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 posita but placita; 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 placitum, 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 placita 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 placets of God. 



6. Here therefore I note this deficience, that there hath 

 Deusu legit- not been, to my understanding, sufficiently 

 imo rationis inquired and handled the true limits and use 

 Humana in o f reason in spiritual things, as a kind of 

 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 possit homo nasci 

 cum sit senex ? The other sort into the error of the dis 

 ciples, which were scandalized at a show of contradiction, 



