Of the Exaltation of Charity

If I rejoiced at the destruction of him who hated me, and lifted up myself when evil found him.

The protestation of Job. To love them that love us is the charity of the Publicans, upon contract of utility: but to be kindly disposed towards our enemies is one of the highest points of the Christian law, and an imitation of divinity. Yet again of this charity there are many degrees. Whereof the first is to forgive our enemies when they repent: and of this there is found even among the more generous kinds of wild beasts some shadow or image: for lions also are said to be no longer savage towards those who yield and prostrate themselves. The second degree is to forgive our enemies though they be more obstinate, and without offerings of reconciliation. The third degree is, not only to accord pardon and grace, but to confer upon them favours and benefits. Nevertheless all these degrees have, or may have, something in them of ostentation, or at least of magnanimity, rather than of pure charity. For when a man feels that virtue is proceeding from him, it may be that he feels a pride in it, and is taking delight more in the fruit of his own virtue than in the welfare and good of his neighbour. But if evil overtake your enemy from elsewhere, and you in the inmost recesses of your heart are grieved and distressed, and feel no touch of joy, as thinking that the day of your revenge and redress has come; — this I account to be the summit and exaltation of Charity.

Of Moderation of Cares

Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.

There ought to be a measure kept in human cares. Else are they both unprofitable, as oppressing the mind and confounding the judgment; and profane, as savouring of a mind which promises to itself a kind of perpetuity in things of this world. For we ought to be creatures of to-day, by reason of the shortness of life, not of to-morrow: but, as he says, seizing the present time: for to-morrow will have its turn and become today: and therefore it is enough if we take thought for the present. Not that moderate cares, whether for a man’s family or for the public or for business committed to his charge, are reprehended. But herein is a twofold excess. The first, when we carry our cares to too great length and into times too far off, as if we could bind divine providence by our arrangements; a thing which even among the Heathen was ever held insolent and unlucky. For it has commonly been seen that those who have attributed much to fortune and held themselves alert and vigilant to use occasions as they present themselves, have enjoyed great prosperity; whereas deep schemers who have trusted to have all things cared for and considered, have been unfortunate. The second kind of excess is, when we dwell on our cares longer than is necessary for just deliberation and decision. For which of us is there who cares only so much as is necessary that he may know what to do, or know that he can do nothing: and does not turn the same things over and over in his mind, and hang uselessly in the same circle of cogitations, till he loses himself in them? Which kind of cares is most adverse both to divine and human considerations.

Of Earthly Hope

Better is the sight of the eyes than the wandering of the desire.

The sense which takes everything simply as it is makes a better mental condition and estate than those imaginations and wanderings of the mind. For it is the nature of the human mind, even in the gravest wits, the moment it receives an impression of anything, to sally forth and spring forward and expect to find everything else in harmony with it: if it be an impression of good, then it is prone to indefinite hope; if of evil, to fear. Whence it is said,

By her own tales is Hope full oft deceived.

and on the other hand,

In doubtful times Fear still forbodes the worst.

In fear however there is some advantage: it prepares endurance and sharpens industry.

The task can show no face that’s strange to me:
Each chance I have pondered, and in thought rehearsed.

But in hope there seems to be no use. For what avails that anticipation of good? If the good turn out less than you hoped for, good though it be, yet because it is not so good, it seems to you more like a loss than a gain, by reason of the overhope. If neither more nor less, but so; the event being equal and answerable to the hope; yet the flower of it having been by that hope already gathered, you find it a stale thing and almost distasteful. If the good be beyond the hope, then no doubt there is a sense of gain: true: yet had it not been better to gain the whole by hoping not at all, than the difference by hoping too little? And such is the effect of hope in prosperity. But in adversity it enervates the true strength of the mind. For matter of hope cannot always be forthcoming; and if it fail, though but for a moment, the whole strength and support of the mind goes with it. Moreover the mind suffers in dignity, when we endure evil only by self-deception and looking another way, and not by fortitude and judgment. And therefore it was an idle fiction of the poets to make Hope the antidote of human diseases, because it mitigates the pain of them; whereas it is in fact an inflammation and exasperation of them rather, multiplying and making them break out afresh. So it is nevertheless, that most men give themselves up entirely to imaginations of hope and these wanderings of the mind, and thankless for the past, scarce attending to the present, ever young, hang merely upon the future. I beheld all that walk under the sun with the next youth that shall rise after him; which is a sore disease and a great madness of the mind. You will ask perhaps if it be not better, when a man knows not what to expect, that he should divine well of the future, and rather hope than distrust, seeing that hope makes the mind more tranquil. Certainly in all delay and expectation to keep the mind tranquil and steadfast by the good government and composure of the same, I hold to be the chief firmament of human life; but such tranquillity as depends upon hope I reject, as light and unsure. Not but it is fit to foresee and presuppose upon sound and sober conjecture good things as well as evil, that we may the better fit our actions to the probable event: only this must be the work of the understanding and judgment, with a just inclination of the feeling. But who is there whose hopes are so ordered that when once he has concluded with himself out of a vigilant and steady consideration of probabilities that better things are coming, he has not dwelt upon the very anticipation of good, and indulged in that kind of thought as In a pleasant dream? And this it is which makes the mind light, frothy, unequal, wandering. Therefore all hope is to be employed upon the life to come in heaven: but here on earth, by how much purer is the sense of things present, without infection or tincture of imagination, by so much wiser and better is the soul.

Long hope to cherish in so short a span
Befits not man.

Of Hypocrites

I will have mercy and not sacrifice.

The ostentation of hypocrites is ever confined to the works of the first table of the law, which prescribes our duties to God. The reason is twofold: both because works of this class have a greater pomp of sanctity, and because they interfere less with their desires. The way to convict a hypocrite therefore is to send him from the works of sacrifice, to the works of mercy. Whence the text: Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, to visit the orphans and widows in their affliction; and that other, He who loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how shall he love God whom he hath not seen? There are some however of a deeper and more inflated hypocrisy, who deceiving themselves, and fancying themselves worthy of a closer conversation with God, neglect the duties of charity towards their neighbour, as inferior matters. By which error the life monastic was, not indeed originated (for the beginning was good), but carried into excess. For it is rightly said that the office of prayer is a great office in the Church; and it is for the service of the Church that there should be companies of men relieved from cares of the world, who may pray to God without ceasing for the state of the Church. But this institution is a near neighbour to that form of hypocrisy which I speak of: nor is the institution itself meant to be condemned; but only those self-exalting spirits to be restrained. For both Enoch, he who walked with God, prophecied, as we know from Jude, and endowed the Church with the fruit of his prophecy; and John the Baptist, whom some would have to be the founder of the life monastic, exercised much ministry both of prophecy and baptism. For it is to those others, who are so officious towards God, that that question is applied: If thow be righteous what givest thou him, or what receiveth he of thine hand? The works of mercy therefore are the works whereby to distinguish hypocrites. With heretics on the contrary it is otherwise: for as hypocrites seek by a pretended holiness towards God to cover their injuries towards men; so heretics seek by a certain moral carriage towards men to make a passage for their blasphemies against God.

Of Impostors

Whether we be beside ourselves, it is to God; or whether we be sober, it is for your cause.

Here is the true image and true temper of a man who has religion deeply seated in his heart, and is God’s faithful workman. His carriage and conversation towards God is full of excess, of zeal, of extasy. Hence groans unspeakable, and exultations, and raptures of spirit, and agonies. His bearing and conversation with men on the contrary is full of mildness and sobriety and appliable demeanour: whence that saying, 1 am become all things to all men, and the like. Contrary it is with hypocrites and impostors: for they in the Church and towards the people set themselves on fire, and are carried as it were out of themselves, and becoming as men inspired with holy furies, they set heaven and earth together. But if a man should look into their times of solitude, and separate meditations, and conversations with God, he would find them not only cold and without life, but full of malice and leaven; sober towards God; beside themselves to the people.

Of the Kinds of Imposture

Avoid profane novelties of terms and oppositions of science falsely so called. Avoid fond and idle fables. Let no man deceive you with high speech.

There are three kinds of speech, and as it were styles of imposture. The first kind is of those who, as soon as they get any subject-matter, straightway make an art of it, fit it with technical terms, reduce all into distinctions, thence educe positions and assertions, and frame oppositions by questions and answers. Hence the rubbish and pother of the schoolmen. The second kind is of those who through vanity of wit, as a kind of holy poets, imagine and invent all variety of stories and examples, for the training and moulding of men’s minds: whence the lives of the fathers, and innumerable figments of the ancient heretics. The third kind is of those who fill everything with mysteries and highsounding phrases, allegories and allusions: which mystic and Gnostic style of discourse a great number of heretics have adopted. Of these kinds, the first catches and entangles man’s sense and understanding, the second allures, the third astonishes: all seduce it.

Of Atheism

The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.

First, he hath said in his heart; it is not said, He hath thought in his heart; that is, it is not so much that he feels it inwardly, as that he wishes to believe it. Because he sees that it would be good for him that there were no God, he strives by all means to persuade himself of it and induce himself to think so; and sets it up as a theme or position or dogma, which he studies to assert and maintain and establish. Nevertheless there remains in him that sparkle of the original light whereby we acknowledge a divinity, to extinguish which utterly, and pluck the instinct out of his heart, he strives mm vain. And therefore it is out of the malice of his will, not out of his natural sense and judgment, that he makes this supposition: as the comic poet says Then came my mind over to my opinion; as though himself and his mind were not one. And so it is true that the Atheist has rather said in his heart than thinks in his heart that there is no God.

Secondly, he hath said it in his heart: he hath not spoken it with his mouth. But note that this is from fear of law and opinion: as one says, It is a hard matter to deny the Gods in a public assembly, but in a familiar conference it is easy enough. For if this restraint were removed, there is no heresy which strives with more zeal to spread and sow and multiply itself, than Atheism. Nor shall you see those who are fallen into this phrensy to breathe and importunately inculcate anything else almost, than speech tending to Atheism; as in Lucretius the Epicurean; who makes his invective against religion almost as the burthen or verse of return to every other subject. The reason appears to be that the Atheist, not being well satisfied in his own mind, tossing to and fro, distrustful of himself, and finding many times his opinion faint within him, desires to have it revived by the assent of others. For it is rightly said that he who is very anxious to approve has opinion to another, himself distrusts at.

Thirdly, he is a fool who has said this in his heart; which is most true: a fool, not only as wanting wisdom in divine matters, but humanly also. For first, you will find those wits which are prone to Atheism to be commonly light and scoffing and rash and insolent: of that composition in short which is most opposed to wisdom and gravity. Secondly, among statesmen, the deeper wits and larger hearts have not made pretence of religion to the people, but have in their private and inward opinion paid respect to it, as those who have attributed most to providence and fortune: while those on the contrary who have ascribed everything to their own arts and industries, and to immediate and apparent causes, and sacrificed (as the prophet says) to their own nets, have been paltry politicians, and mountebanks, and incapable of great actions. Thirdly, in physics likewise I maintain this — that a little natural philosophy and the first entrance into it inclines men’s opinions to Atheism; but on the other hand much natural philosophy and a deeper progress into it brings men’s minds about again to religion. So that Atheism appears to be convicted on all sides of folly and ignorance: and it is truly the saying of fools, that there is no God.

Of Heresies

Ye err, not knowing the Scriptures nor the power of God. This canon is the mother of all canons against heresies. The cause of error is twofold: ignorance of the will of God, and ignorance or superficial consideration of the power of God. The will of God is more revealed through the Scriptures: Search the Scriptures; his power more through his creatures: Behold and consider the creatures. So is the plenitude of God’s power to be asserted, as not to involve any imputation upon his will. So is the goodness of his will to be asserted, as not to imply any derogation of his power. True religion therefore is seated in the mean, between Superstition with superstitious heresies on one side, and Atheism with profane heresies on the other. Superstition, rejecting the light of the Scriptures, and giving itself up to corrupt or apocryphal traditions, and new revelations or false interpretations of the Scriptures, invents and dreams many things concerning the will of God which are astray and alien from the Scriptures. Atheism and Theomachy rebels and mutinies against the power of God; not trusting to his word, which reveals his will, because it does not believe in his power, to whom all things are possible. Now the heresies which spring from this source appear to be more heinous than the rest: for in civil government also it is a more atrocious thing to deny the power and majesty of the prince, than to slander his reputation. But of the heresies which deny the power of God, there are, besides simple atheism, three degrees; and they have all one and the same mystery (for all antichristianism works in a mystery, that is under a shadow of good); namely to discharge the will of God from all imputation of evil. The first degree is of those who set up two equal and contrary principles, at war with one another, one of good the other of ill. The second is of those who think it too injurious to the majesty of God to allow of an active and affirmative principle being set up against him; and therefore reject such boldness; but nevertheless bring in a negative and privative principle in opposition to him. For they suppose it to be the inherent natural and substantive operation of matter itself and the creature, to tend and fall back of itself into confusion and nothingness: not knowing that it is no less the work of omnipotence to make nothing of something, than to make something of nothing. The third degree is of those who limit and restrain the former opinion to human actions only, which partake of sin: which actions they suppose to depend substantively and without any chain of causes upon the inward will and choice of man; and who give a wider range to the knowledge of God than to his power; or rather to that part of God’s power (for knowledge itself is power) whereby he knows, than to that whereby he works and acts; suffering him to foreknow some things as an unconcerned looker on, which he does not predestine and preordain: a notion not unlike the figment which Epicurus introduced into the philosophy of Democritus, to get rid of fate and make room for fortune; namely the sidelong motion of the Atom; which has ever by the wiser sort been accounted a very empty device. But the fact is that whatever does not depend upon God as author and principle, by links and subordinate degrees, the same will be instead of God, and a new principle and kind of usurping God. And therefore that opinion is rightly rejected as treason against the majesty and power of God. And yet for all that it is very truly said that God is not the author of evil; not because he is not author, — but because not of evil.

Of the Church and the Scriptures

Thou shalt protect them in thy tabernacle from the contradiction of tongues.

Contradictions of tongues are found everywhere out of the tabernacle of God: turn which way you will therefore, you will find no end of controversies unless you betake yourself thither. True, you all say — namely to the unity of the Church. But observe. In the tabernacle was the ark, and in the ark was the testimony or tables of the law. Why do you talk to me of the tabernacle, which is the shell; without the testimony, which is the kernel? The tabernacle was ordained for the custody and handing down of the testimony. In like manner to the Church is committed the custody and handing down of the Scriptures: but the soul of the tabernacle is the testimony.

Footnotes

1. I have here merely transcribed the old translation; which seems to me particularly well done, and being rather freer and fuller than the others, may possibly have some of Bacon’s own hand in it. ↩