214 Bacon 



but the tares may not be pulled up from the corn in the 

 field. 1 So as it is a thing of great use well to define what, 

 and of what latitude those points are, which do make men 

 merely aliens and disincorporate from the Church of God. 



For the obtaining of the information, it resteth upon 

 the true and sound interpretation of the Scriptures, which 

 are the fountains of the water of life. The interpretations 

 of the Scriptures are of two sorts ; methodical, and solute or 

 at large. For this divine water, 2 which excelleth so much 

 that of Jacob s Well, is drawn forth much in the same kind 

 as natural water useth to be out of wells and fountains; 

 either it is first forced up into a cistern, and from thence 

 fetched and derived for use ; or else it is drawn and received 

 in buckets and vessels immediately where it springeth. 

 The former sort whereof, though it seem to be the more 

 ready, yet in my judgment is more subject to corrupt. 

 This is that method which hath exhibited unto us the 

 scholastical divinity ; whereby divinity hath been reduced 

 into an art, as into a cistern, and the streams of doctrine 

 or positions fetched and derived from thence. 



In this men have sought three things, a summary brevity, 

 a compacted strength, and a complete perfection; whereof 

 the two first they fail to find, and the last they ought not 

 to seek. For as to brevity we see, in all summary methods, 

 while men purpose to abridge, they give cause to dilate. 

 For the sum or abridgment by contraction becometh 

 obscure ; the obscurity requireth exposition, and the expo 

 sition is diduced into large commentaries, or into common 

 places and titles, which grow to be more vast than the 

 original writings, whence the sum was at first extracted. 

 So, we see, the volumes of the schoolmen are greater much 

 than the first writings of the fathers, whence the Master 

 of the Sentences 3 made his sum or collection. So, in like 

 manner, the volumes of the modern doctors of the civil 



1 Matth. xiii. 29. a Joh. iv. 13, 14. 



3 Peter Lombard received this name after writing a work en 

 titled &quot; The Sentences&quot;; a summary of Theology in four Books. 

 The object of the work was the settlement of all disputed doctrines 

 by a collection of sentences from the Fathers. It is perhaps super 

 fluous to add that the work has not as yet fulfilled its object. Still 

 he deeply affected Theology, for he laid by it the foundations of the 

 Scholastic Philosophy. He was born at the beginning of the twelfth 

 century; Bishop of Paris 1159; died 1164. 



