II.] ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING. 



advantage to \vin the game, is artificial and rational. So in human 

 laws, there be many grounds and max&amp;gt;ms, which 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. 



Here therefore I note this deficicnce, 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 pre 

 text 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, &quot; Quomodo possit 

 homo nasci cum sit scnex?&quot; the other sort into the error of the 

 disciples, which were scandalized at a show of contradiction, &quot; Quid 

 est hoc, quod dicit nobis ? Modicum et non vidcbitis me, ct iterum 

 modicum, et videbitis me/ etc. 



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, wherewith the schools labour, but the fury of 

 controversies, wherewith the Church laboureth. For it cannot but 

 open men s eyes, to sec that many controversies do merely pertain to 

 that which is cither 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 stile of that great doctor of the 

 Gentiles, would be carried thus ; Ego, non Doininus ; and again, 

 Secundum consilium mcum; in opinions and counsels, and not in 

 positions and oppositions. But men arc now over-ready to usurp the 

 stile, Non ego, scd Doniinus; 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 Solomon, that &quot; the 

 causeless curse shall not come.&quot; 



Divinity hath two principal parts ; the matter informed or revealed, 

 and the nature of the information or revelation : and with the latter 

 we will begin, because it hath most coherence with that which we have 

 now last handled. The nature of the information consistcth of three 

 branches ; the limits of the information, the sufficiency of the informa 

 tion, and the acquiring or obtaining the information. Unto the limits 

 of the information belong these considerations ; how far forth particular 

 persons continue to be inspired ; how far forth the Church is inspired ; 

 and how far forth reason may be used : the last point whereof I have 

 denoted as deficient. Unto the sufficiency of the information belong 

 two considerations ; what points of religion are fundamental, and 

 what perfective, being matter of farther building and perfection upon 

 one and the same foundation ; and again, how the gradations of litfht, 



