28 The Advancement of Learning 



and adored the deceiving and deformed images which the 

 unequal mirror of their own minds, or a few received 

 authors or principles did represent unto them. And thus 

 much for the second disease of learning. 



8. For the third vice or disease of learning, which con- 

 cerneth deceit or untruth, it is of all the rest the foulest ; as 

 that which doth destroy the essential form of knowledge, 

 which is nothing but a representation of truth: for the 

 truth of being and the truth of knowing are one, differing 

 no more than the direct beam and the beam reflected. 

 This vice therefore brancheth itself into two sorts; de- 

 light in deceiving, and aptness to be deceived; imposture 

 and credulity; which, although they appear to be of a 

 diverse nature, the one seeming to proceed of cunning and 

 the other of simplicity, yet certainly they do for the most 

 part concur: for, as the verse noteth, 



Percontatorem fugito, nam garrulus idem est,* 

 an inquisitive man is a prattler; so, upon the like reason 

 a credulous man is a deceiver : as we see it in fame, that he 

 that will easily believe rumours, will as easily augment 

 rumours, and add somewhat to them of his own; which 

 Tacitus wisely noteth, when he saith, Fingunt simul credunt- 

 qiie : ^ so great an affinity hath fiction and beUef. 



9. This facility of credit and accepting or admitting things 

 weakly authorised or warranted, is of two kinds according 

 to the subject : for it is either a behef of history (as ^ the 

 lawyers speak, matter of fact) ; or else of matter of art and 

 opinion. As to the former, we see the experience and in- 

 convenience of this error in ecclesiastical history; which 

 hath too easily received and registered reports and nar- 

 rations of miracles wrought by martyrs, hermits, or 

 monks of the desert, and other holy men, and their relics, 

 shrines, chapels, and images: which though they had a 

 passage for a time by the ignorance of the people, the super- 

 stitious simplicity of some, and the politic toleration of 

 others holding them but as divine poesies; yet after a period 

 of time, when the mist began to clear up, they grew to be 

 esteemed but as old wives' fables, impostures of the clergy, 

 illusions of spirits, and badges of Antichrist, to the great 

 scandal and detriment of religion. 



» Hor. Ep. I. xviii. 69. • Tac. HisU i. 51. 



• I have here followed the reading of edition 1605. 



