PREFACE. XIX 



British Museum, and one apparently in Lord Ba 

 con s handwriting. () It is stated in one of the MSS. 

 to have been written before or when Sir Francis 

 Bacon was Solicitor General, (e 1 ) and in the Remains 

 it is entitled, &quot; Confession of Faith, written by Sir 

 Francis Bacon, knight, Viscount St. Albans, about 

 the time he was Solicitor General to our late Sove 

 reign Lord King James.&quot; (d) 



(b) MS. Burch, No. 4263. 



(c) Sloane s, 23, and see in Rawley s observations, ante xiv. 

 where he says, &quot; though he composed the same many years be 

 fore his death,&quot; and the same expression is in the passage from 

 the Opuscula. 



(d)This tract was republished in 1757. A Confession of Faith, 

 written by the Right Honourable Francis Bacon, Lord Verulam, 

 republished with a Preface on the Subject of Authority in Re 

 ligious Matters, and adapted to the Exigency of the present 

 Times. London, printed for W. Owen, at Temple-Bar, 1757, 

 8vo. pp. 26. and in the second volume of Butler s Reminiscences, 

 recently published, in page 232, there is a letter from Dr. Parr 

 containing the following, &quot; You know there is no doubt as to the 

 authenticity of the Confession of Faith, ascribed to Lord Bacon. 

 I am perplexed with it. Was he serious ? I mean serious all 

 through? Does he mean it for a tentamen? What inference 

 would Hume have drawn from it?&quot; And in a manuscript 

 kindly communicated to me by Mr. Barker, the doctor says 

 &quot; that Bacon admitted the received doctrine of the Trinity, is 

 obvious, from the prayer made by him when Chancellor of Eng 

 land, and from various passages of the most unequivocal and 

 emphatical kind in his Confession of Faith.&quot; 



