not fire of contradiction; and esteem of the inquisition of truth as of an enterprise, and not as of a quality or ornament; and employ wit and magnificence to things of worth and excellency, and not to things vulgar and of popular estimation. As for my labours, if any man shall please himself or others in the re

66

Wherefore we conclude that sacred Theology, (which in our idiom we call Divinity,) is grounded only upon the word and oracle of God, and not upon the light of nature: for it is written, "Cœli enarrant gloriam Dei ;" but it is not written, "Cœli enarrant voluntatem Dei:" but of that it is said, " Ad legem et testimonium: si non fecerint secundum verbum istud," &c. This holdeth not only in those points of faith which concern the great mysteries of the Deity, of the creation, of the redemption, but likewise those which concern the law moral truly interpreted: Love your enemies: do good to them that hate you; be like to your heavenly Father, that suffereth his rain to fall upon the just and unjust. To this it ought to be applauded, "Nec vox hominum sonat:" it is a voice beyond the light of nature. So we see the heathen poets, when they fall upon a libertine passion, do still expostulate with laws and moralities, as if they were opposite and malignant to nature: "Et quod natura remittit, invida jura negant." So said Dendamis the Indian unto Alexander's messengers, 66 That he had heard somewhat of Pythagoras, and some other of the wise men of Græcia, and that he held them for excellent men: but that they had a fault, which was, that they had in too great reverence and

veneration a thing they called law and manners." | and exempted from examination of reason, it is So it must be confessed, that a great part of the law moral is of that perfection, whereunto the light of nature cannot aspire: how then is it that man is said to have, by the light and law of nature, some notions and conceits of virtue and vice, justice and wrong, good and evil? Thus, because the light of nature is used in two several senses; the one, that which springeth from reason, sense, induction, argument, according to the laws of heaven and earth; the other, that which is imprinted upon the spirit of man by an inward instinct, according to the law of conscience, which is a sparkle of the purity of his first estate in which latter sense only he is participant of some light and discerning touching the perfection of the moral law: but how? sufficient to check the vice, but not to inform the duty. So then the doctrine of religion, as well moral as mystical, is not to be attained but by inspiration and revelation from God.

:

The use, notwithstanding, of reason in spiritual things, and the latitude thereof, is very great and general for it is not for nothing that the apostle calleth religion our reasonable service of God: insomuch as the very ceremonies and figures of the old law were full of reason and signification, much more than the ceremonies of idolatry and magic, that are full of non-significants and surd characters. But most especially the Christian faith, as in all things, so in this deserveth to be highly magnified; holding and preserving the golden mediocrity in this point between the law of the heathen and the law of Mahomet, which have embraced the two extremes. For the religion of the heathen had no constant belief or confession, but left all to the liberty of argument; and the religion of Mahomet, on the other side, interdicteth argument altogether: the one having the very face of error, and the other of imposture: whereas the faith doth both admit and reject disputation with difference.

then permitted unto us to make derivations and inferences from, and according to the analogy of them, for our better direction. In nature this holdeth not; for both the principles are examinable by induction, though not by a medium or syllogism; and besides, those principles or first positions have no discordance with that reason which draweth down and deduceth the inferior positions. But yet it holdeth not in religion alone, but in many knowledges, both of greater and smaller nature, namely, wherein there are not only posita but placita; for in such there can be no use of absolute reason: we see it familiarly in games of wit, as chess, or the like: the draughts and first laws of the game are positive, but how? merely ad placitum, and not examinable by reason; but then how to direct our play thereupon with best advantage to win the game, is artificial and rational. So in human laws, there be many grounds and maxims which are placita juris, positive upon authority, and not upon reason, and therefore not to be disputed: but what is most just, not absolutely but relatively, and according to those maxims, that affordeth a long field of disputation. Such therefore is that secondary reason, which hath place in divinity, which is grounded upon the placets of God.

Here therefore I note this deficiency, that there hath not been, to my understanding, sufficiently inquired and handled the true limits and use of reason in spiritual things, as a kind of divine dialectic: which for that it is not done, it seemeth to me a thing usual, by pretext of true conceiving that which is revealed, to search and mine into that which is not revealed; and by pretext of enucleating inferences and contradictories, to examine that which is positive: the one sort falling into the error of Nicodemus, demanding to have things made more sensible than it pleaseth God to reveal them, "Quomodo possit homo nasci cum sit senex ?" the other sort into the error of the disciples, which were scandalized at a show of contradiction, “Quid est hoc quod dicit nobis? Modicum et non videbitis me; et iterum modicum et videbitis me," &c.

The use of human reason in religion is of two sorts: the former, in the conception and apprehension of the mysteries of God to us revealed; the other, in the inferring and deriving of doctrine and direction thereupon. The former ex- Upon this I have insisted the more, in regard tendeth to the mysteries themselves; but how? of the great and blessed use thereof; for this by way of illustration, and not by way of argu- point, well laboured and defined of, would in my ment: the latter consisteth indeed of probation judgment be an opiate to stay and bridle not only and argument. In the former, we see, God the vanity of curious speculations, wherewith the vouchsafeth to descend to our capacity, in the ex-schools labour, but the fury of controversies, pressing of his mysteries in sort as may be sensible unto us; and doth graft his revelations and holy doctrine upon the notions of our reason, and applieth his inspirations to open our understanding, as the form of the key to the ward of the lock for the latter, there is allowed us a use of reason and argument, secondary and respective, although not original and absolute. For after the articles and principles of religion are placed

wherewith the church laboureth. For it cannot but open men's eyes, to see that many controversies do merely pertain to that which is either not revealed, or positive; and that many others do grow upon weak and obscure inferences or derivations: which latter sort, if men would revive the blessed style of that great doctor of the Gentiles, would be carried thus, "Ego, non Dominus;" and again, "Secundum consilium meum,”