Bacon's Essays, and Wisdom of the AncientsBacon, Francis
Philosophy
Bacon's Essays, and Wisdom of the Ancients
Bacon, Francis
Bacon, Francis, 1561-1626; English essays -- Early modern, 1500-1700; Mythology, Classical
Concerning the bounds of unity, the true placing of them importeth
exceedingly. There appear to be two extremes; for to certain zealots
all speech of pacification is odious. “Is it peace, Jehu?”—“What hast
thou to do with peace? turn thee behind me.”[74] Peace is not the
matter, but following, and party. Contrariwise, certain Laodiceans[75]
and lukewarm persons think they may accommodate points of religion by
middle ways, and taking part of both, and witty reconcilements, as if
they would make an arbitrament between God and man. Both these extremes
are to be avoided; which will be done if the league of Christians,
penned by our Saviour himself, were in the two cross clauses thereof
soundly and plainly expounded: “He that is not with us is against
us;”[76] and again, “He that is not against us, is with us;” that is,
if the points fundamental, and of substance in religion, were truly
discerned and distinguished from points not merely of faith, but of
opinion, order, or good intention. This is a thing may seem to many a
matter trivial, and done already; but if it were done less partially,
it would be embraced more generally.
Of this I may give only this advice, according to my small model.
Men ought to take heed of rending God’s church by two kinds of
controversies; the one is, when the matter of the point controverted is
too small and light, not worth the heat and strife about it, kindled
only by contradiction; for, as it is noted by one of the fathers,
“Christ’s coat indeed had no seam, but the church’s vesture was of
divers colors;” whereupon he saith, “In veste varietas sit, scissura
non sit,”[77] they be two things, unity and uniformity; the other is,
when the matter of the point controverted is great, but it is driven
to an over-great subtilty and obscurity, so that it becometh a thing
rather ingenious than substantial. A man that is of judgment and
understanding shall sometimes hear ignorant men differ, and know well
within himself, that those which so differ mean one thing, and yet
they themselves would never agree; and if it come so to pass in that
distance of judgment, which is between man and man, shall we not think
that God above, that knows the heart, doth not discern that frail men,
in some of their contradictions, intend the same thing, and accepteth
of both? The nature of such controversies is excellently expressed by
St. Paul, in the warning and precept that he giveth concerning the
same: “Devita profanas vocum novitates, et oppositiones falsi nominis
scientiæ.”[78] Men create oppositions which are not, and put them
into new terms, so fixed as, whereas the meaning ought to govern the
term, the term in effect governeth the meaning. There be also two
false peaces, or unities; the one, when the peace is grounded but upon
an implicit ignorance; for all colors will agree in the dark; the
other, when it is pieced up upon a direct admission of contraries in
fundamental points; for truth and falsehood, in such things, are like
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