صور الصفحة
PDF
النشر الإلكتروني

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 vaft in volumes, or too full of multiplicity and croffness; how they are to be expounded, when upon causes emergent and judicially difcuffed, and when upon refponfes and conferences touching general points or questions; how they are to be pressed, rigorously or tenderly; how they are to be mitigated by equity and good conscience, and whether discretion and ftrict Law are to be mingled in the fame Courts, or kept apart in feveral Courts; again, how the practice, profeffion, and erudition of Law is to be cenfured and governed; and many other points touching the administration, and, as I may term it, animation of Laws. Upon which I infift the lefs, because I purpose, if God give me leave, (having begun a work of this Nature in Aphorifms,) to propound it hereafter, noting it in the mean time for deficient.

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 quæfitum munus in ufus; 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.

[graphic]

HUS have I concluded this portion of learning touching Civil knowledge; and with Civil knowledge have concluded Human Philofophy; and with Human Philofophy, Philofophy in General. And being now at some paufe, looking back into that I have paffed through, this writing feemeth to me, fi nunquam fallit Imago (as far as a man can judge of his own work), not much better than that noise or found which Muficians make while they are tuning their Inftruments; which is nothing pleasant to hear, but yet is a caufe why the Mufic is fweeter afterwards: fo have I been content to, tune the Inftruments of the Mufes, that they may play that have better hands. And furely, when I fet before me the condition of these times, in which learning hath made her third vifitation or circuit in all the qualities thereof-as the excellency and vivacity of the wits of this age; the noble helps and lights which we have by the travails of ancient writers; the Art of Printing, which communicateth Books to men of all 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 fo generally in civil bufinefs, as the States of Græcia did, in respect of their popularity, and

the State of Rome, in respect of the greatness of their Monarchy; the present disposition of these times at this inftant to peace; the confumption of all that ever can be faid in controverfies 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 infeparable propriety of Time, which is ever more and more to disclose truth-I cannot but be raised to this perfuafion that this third period of time will far furpafs 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 Inquifition 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 eftimation. As for my labours, if any man fhall please himself or others in the reprehenfion of them, they shall make that ancient and patient request, Verbera, fed audi; let men reprehend them, fo they obferve and weigh them: for the Appeal is lawful, though it may be it fhall 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 fo blessed as to know, Sacred and infpired Divinity, the Sabbath and port of all men's labours and peregrinations.

HE prerogative of GOD extendeth as
well to the reafon as to the will of
Man; so that as we are to obey his
Law, though we find a reluctation in

our will, fo 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 confent to the matter, and not to the Author; which is no more than we would do towards a fufpected and difcredited witnefs; but that faith which was accounted to Abraham for righteoufnefs was of fuch a point as whereat Sarah laughed, who therein was an Image of Natural Reason.

Howbeit, if we will truly confider it, more worthy it is to believe than to know as we now know. For in knowledge man's mind suffereth from sense; but in belief it fuffereth from Spirit, fuch one as it holdeth for more authorised than itself, and fo fuffereth from the worthier Agent. Otherwise it is of the state of man glorified; for then faith fhall ceafe, and we fhall know as we are known.

Wherefore we conclude that facred 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 Coli enarrant gloriam Dei; but it is not written, Cali enarrant voluntatem Dei: but of that it is faid, Ad legem et teftimonium: fi non fecerint fecundum verbum iftud, &c. This holdeth not only in those

[graphic]

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 fuffereth his rain to fall upon the Just and Unjust. To this it ought to be applauded, Nec vox hominem fonat: it is a voice beyond the light of Nature. So we fee the heathen Poets, when they fall upon a libertine paffion, do ftill expoftulate with laws and Moralities, as if they were oppofite and malignant to Nature; Et quod natura remittit, invida Jura negant. So faid Dendamis the Indian unto Alexander's messengers, That he had heard fomewhat of Pythagoras, and some other of the wife 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. So it must be confeffed, 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 faid to have, by the light and Law of Nature, fome Notions and conceits of virtue and vice, juftice 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 Inftinct, according to the Law of conscience, which

« السابقةمتابعة »