212 BACON 



of good, in describing the nature of good, considers it either as 

 simple or compounded, and either as to the kinds or degrees 

 thereof. In the latter of these, the Christian faith has at length 

 abolished those infinite disputes and speculations as to the su- 

 preme degree of good, called happiness, blessedness, or the 

 " summum bonum," which was a kind of heathen theology. 

 For, as Aristotle said, " Youth might be happy, though only in 

 hope " \f so, according to the direction of faith, we must 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, " Vere magnum habere fragilitatem hominis, securita- 

 tem Dei," 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 beau- 

 tifully and according to the life, in several pieces exactly repre- 

 senting the form of virtue and duty their order, kinds, rela- 

 tions, 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 compara- 

 tive good, they have not been wanting, but appointed three 

 orders thereof they have compared contemplative and active 

 life together ; h distinguished between virtue with reluctance, 

 and virtue secured and confirmed ; represented the conflict be- 

 twixt 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 no- 

 tions 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 sub- 

 sequent inquiries, especially if they had consulted the nature of 

 things, as well as moral axioms, they would have shortened 



