clvili LIFE OF BACON. 



A parliament was accordingly summoned, and met in 

 April, 1614, when the question, whether the Attorney 

 General was eligible to sit in the house was immediately 

 agitated; and, after debate and search of precedents, it 

 was resolved, that, by reason of his office, he ought not 



trouble or vex your mind. I remember Moses saith of the 

 land of promise, that it was not like the land of Egypt 

 that was watered with a river, but was watered with 

 showers from heaven; whereby I gather, God preferreth 

 sometimes uncertainties before certainties, because they 

 teach a more immediate dependance upon his providence. 

 Sure I am, nil novi accidit vobis. It is no new thing for 

 the greatest kings to be in debt ; and, if a man shall parvis 

 componere magnet, I have seen an Earl of Leicester, a Chan 

 cellor Hatton, an Earl of Essex, and an Earl of Salisbury 

 in debt; and yet was it no manner of diminution to their 

 power or greatness. 



My second prayer is, that your majesty, in respect of 

 the hasty freeing of your estate, would not descend to any 

 means, or degree of means, which carrieth not a symmetry 

 with your majesty and greatness. He is gone from whom 

 those courses did wholly flow. So have your wants and 

 necessities in particular, as it were, hanged up in two 

 tablets before the eyes of your Lords and Commons, to be 

 talked of for four months together; to have all your courses 

 to help yourself in revenue or profit put into printed books, 

 which were wont to be held arcana imperil; to have such 

 worms of aldermen to lend for ten in the hundred upon 

 good assurance, and with such * *, as if it should save the 

 bark of your fortune ; to contract still where might be had 

 the readiest payment, and not the best bargain; to stir a 

 number of projects for your profit, and then to blast them, 

 and leave your majesty nothing but the scandal of them; 

 to pretend an even carriage between your majesty s rights 

 and the ease of the people, and to satisfy neither. These 



