most humble and hearty supplications, that human things may not prejudice such as are divine; neither that, from the unlocking of the gates of sense, and the kindling of a greater natural light, any thing of incredulity or intellectual night may arise in our minds towards divine mysteries."
As an author he prays in the same spirit: "Thou, O Father, who gavest the visible light as the first-born of thy creatures, and didst pour into man the intellectual light as the top and consummation of thy workmanship, be pleased to protect and govern this work, which, coming from thy goodness, returneth to thy glory."
The same spirit did not forsake him when chancellor: "Most gracious Lord God, my merciful Father from my youth up, my Creator, my Redeemer, my Comforter. Remember, O Lord, how thy servant hath walked before thee: remember what I have first sought, and what hath been principal in my intentions. I have loved thy assemblies: I have mourned for the divisions of thy church: I have delighted in the brightness of thy sanctuary. This vine, which thy right-hand hath planted in this nation, I have ever prayed unto thee that it might have the first and the latter rain; and that it might stretch her branches to the seas and to the floods. Thy creatures have been my books, but thy Scriptures much more. I have sought thee in the courts, fields, and gardens, but I have found thee in thy temples."
The same holy feeling appears in all his important works. The preface to his Instauratio Magna opens and concludes with a prayer. The treatise "De Augmentis Scientiarum" abounds with religious sentiments, contains two tracts, one upon natural, the other upon revealed religion, "the Sabbath and port of all men's labours," and concludes, "Attamen, quoniam etiam res quæque maximæ initiis suis debentur, mihi satis fuerit sevisse posteris et Deo immortali: cujus numen supplex precor, per filium suum et servatorem nostrum, ut has et hisce similes intellectus humani victimas, religione tanquam sale respersas, et gloriæ suaæ immolatas, propitius accipere dignetur." In the midst of his profound reasoning in the Novum Organum, there is a passage in which his opinion of our incorporeal nature is disclosed. And the third part of the Instauration concludes thus: "Deus Universi Conditor, Conservator, Instaurator, hoc opus, et in ascensione ad gloriam suam, et in descensione ad bonum humanum pro sua erga homines, benevolentia, et misericordia, protegat et regat, per Filium suum unicum, nobiscum Deum."
In his minor publications the same piety may be seen. It appears in the Meditationes Saeræ; in the Wisdom of the Ancients; in the fables of Pan, of Prometheus, of Pentheus, and of Cupid: in various parts of the Essays, but particularly in the Essay on Atheism and Goodness of Nature: in the New Atlantis: in his tract "De principiis," and the tract, entitled "The Conditions of Entities."
There is a tract entitled "The Characters of a believing Christian, in paradoxes and seeming contradictions," which is spurious.
Such are his religious sentiments in different parts of his works: but they are not confined to his publications. They appear where, according to his own doctrine, our opinions may always be discovered, in his familiar letters, in the testimony of his friends, in his unguarded observations, and in his will.
In a letter to Mr. Mathew, imprisoned for religion, he says, "I pray God, who understandeth us all better than we understand one another, contain you, even as I hope he will, at the least, within the bounds of loyalty to his majesty, and natural piety towards your country." In the decline of his life, in his letter to the Bishop of Winchester, he says, "Amongst consolations, it is not the least to represent to a man's self like examples of calamity in others. In this kind of consolation I have not been wanting to myself though, as a Christian, I have tasted, through God's great goodness, of higher remedies."
In his essay on Atheism there is an observation, which may appear to a superficial observer hasty and unguarded, inconsistent with the language of philosophy, and at variance with his own doctrines. It was written, not in prostration to any idol, but from his horror of the barren and desolate minds that are continually saying, "There is no God," and his preference, if compelled to elect, of the least of two errors. "I had rather," he says, "believe all the fables in the Legend and the Talmud and the Alcoran, than that this universal frame is without a mind."
As knowledge consists in understanding the sequence of events, or cause and effect, he knew that error must exist, not only from our ignorance, but from our knowledge of immediate causes.
In the infancy of his reason, man ascribes events to chance, or to a wrong natural cause, or to the immediate interference of a superior benevolent or malevolent being; and, having formed an opinion, he entrenches himself within its narrow boundaries, or is indolently content without seeking for any remote cause, but philosophy endeavours to discover the antecedent in the chain of events, and looks up to the first cause.
This stopping at second causes, the property of animals and of ignorance, always diminishes as knowledge advances. Great intellect cannot be severed from piety. It was reserved for the wisest of men to raise a temple to the living God.
The philosopher who discovered the immediate cause of lightning was not inflated by his beautiful discovery: he was conscious of the power "which dwelleth in thick darkness, and sendeth out lightning like arrows."
