2 1 2 The Advancement of Learning 



are placita juris, positive upon authority, and not upon 

 reason, and therefore not to be disputed: but what is most 

 just, not absolutely but relatively, and according to those 

 maxims, that affordeth a long field of disputation. Such 

 therefore is that secondary reason, which hath place in 

 divinity, which is grounded upon the placets of God. 



6. Here therefore I note this deficiency, that there hath 

 not been, to my understanding, sufficiently inquired and 

 handled the true limits and use of reason in spiritual things, 

 as a kind of divine dialectic: which for that it is not done, 

 it seemeth to me a thing usual, by pretext of true conceiving 

 that which is revealed, to search and mine into that which 

 is not revealed; and by pretext of enucleating inferences 

 and contradictories, to examine that which is positive: 

 the one sort falling into the error of Nicodemus, demanding 

 to have things made more sensible than it pleaseth God 

 to reveal them, Quomodo possit homo nasci cum sit senex ? ^ 

 the other sort into the error of the disciples, which were 

 scandahzed at a show of contradiction, Quid est hoc quod 

 dicit nobis ? Modicum, et non videbitis me ; et iterum 

 modicum, et videbitis me, etc.* 



7. Upon this I have insisted the more, in regard of the great 

 and blessed use thereof; for this point, well laboured and 

 defined of, would in my judgment be an opiate to stay and 

 bridle not only the vanity of curious speculations, where- 

 with the schools labour, but the fury of controversies, 

 wherewith the church laboureth. For it cannot but open 

 men's eyes, to see that many controversies do merely 

 pertain to that which is either not revealed, or positive; 

 and that many others do grow upon weak and obscure 

 inferences or derivations: which latter sort, if men would 

 revive the blessed style of that great doctor of the Gentiles, 

 would be carried thus, ego, non dominus;^ and again, 

 secundum consilium meum, in opinions and counsels, and 

 not in positions and oppositions. But men are now over- 

 ready to usurp the style, non ego, sed dominus ; and not so 

 only, but to bind it with the thunder and denunciation of 

 curses and anathemas, to the terror of those which have not 

 sufficiently learned out of Salomon, that the causeless curse 

 shall not come* 



* Joh. iii. 4. • Joh. xvi. 17. 



• I Cor. vii. 12, 40. Prov. xxvi. 2. 



