| nature in the Scriptures, otherwise | than in passage, and for application | to man's capacity and to matters | moral or divine" (ut 485-6). If we | take Thomas Sprat at his word, the | Royal Society was founded on | generally similar principles. The | first corruption of knowledge, he | argues, resulted from the Egyptians' | concealment of wisdom "as sacred | Mysteries." The current age of | inquiry benefitted from "the | dissolution of the ABBYES, whereby | their Libraries came forth into the | light, and fell into industrious Mens | hands." Surrounded by the warring | forces of contrary religions (the | society's rooms at Gresham College, | London, were occupied by soldiers in | 1658), the founders of the Royal | Society--according to Sprat's | account--were "invincibly arm'd" not | only against scholastic Catholicism, | but against the "inchantments of | ENTHUSIASM" and "spiritual Frensies" | that sometimes characterized the | Protestant revolutionaries. | | In Bacon's project, there is an | explicit, delineated role for the | study of divinity, which he carefully | separates from his own work. Reason | is at work "in the conception and | apprehension of the mysteries of God | to us revealed" and in "the inferring | and deriving of doctrine and | direction thereupon" (III, 479). In | the first instance reason stirs