Observations on antimony: Read before the Medical Society of London, and published at their request — John Stuart Mill — John Shaqi
Observations on antimony: Read before the Medical Society of London, and published at their request
John Stuart Mill · en
But, even in those times of ignorance an ecclesiastic arose worthy of a
better age and happier fate. Roger Bacon, undaunted by the terrors of
the church, boldly attempted to stem the torrent of superstition, and
recal the world to truth and sound philosophy. Such of his writings as
yet remain, are composed in a rational, manly stile, void of hypocrisy
and dissimulation. He leads us to examine the works of nature and of art,
chastly distinguishing those from the sacred truths of revelation, and
clearly demonstrating their united operations to be far more wonderful
than the pretended miracles of those who boasted of supernatural
assistance, whom he justly censures as amusing the ignorant with the
fumes of drunkenness, or the ravings of a distempered brain.
The age in which he lived was too much depressed to be roused by his
vigorous efforts; and his laudable attempts to emancipate the christian
world from that slavish ignorance in which it was held, were, for very
obvious reasons, severely censured by the Roman church: he was arraigned,
condemned, and cast into prison, where he was exhausted by a tedious
confinement and severe penance[1], and soon after fell a victim to the
vengeance of his enemies.
The papal tyranny having thus prevailed against the strenuous efforts
of this rational and intelligent philosopher, it was easy, under the
pretence of exalted devotion, to suppress more feeble attempts toward
improvement and reformation.
But those high pretensions to extraordinary sanctity have been so often
used as a cloak, by men of an intriguing spirit, that they are now justly
deemed suspicious; and we need only look into the lives and writings
of the ecclesiastical chymists to be convinced that they were assumed
by them, to cover their ignorance, ambition, and dissolute manners. An
overweening conceit of their own opinions, and an arrogant contempt for
those of others, is, notwithstanding all their pretensions to humility
and self-denial, the genuine characteristic of those hypocritical
writers. Thus we find them extolling themselves to the disparagement of
all mankind. _Ye doctors of physick and surgery_, says Basil Valentine,
_come to me, a religious person, and servant of God, I will shew you what
ye have never seen, I will make manifest to you the way of health and
salvation, which you have not yet known_.[2]