The physical and metaphysical works of Lord Bacon : including the Advancement of learning and Novum organum / edited by Joseph Devey.

  • Francis Bacon
Date:
1886
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The physical and metaphysical works of Lord Bacon : including the Advancement of learning and Novum organum / edited by Joseph Devey. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    132/608 (page 120)
    particulars we find no mention in the discourses of trans- cendentals ; for men have rather pursued the quirks of words ‘than the subtilities of things. And, therefore, we would introduce into primary philosophy a real and solid inquiry • into these transcendentals, or adventitious conditions of beings, according to the laws of nature, not of speech. CHAPTER II. Natural Theology with its Appendix, the Knowledge of Angels and Spirits. Thus having first seated the common parent of the sci» ] ences, as Berecynthia rejoicing over her celestial offspring,— “ Omnes ccelicolas, omne3 supera alta tenentes,”a— we return to our division of philosophy into divine, natural, and human; for natural theology may be justly called divine philosophy. Divine philosophy is a science, or rather the rudiments of a science, derivable from God by the light of nature, and the contemplation of his creatures ; so that t with regard to its object, it is truly divine; but with regard to its acquirement, natural. The bounds of this knowledge extend to the confutation of atheism, and the ascertaining the laws of nature, but not to the establishing of religion. And, therefore, God never wrought a miracle to convert an atheist, because the light of nature is sufficient to demon- strate a deity ; but miracles were designed for the conver- sion of the idolatrous and superstitious, who acknowledged a God, but erred in their worship of him—the light of nature being unable to declare the will of God, or assign the just form of worshipping him. For as the power and skill of a workman are seen in his works, but not his person, so the works of God express the wisdom and omnipotence of the Creator, without the least representation of his image. And in this particular, the opinion of the heathens differed from the sacred verity, as supposing the world to be the image of God, and man a little image of the world. The Scripture never gives the world that honour, but calls it the work of his hands; making only man the image of God.11 And, there- fore, the being of a God, that he governs the world, that he * iEneid, vi. 787. b Ps. viii. 3, cii. 25, et al.