256 OF THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING, [XXV. 5. 
syllogism ;. and besides, those principles or first positions 
have no discordance with that reason which draweth down 
and deduceth the inferior positions. But yet it holdeth 
not in religion alone, but in many knowledges, both of 
greater and smaller nature, namely, wherein there are not 
only postfa but placifa; for in such there can be no use 
of absolute reason. We see it familiarly in games of wit, 
as chess, or the like. The draughts and first laws of the 
game are positive, but how? merely ad placifum, and not 
examinable by reason; but then how to direct our play 
thereupon with best advantage to win the game, is arti- 
ficial and rational. So in human laws there be many 
grounds and maxims which are p/acz/a juris, positive upon 
authority, and not upon reason, and therefore not to be 
disputed: but what is most just, not absolutely but rela- 
tively, and according to those maxims, that affordeth a 
long field of disputation. Such therefore is that second- 
ary reason, which hath place in divinity, which is grounded 
upon the dlace/s of God. 
6. Here therefore I note this deficience, that there hath 
De usu legit- NOt been, to my understanding, sufficiently 
imo rationis inquired and handled the true limits and use 
humane in of reason in spiritual things, as a kind of 
divinis, divine dialectic: which for that it is not done, 
it seemeth to me a thing usual, by pretext of true con- 
ceiving that which is revealed, to search and mine into 
that which is not revealed; and by pretext of enucleating 
inferences and contradictories, to examine that which is 
positive. The one sort falling into the error of Nicodemus, 
demanding to have things made more sensible than it 
pleaseth God to reveal them, Quomodo posstt homo nasct 
cum stt senex ? ‘The other sort into the error of the dis- 
ciples, which were scandalized at a show of contradiction, 
