302 BACON 



with Jehu ? What hast thou to do with peace ? Turn, and fol- 

 low me." r For the hearts of most men are not set upon peace, 

 but party. And yet we think proper to place among the things 

 wanting, a discourse upon the degrees of unity in the city of 

 God, as a wholesome and useful undertaking. 



The holy Scriptures having so great a share in the constitu- 

 tion of theology, a principal regard must be had to their inter- 

 pretation. We speak not of the authority of interpreting, estab- 

 lished by the consent of the Church, but of the manner of 

 interpreting, which is either methodical or loose. For the pure 

 waters of divinity are drawn and employed, nearly in the same 

 manner as the natural waters of spring; viz., i. either received 

 in cisterns, and thence derived through different pipes, for the 

 more commodious use of men ; or 2. immediately poured into 

 vessels for present occasions. The former methodical way has 

 produced the scholastic divinity, whereby the doctrine of the- 

 ology is collected into an art, as in a cistern ; and thence dis- 

 tributed around, by the conveyance of axioms and positions. 



But the loose way of interpreting has two excesses : the one 

 supposes such a perfection in the Scriptures, that all philosophy 

 should be'derived from their fountains, as if every other philoso- 

 phy were a profane and heathenish thing. And this distemper 

 principally reigned in the school of Paracelsus, and some 

 others, though originally derived from the rabbis and cabal- 

 ists. But these men fail of their end ; for they do not, by this 

 means, honor the Scriptures as they imagine, but rather debase 

 and pollute them. For they who seek a material heaven, and a 

 material earth, in the word of God, absurdly seek for transitory 

 things among eternal. To look for theology in philosophy is 

 looking for the living among the dead, and to look for philoso- 

 phy in theology is to look for the dead among the living. 



The other excess, in the manner of interpretation, appears, at 

 first sight, just and sober ; yet greatly dishonors the Scriptures, 

 and greatly injures the Church, by explaining the inspired writ- 

 ings in the same manner as human writings are explained. For 

 we must remember, that to God, the author of the Scriptures, 

 those two things lie open which are concealed from men ; the 

 secrets of the heart, and the successions of time. Therefore, as 

 the dictates of Scripture are directed to the heart, and include 

 the vicissitudes of all ages, along with an eternal and certain 

 foreknowledge of all heresies, contradictions, and the mutable 



