strait in examinations and inquisitions, in swearing men to blanks and generalities, a thing captious and strainable. They think to silence their opponents by forbidding them to preach; but, in such great scarcity of preachers, this is to punish the people, and not them. Instead of fixing both eyes on the supposed evil done by these preachers, ought they not (I mean the bishops) to keep one eye open upon the good that these men do? And when he comes to speak further in detail of the petty molestations and oppressions to which tender spirits had been subjected, a noble spirit of indignation bursts out in the protest, Ira viri non operatur justitiam Dei-The wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God.

On the whole, Bacon's verdict leans clearly to the side of the Puritans. Some may find an explanation of this in Bacon's predilections, and in a puritanical spirit inherited by him from his mother. But this is hardly necessary or probable. Bacon's religious ways by no means satisfied his mother. He was far too remiss for her in the performance of his religious duties, and she finds herself obliged to warn her son Anthony against his brother's general laxity in these matters. Nor is Bacon's love of fervid and powerful preaching sufficient to account for his preference of the Puritan claims, though he unquestionably did respect some of the abler preachers on that side, and even had a good word to say for the inhibited practice of prophesying. But the one sufficient explanation is found in the nature of the dispute, and in his views as a statesman. Here was the great English nation, but newly freed from Roman domination, raised up by Providence to be a bulwark against the despotism of superstition, the natural centre and refuge of all the smaller Protestant States-yet unhappily divided against itself upon points indifferent and trifling, such as the use of gown or surplice, use or disuse of the ring in marriage, the use of music in worship, the rite of confirmation, the

use of the word Priest or Minister, the use of the General Absolution, and the like. In some of these matters the Puritans seemed to Bacon to have reason on their side: but even in others, since the one party held them to be superstitious while the other party could not maintain them to be essential, it seemed to him that they fell within the compass of the Apostle's rule, which is that the stronger do descend unto the weaker. Nor was it an unimportant consideration that to incline to the side of the Puritans, and to assimilate the Church of England to the Reformed churches abroad, seemed likely to be a means of increasing England's political influence; thus might the Church help the State in founding that great Protestant Monarchy of the West which was one of Bacon's constant dreams. For the purpose of gaining an enforced uniformity in such petty matters, to break up the English nation into two hostile religious camps, seemed to Bacon, and must have seemed to many others, not only unbrotherly, but also a grave political error.

Church reform, quite apart from the polemics of the day, seemed to Bacon a natural and desirable thing. That the Church should continue for fifty years in all respects unaltered, so far from seeming to him cause for congratulation, rather gave ground for the gravest apprehension. Time, as his master Machiavelli had taught him, bringeth ever new good and new evil, and is always innovating, so that nothing can remain as it was, except by innovations made to suit the innovations of time. And he continues, putting a question that may well be repeated in modern times, I would only ask why the Civil State should be purged and restored by good and wholesome laws, made every third or fourth year in parliaments assembled, devising remedies as fast as time breedeth mischiefs, and contrariwise the Ecclesiastical State should still continue upon the dregs of time, and receive no alteration now for these five-and-forty years and more? If any man shall

object that, if the like intermission had been used in civil cases also, the error had not been great, surely the wisdom of the kingdom hath been otherwise in experience for three hundred years' space at the least. But if it be said to me that there is a difference between civil causes and ecclesiastical, they may as well tell me that churches and chapels need no reparations, though houses and castles do: whereas commonly, to speak truth, dilapidations of the inward and spiritual edification of the Church of God are in all times as great as the outward and material.1 To the bishops themselves he appeals in the year 1589 to take up the task of Church reform. To my lords the bishops, I say that it is hard for them to avoid blame (in the opinion of an indifferent person) in standing so precisely upon altering nothing. Leges novis legibus non recreatæ acescunt: laws not refreshed with new laws wax sour. Qui mala non permutat in bonis non perseverat : without change of the ill, a man cannot continue the good. To take away abuses, supplanteth not good orders, but establisheth them. Morosa moris retentio res turbulenta est æque ac novitas: a contentious retaining of custom is a turbulent thing, as well as innovation. We have heard of

...

no offers of the bishops of bills in parliament. I pray God to inspire the bishops with a fervent love and care for the people, and that they may not so much urge things in controversy as things out of controversy, which all men confess to be gracious and good."

3

In later days Bacon had become less hopeful or less desirous of Church reform; and among the Means of procuring Unity, described in the Essay of 1625, 3 Reform finds no place. The Essay on Superstition may indeed be quoted as warning us against over-great reverence of 2 Life, Vol. i. p. 87.

1

Life, Vol. iii. p. 105.

3 Essay iii. Mr. Gardiner (Vol. ii. p. 258) thinks that Bacon in later years objected to change because, if it had come at all then, it would have come from the High Churchmen.

traditions which cannot but load the Church; and as reminding us that, as whole meat corrupteth to little worms, so good forms and orders corrupt into a number of petty observances; but, more closely viewed, this Essay exhibits conservative tendencies. For whereas in 1612 it ends with a warning against conservatism, in 1625 it is made to end with a warning against excessive reform. And indeed throughout the Essays there are to be found few or no enforcements of Bacon's favourite maxim that in Church as well as in State a contentious retaining of custom is a turbulent thing. In the impossibility of securing any popular changes in the Church so as to create a real unity, it seemed best to secure the appearance of unity by rousing a fear common to all, and by putting prominently forward the danger threatening England from Roman superstition, as the great cause why the nation should rally round the National Church. It is probable that Bacon also foresaw the reluctance of the King to any effectual reform, the impossibility of satisfying either party in the Church, and the unpopularity awaiting the Reformer, whoever he might be.1 We have seen above that he deprecated the waste of time and energy over theological disputes: he had gladly believed that. the material for such controversies had been now quite exhausted, so that Science might secure her share of attention. With these feelings, it is not surprising that as Bacon, out of deference to the King, gave up his dreams of war and colonisation, and an aggressive Protestant Policy, so also he dropped his advocacy of Church reform. It was so much easier to let the Church alone than to sow the seeds of her future amplitude and greatness.

There is certainly a noticeable increase in the bitter

1 Mr. Gardiner (History from the Accession &c., Vol. i. p. 183) thinks Bacon may have slightly alienated the King at first by his proposals for the pacification of the Church, which were too statesmanlike for James.'

ness with which Bacon speaks of the Church of Rome. In 1589 he is able to censure those of the Puritan party who think it the true touch-stone to try what is good and holy by measuring what is more or less opposite to the institutions of the Church of Rome. . . . It is very meet that men be aware how they be abused by this opinion, and that they know that it is a consideration of much greater wisdom and sobriety to be well advised whether, in the general demolition of the Church of Rome, there were not (as men's actions are imperfect) some good purged with the bad, rather than to purge the Church, as they pretend, every day anew. Not again in later years can Bacon say a word for the Roman Church. The Essay on Religion, in 1612, is nothing but a protest against the crimes perpetrated in the name of the Roman Superstition; and even in the ampler and graver Essay of 1625, on the Unity of Religion, Bacon can suggest no means for procuring Unity except the damning and sending to hell for ever those facts and opinions that tend to the support of such crimes as Rome had encouraged. It is true that in the Essay on Superstition he finds space for a few additional censures on the Puritanical superstition in avoiding superstition. But all words that might be construed into approval of the Church of Rome, all warnings against excessive recoil from Rome, are carefully avoided. Compare the passage quoted above with the following passage written in 1625; the same thought is expressed, but Superstition is substituted for Rome, lest Rome should seem to be approved: There is a superstition in avoiding superstitions, when men think to do best if they go furthest from the superstition formerly received. Therefore care would be had that (as it fareth in ill purgings) the good be not taken away with the bad; which commonly is done when the people is the reformer.'