LETTERS FROM BIRCH. 393 



overcome, to your majesty by a public epistle, where I 

 speak to you in the hearing of others; yet I thought fit 

 also humbly to seek access for the same, not so much to 

 your person as to your judgment, by these private lines. 



The work, in what colours soever it may be set forth, is 

 no more but a new logic, teaching to invent and judge by 

 induction, as finding syllogism incompetent for sciences of 

 nature ; and thereby to make philosophy and sciences both 

 more true and more active. 



This tending to inlarge the bounds of reason, and to 

 endow man s estate with new value, was no improper obla 

 tion to your majesty, who, of men, is the greatest master 

 of reason and author of beneficence. 



There be two of your council, and one other bishop* of 

 this land, that know I have been about some such work 

 near thirty years f ; so as I made no haste. And the reason 

 why I have published it now, specially being imperfect, is, 

 to speak plainly, because I number my days, and would 

 have it saved. There is another reason of my so doing, 

 which is to try whether I can get help in one intended 

 part of this work, namely, the compiling of a natural and 

 experimental history, which must be the main foundation 

 of a true and active philosophy. 



This work is but a new body of clay whereinto your 

 majesty, by your countenance and protection, may breathe 

 life. And to tell your majesty truly what I think, I ac 

 count your favour may be to this work as much as a 

 hundred years time : for I am persuaded the work will 

 gain upon men s minds in ages, but your gracing it may 

 make it take hold more swiftly; which I would be very 

 glad of, it being a work meant, not for praise or glory, but 

 for practice and the good of men. One thing, I confess, I 

 am ambitious of, with hope, which is, that after these 

 beginnings, and the wheel once set on going, men shall 

 seek more truth out of Christian pens than hitherto they 

 have done out of heathen. I say with hope, because I 

 hear my former book of the Advancement of Learning, is 



* Dr. Lancelot Andrews, Bishop of Winchester. 



t Mr. Chamberlain, in a letter to Sir Dudley Carleton, ambassador at 

 Holland, dated at London, October 28th, 1620, mentions, that Mr. Henry 

 Cuffe, who had been secretary to Robert, Earl of Essex, and executed for being 

 concerned in his treasons, having long since perused this work, gave this cen 

 sure, that &quot; a fool could not have written such a work, and a wise man would 

 not.&quot; And, in another letter, dated February 3, 1620-1, Mr. Chamberlain 

 takes notice, that the king could not forbear sometimes, in reading that book, 

 to say, &quot; that it was like the peace of God, that passeth all understanding.&quot; 



