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. 



1 8. 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 absit invidia 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 



. of 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- 



ivas. vinity which had been written since the 

 Apostles times. 



19. The matter informed by divinity is of two kinds; 



