Doctrine of this kind is familiar enough to the student of theosophic and cosmogonic speculation. Whether Vane in his foreign travels had fallen in with the writings of Jacob Boehme we cannot say, but the family likeness is strong. The interest of the doctrine for us lies in its application to practical statesmanship by the keenest politician of a time when politicians were keen and strong. That it should have been so applied has been a sore stumbling-block to two classes of men not unfrequently found in alliance, sensational philosophers, and theologians who find the way of salvation in scripture construed as an act of parliament. The man above ordinances, as Vane was called by his contemporaries, [1] was naturally not a favourite with men whom he would have reckoned in bondage to the legal conscience. Baxter’s opinion of him has been already quoted. To the lawyers, calling themselves theologians, of the next century he was even less intelligible. Burnet had ‘sometimes taken pains to see if I could find out his meaning in his words, yet I could never reach it. And since many others {296} have said the same, it may be reasonable to believe that he hid somewhat that was a necessary key to the rest.’ [2] Clarendon had been more modest; when he had read some of his writings and ‘found nothing in them of his usual clearness and ratiocination in his discourse, in which he used much to excel the best of the company he kept’ (the company, we must remember, that called Milton friend), ‘and that in a crowd of very easy words the sense was too hard to find out, I was of opinion that the subject of it was of so delicate a nature that it required another kind of preparation of mind, and perhaps another kind of diet, than men are ordinarily supplied with.’ [3] Hume was superior to such a supposition; ‘This man, so celebrated for his parliamentary talents, and for his capacity in business, has left some writings behind him. They treat all of them of religious subjects and are absolutely unintelligible. No traces of eloquence, even of common sense, appear in them.’ In this language is noticeable a certain resentment common to men of the world and practical philosophers, that a man whom they deem a fool in his philosophy should not be a fool altogether. From his derided theosophy, however, Vane had derived certain practical principles, now of recognised value, which no statesman before him had dreamt of, and which were not less potent when based on religious ideas struggling for articulate utterance, than when stated by the masters of an elegant vocabulary from which God and spirit were excluded. [1] [Amended from “cotemporary”. Tr.] [2] [Burnet, _Own Time_, p. 108, Ed. 1838.] [3] [Clarendon on ‘Creasy’s answer to Stillingfleet,’ as quoted in the _Biographia Britannica_ (art. ‘Vane.’)] LECTURE II.