224 OF THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING 



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 artificial 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 relatively, and according to those 

 maxims, that affordeth a long field of disputation. 

 Such therefore is that secondary reason, which hath 

 place in divinity, which is grounded upon the placets 

 of God. 



6. Here therefore I note this deficience, that there 

 De usu it it na th not been, to my understanding, suf- 

 imorationis ficiently inquired and handled the true 

 humanae in limits and use of 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 conceiving that which is revealed, to 

 search and mine into that which is not revealed ; and 

 by pretext of enucleating inferences and contradic 

 tories, 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 

 eenex ? The other sort into the error of the disciples, 

 which were scandalized at a show of contradiction, 

 * Quid est hoc quod dicit nobis ? Modicum, et non 

 videbitis me ; et iterum, modicum, et videbitis me, &c. 



7. Upon this I have insisted the more, in regard of 

 the great and blessed use thereof ; for this point well 

 laboured and defined of would in my judgement be an 

 opiate to stay and bridle not only the vanity of curious 

 speculations, wherewith the schools labour, but the fury 

 of controversies, wherewith the church laboureth. For 

 it cannot but open men s eyes, to see that many contro 

 versies do merely pertain to that which is either not 

 revealed or positive ; and that many others do grow 



