126 OF THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING. [PAGES 



being endowed with the power of speaking the languages of all 

 those to whom they wished to preach Christianity. 



1. 12. for the plantation of the faith, i.e., to disseminate the 

 doctrines of Christianity. 



1. 13. altogether unlearned, the immediate followers of Christ 

 and first preachers of Christianity possessed no knowledge except 

 such as was miraculously given them by God, ' by inspiration. ' 

 They belonged, mostly, to the lowest classes : some of them being 

 common fishermen. Their natural ignorance, says Bacon, dis 

 played all the more clearly that they were under the direct 

 influence, ' immediate working, ' of God. 



1. 16. counsel, intention. 



1. 17. in the next vicissitude and succession, in the times 

 immediately following. 



1. 20. who was the only learned, i.e., who alone, among the 



postles, was learned. Bacon's argument is that learning must 

 be a good thing, otherwise God would not have employed it in 

 the service of religion. 



1. 21. had his pen most used in, wrote the greater part of. 

 the New Testament, the Christian, as opposed to the Jewish, 

 Scriptures. 



1. 24. fathers, the word is used of those priests of the church 

 whose writings have been accepted as authoritative on points of 

 doctrine. 



1. 26. interdicted, forbidden. The Emperor Julian, who wished 

 to destroy Christianity and to restore the early religion of Rome, 

 issued an edict, A. D. 363, forbidding Christian professors to teach. 

 This indirectly forbade Christians to learn, since they could not 

 conscientiously attend the schools of Pagan teachers. Gibbon, 

 ch. xxiii. 



1. 31. emulation and jealousy, i.e., his zeal for Christianity, and 

 his hatred of anything that might prove a dangerous rival to it. 

 See below, p. 50. 



1. 32. the opinion, the reputation. 



1. 34. humour, caprice. 



1. 35. in that, because. Gregory the First, commonly called 

 'the Great,' was Pope from A.D. 590-604. "It is commonly 

 believed that Pope Gregory the First attacked the temples and 

 mutilated the statues of the city : that by the command of the 

 barbarian the Palatine Library was reduced to ashes, and that 

 the history of Livy was the peculiar mark of his absurd and 

 mischievous fanaticism. The writings of Gregory himself reveal 

 his implacable aversion to the monuments of classic genius, and 

 he points his severest censure against the profane learning of a 

 bishop who studied the Latin poets, and pronounced with the 



