Saracen soldiers against the Pope; ") and in his recommendation to the Queen to use the Puritans in the same way as her mere instruments. Bearing in mind that about this very time (soon after Christmas, 1584) Bacon's mother was expostulating with Burghley upon the unfair treatment of the Puritans by the Bishops, and that the Queen was, at this crisis, placing herself in opposition to the feeling of the Commons by the persecuting policy for which she had just appointed Whitgift to the primacy, we can easily understand the reasons for Bacon's protestation that he was "not addicted to the preciser sort," and appreciate the extreme delicacy of touch with which he handled the question of the dispossession of the Preachers. This transparent veil does not however conceal his real sympathy with the “careful and diligent" Puritans, and his feeling that the Queen was making a mistake in attempting to crush them—an expression not obscurely expressed in his condemnation of the "very evil and unadvised course taken by the Bishops."

Herein Bacon shows the insight of a Statesman, no less than in his proposed modification of the Oath of Allegiance. But the reader must not omit to note the qualifying words with which the young barrister "lays at Her Highness's feet" his unacceptable condemnation of her policy. "I am bold to think it," he says, "till I think that you think otherwise." From a very young man the phrase is excusable and natural, perhaps almost commendable. But it betokened more than a young man's excess of modesty. There was in Bacon an invariable pliancy in the presence of great persons which disqualified him for the task of giving wise and effectual counsel. In part, this obsequiousness arose from his mental and moral constitution; in part, it was a habit deliberately adopted as one among many means by which a man may make his way in the world. In a little treatise entitled The Architect of Fortune, published in the De Augmentis (1623), he lays it down as a precept for the man who wishes to succeed, that he must "avoid repulse:

stream.

"

"A second precept is, to beware being carried by an excess of magnanimity and confidence to things beyond our strength, and not to row against the We ought to look round and observe where things lie open to us and where they are closed and obstructed, where they are difficult and where easy, that we may not waste our time on things to which convenient

access is forbidden. For in that way we shall avoid repulse, not occupy ourselves too much about one matter, earn a character for moderation, offend fewer persons, and get the credit of continual success, whilst things which would perhaps have happened of themselves will be attributed to our industry."

Here then we have one secret of Bacon's failure as a counsellor. He had no political backbone, no power of adhering to his convictions and pressing them on unwilling ears. Young or old, from twenty to sixty, he was always the same in this excessive obsequiousness; if he strove against authority, if he forced himself to utter a possibly unacceptable "Yes" or "No," it was always "like Ovid's mistress, as one that was willing to be overcome." 2 This pliability he avowed so frankly that every one took him at his word; and from the beginning to the end of his career his wiser counsels were neglected, and he was little better than an instrument in the hands of the unwise.

At the same time we must remember the circumstances in which a counsellor of those days offered counsel. Personal government was a necessity. There is no reason to think that Bacon considered it an undesirable necessity; the great persons whom he sought to persuade seemed to him more fit to govern, and perhaps more open to his persuasion, than a House of Commons; the Queen and her Council had more means of information, more traditions of continuous policy, more responsibility, and far more power, than could be wielded by a mere representative and changeable assembly without organised parties. Desirable, or undesirable, it was a necessity. What counsels Bacon addressed to the House of Commons could not be heard outside the House, and might be ineffective within it; the modern press and public meetings were non-existent. If, therefore, anything was to be done it must be done through the Queen; and if his counsel was distasteful to her, it was impracticable and useless. How necessary, therefore, to show all possible

1 De Aug. viii. 2, Spedding, Works, v. 73.

2 See Bacon's opinion about the objectionable Patents in December 1602 (Spedding, vii. 151), "The King, by my Lord Treasurer's signification, did wisely put it upon a consult, whether the Patents which we mentioned in our joint letter were at this time to be removed by Act of Parliament. I opined (but yet somewhat like Ovid's mistress, that strove, but yet as one that would be overcomen) that Yes."

tact in avoiding unpleasant advice, and to be ready to exchange the counsel that was best, but unpleasing, for that which was less good but more welcome to her ears!

§ 4 "THE CONTROVERSIES OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND" 1

In the next Parliament (29 October, 1586) Bacon sat for Taunton, and, with other members of both houses, presented a petition for the execution of Mary Stuart. In this year he became a Bencher of Gray's Inn. The quarrel between the Puritans and High Churchmen, suspended during the general terror of Spain, broke out again after the destruction of the Armada in 1588, and the Marprelate controversy was at its height in the summer of 1589. Between the two contending parties, Bacon, in his Controversies of the Church of England (1589), arbitrates with stately impartiality, censuring both for their bigotry, but inclining towards the Puritans.2

One party, he says, is seeking truth in the conventicles of heretics, the other in the external representation of the Church,3 and both are in error. The remedy is charity; the controversy being, as all confess, about things not of the highest nature, men must not forget the league of Christians penned by our Saviour, "He that is not against us is with us." St. Paul says, "One faith, one baptism," not " one ceremony, one policy:" and in such light matters, men should say with St. Paul, "I and not the Lord." 4 The causes of controversy are four, 1st, imperfections in the "conversation" and government of the Bishops and Governors of the Church; 2nd, the ambition of certain persons which love the salutation of "Rabbi, master' the true successors of Diotrephes, the lover of preeminence, of which disease the Universities [here he aims at Cartwright, the Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity at Cambridge] are the seat and continent; 3rd, an excessive detestation of some former corruptions, which leads men to think that opposition to the Church of Rome is the best touchstone to try what is good, and that the Church

1 Spedding, i. 74-95.

2 This treatise should be studied in connection with the Essay Of Unity in Religion.

3 Essays, iii. 28.

+ lb. 65-80.

5 Ib. 50.

must be purged every day anew; 4th, the imitation of foreign forms of Church government, whereas the Church in every country should do that which is convenient for itself.

Both parties have degenerated from their former moderation. The Churchmen, who once admitted the existence of defects, now maintain that things are perfect as they are; they condemn the Reformers; they censure the Churches abroad, and even impugn the validity of holy orders conferred in the Reformed Churches abroad. Why do the Bishops stand so precisely on altering nothing? A good husbandman is ever proyning and stirring in his vineyard; he ever findeth somewhat to do. But we have heard of no offers of the Bishops of bills in Parliament. Their own constitution and orders have reformed little. Is nothing amiss? Let them remember that the contentious retention of custom is a turbulent thing.1 The wrongs inflicted by them upon the weaker party in the Church can hardly be dissembled or excused. They have been captious and uncharitable in inquisitions, in receiving accusations, in swearing men to blanks and generalities, in urging subscriptions; and in silencing preachers, they have punished less the preachers than the people. Let them not forget that "the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God."

On the other hand the Puritans, who began with projects of reform have advanced to projects of destruction; they are narrow and bigoted in their dislike of tact, study, learning, and critical acumen; they ramble and never penetrate; "the word (the bread of life) they toss up and down, they break it not; " they teach people their restraints and not their liberty, they vulgarise controversies, unduly magnify preaching, neglect liturgies, depreciate the authority of the fathers, and "resort to naked examples, conceited inferences, and forced allusions, such as do mine into all certainty of religion." Characteristically enough, he adds the accusation that in their excess of zeal, "they have pronounced, generally and without difference, all untruths as unlawful," forgetting the midwives in Egypt, and the example of Rahab, and even how "our Saviour, the more to touch the hearts of the two disciples with a holy dalliance, made as if he would have passed Emmaus." 1 Essays, xxiv. 22.

Finally he warns the Puritans to "take heed that it be not true, which one of their adversaries said, that they have but two small wants, want of knowledge and want of love" and thenafter deprecating personalities and public controversies on subjects on which "the people is no fit arbitrator," and which should be reserved for "the quiet, moderate, and private assemblies and conferences of the learned"-he concludes with the hope that he shall "find a correspondence in their minds which are not embarked in partiality, and which love the whole better than a part."

Obviously either side of the controversialists might have replied that the real question was whether the "part" for which they were contending was essential to the "whole;" and indeed practical disputes are seldom settled by general propositions. Bacon writes like a sensible Erastian, with Puritan inclinations, who has a profound belief in the value of the Christian religion, and an equally profound indifference to small details of Church government or ceremonies. No Anglican, and no decided Puritan, could have written this paper. A Puritan could hardly have laid his finger so exactly upon the faults of his brethren, or have maintained so unhesitatingly that every Church should do that which is convenient for the Estate of itself ("consentiamus in eo quod convenit"): still less could a thorough-going Anglican like Hooker have made the implied admission that the Reformed Churches were superior to the Church of England in the absence of some "abuses" ("neither yet do I admit that their form is better than ours if some abuses were taken away") or have written the following sentence:

"Hence (exasperate through contentions) they are fallen to a direct condemnation of the contrary part, as of a sect. Yea, and some indiscreet persons have been bold in open preaching to use dishonourable and derogative speech and censure of the Churches abroad; and that so far as some of our men (as I have heard) ordained in foreign parts have been pronounced to be no lawful ministers.”

As between the controversialists, it would be hard to detect partiality; for Bacon's indignation at the oppressions of the Bishops is equalled by his scorn for the bigoted narrowness of some of the Puritans. But in his frank recognition of the