308 ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING 



put ourselves in the state of minors, and think of no other 

 felicity, but that founded in hope. Being, therefore, thus 

 delivered from this ostentatious heaven of the heathens, 

 who, following Seneca, &quot;Vere magnum habere fragilitatem 

 hominis, securitatem Dei,&quot; e exaggerated the perfectibility 

 of man s nature we may, with less offence to truth and 

 sobriety, receive much of what they deliver about the 

 image of good. As for the nature of positive and simple 

 good, they have certainly drawn it beautifully and accord 

 ing to the life, in several pieces exactly representing the 

 form of virtue and duty their order, kinds, relations, parts, 

 subjects, provinces, actions, and dispensations. And all this 

 they have recommended and insinuated to the mind with 

 great vivacity and subtilty of argument, as well as sweet 

 ness of persuasion, at the same time faithfully guarding, 

 as much as was possible by words, against depraved and 

 popular errors and insults. And in deducing the nature of 

 comparative good they have not been wanting, but ap 

 pointed three orders thereof they have compared contem 

 plative and active life together; 9 distinguished between 

 virtue with reluctance, and virtue secured and confirmed; 

 represented the conflict between honor and advantage; 

 balanced the virtues, to show which overweighed, and the 

 like so that this part of the image of good is already nobly 

 executed; and herein the ancients have shown wonderful 

 abilities. Yet the pious and strenuous diligence of the 

 divines, exercised in weighing and determining studies, 

 moral virtues, cases of conscience, and fixing the bounds 

 of sin, have greatly exceeded them. But if the philoso 

 phers, before they descended to the popular and received 

 notions of virtue and vice, pain and pleasure, etc., had 

 dwelt longer upon discovering the roots and fibres of good 

 and evil, they would, doubtless, have thus gained great 

 light to their subsequent inquiries, especially if they had 

 consulted the nature of things, as well as moral axioms, 



8 Epist. 53, 12. 9 See Arist. Eth. Nic. i. 3, sq. 



