. 
264 OF THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING, [XXV. 17. 
the church hath most use: not that I wish men to be 
bold in allegories, or indulgent or light in allusions ; 
but that I do much condemn that interpretation of the 
scripture which is only after the manner as men use to 
interpret a profane book. 
18. In this part touching the exposition of the 
scriptures, I can report no deficience; but by way of 
remembrance this I will add. In perusing books of 
divinity, I find many books of controversies, and many of 
commonplaces and treatises, a mass of positive divinity, as 
it is made an art: a number of sermons and lectures, and 
many prolix commentaries upon the scriptures, with har- 
monies and concordances. But that form of writing in 
divinity which in my judgement is of all others most rich 
and precious, is positive divinity, collected upon particular 
* texts of scriptures in brief observations; not dilated into 
commonplaces, not chasing after controversies, not re- 
duced into method of art; a thing abounding in sermons, 
which will vanish, but defective in books which will re- 
main, and a thing wherein this age excelleth. For I am 
persuaded, and I may speak it with an abstt tnvidia verbo, 
and no ways in derogation of antiquity, but as in a good 
emulation between the vine and the olive, that if the 
choice and best of those observations upon texts of 
scriptures, which have been made dispersedly in sermons 
within this your Majesty’s island of Brittany by the space 
Emanationes ©! these forty years and more (leaving out the 
scriptura-  largeness of exhortations and applications 
rum in doc- thereupon) had been set down in a con- 
trinas posit- tinuance, it had been the best work in di- 
tas, vinity which had been written since the 
Apostles’ times, 
19, The matter informed by divinity is of two kinds; 
