88 The Advancement of Learning 



for I see sometimes the profounder sort of wits in handling 

 some particular argument will now and then draw a bucket 

 of water out of this well for their present use; but the 

 spring-head thereof seemeth to me not to have been visited ; 

 being of so excellent use, both for the disclosing of nature, 

 and the abridgment of art. 



I. This science being therefore first placed as a common 

 parent, like unto Berecynthia, which had so much heavenly 

 issue, 



Omnes Coelicolas, omnes supera alta tenentes/ 



we may return to the former distribution of the three 

 philosophies, divine, natural, and human. 



And as concerning divine philosophy or natural theology, 

 it is that knowledge or rudiment of knowledge concerning 

 God, which may be obtained by the contemplation of His 

 creatures; which knowledge may be truly termed divine in 

 respect of the object, and natural in respect of the light. 

 The bounds of this knowledge are, that it sufficeth to con- 

 vince atheism, but not to inform religion: and therefore 

 there was never miracle wrought by God to convert an 

 atheist, because the light of nature might have led him to 

 confess a God : but miracles have been wrought to convert 

 idolators and the superstitious, because no Ught of nature 

 extendeth to declare the will and true worship of God. 

 For as all works do show forth the power and skill of the 

 workman, and not his image; so it is of the works of God, 

 which do show the omnipotency and wisdom of the Maker, 

 but not His image: and therefore therein the heathen 

 opinion diff ereth from the sacred truth ; for they supposed 

 the world to be the image of God, and man to be an exact 

 or compendious image of the world,^ but the Scriptures 

 never vouchsafe to attribute to the world that honour, as to 

 be the image of God, but only the work of His hands ' ^ 

 neither do they speak of any other image of God, but man: 

 wherefore by the contemplation of nature to induce and 



^ Virg. ^n. vi. 787. 



* Mt/c/)(5A:o(ryLios — a favourite dogma with Paracelsus, who divided 

 the body of man according to the cardinaJ points of the world. But 

 Bacon is perhaps referring to the Platonists in the first part of the 

 sentence. 



» Ps. viii. 3. 



