this pool or touch this fair but unsavory plant, as a kind of men that
are supercilious beyond comparison, and to that too, implacable; lest
setting them about my ears, they attack me by troops and force me to a
recantation sermon, which if I refuse, they straight pronounce me a
heretic. For this is the thunderbolt with which they fright those whom
they are resolved not to favor. And truly, though there are few others
that less willingly acknowledge the kindnesses I have done them, yet even
these too stand fast bound to me upon no ordinary accounts; while being
happy in their own opinion, and as if they dwelt in the third heaven,
they look with haughtiness on all others as poor creeping things and
could almost find in their hearts to pity them; while hedged in with so
many magisterial definitions, conclusions, corollaries, propositions
explicit and implicit, they abound with so many starting-holes that
Vulcan's net cannot hold them so fast, but they'll slip through with
their distinctions, with which they so easily cut all knots asunder that
a hatchet could not have done it better, so plentiful are they in their
new-found words and prodigious terms. Besides, while they explicate the
most hidden mysteries according to their own fancy--as how the world was
first made; how original sin is derived to posterity; in what manner, how
much room, and how long time Christ lay in the Virgin's womb; how
accidents subsist in the Eucharist without their subject.
But these are common and threadbare; these are worthy of our great and
illuminated divines, as the world calls them! At these, if ever they fall
athwart them, they prick up--as whether there was any instant of time in
the generation of the Second Person; whether there be more than one
filiation in Christ; whether it be a possible proposition that God the
Father hates the Son; or whether it was possible that Christ could have
taken upon Him the likeness of a woman, or of the devil, or of an ass, or
of a stone, or of a gourd; and then how that gourd should have preached,
wrought miracles, or been hung on the cross; and what Peter had
consecrated if he had administered the Sacrament at what time the body of
Christ hung upon the cross; or whether at the same time he might be said
to be man; whether after the Resurrection there will be any eating and
drinking, since we are so much afraid of hunger and thirst in this world.
There are infinite of these subtle trifles, and others more subtle than
these, of notions, relations, instants, formalities, quiddities,
haecceities, which no one can perceive without a Lynceus whose eyes could
look through a stone wall and discover those things through the thickest
darkness that never were.
Add to this those their other determinations, and those too so contrary
to common opinion that those oracles of the Stoics, which they call
paradoxes, seem in comparison of these but blockish and idle--as 'tis a
lesser crime to kill a thousand men than to set a stitch on a poor man's
shoe on the Sabbath day; and that a man should rather choose that the
whole world with all food and raiment, as they say, should perish, than
tell a lie, though never so inconsiderable. And these most subtle
subtleties are rendered yet more subtle by the several methods of so many
Schoolmen, that one might sooner wind himself out of a labyrinth than the
entanglements of the realists, nominalists, Thomists, Albertists,
Occamists, Scotists. Nor have I named all the several sects, but only
some of the chief; in all which there is so much doctrine and so much
difficulty that I may well conceive the apostles, had they been to deal
with these new kind of divines, had needed to have prayed in aid of some
other spirit.
Paul knew what faith was, and yet when he said, "Faith is the substance
of things hoped for, and the evidence of things not seen," he did not
define it doctor-like. And as he understood charity well himself, so he
did as illogically divide and define it to others in his first Epistle to
the Corinthians, Chapter the thirteenth. And devoutly, no doubt, did the
apostles consecrate the Eucharist; yet, had they been asked the question
touching the "terminus a quo" and the "terminus ad quem" of
transubstantiation; of the manner how the same body can be in several
places at one and the same time; of the difference the body of Christ has
in heaven from that of the cross, or this in the Sacrament; in what point
of time transubstantiation is, whereas prayer, by means of which it is,
as being a discrete quantity, is transient; they would not, I conceive,
have answered with the same subtlety as the Scotists dispute and define
it. They knew the mother of Jesus, but which of them has so
philosophically demonstrated how she was preserved from original sin as
have done our divines? Peter received the keys, and from Him too that
would not have trusted them with a person unworthy; yet whether he had
understanding or no, I know not, for certainly he never attained to that
subtlety to determine how he could have the key of knowledge that had no
knowledge himself. They baptized far and near, and yet taught nowhere
what was the formal, material, efficient, and final cause of baptism, nor
made the least mention of delible and indelible characters. They
worshiped, 'tis true, but in spirit, following herein no other than that
of the Gospel, "God is a Spirit, and they that worship, must worship him
in spirit and truth;" yet it does not appear it was at that time revealed
to them that an image sketched on the wall with a coal was to be
worshiped with the same worship as Christ Himself, if at least the two
forefingers be stretched out, the hair long and uncut, and have three
rays about the crown of the head. For who can conceive these things,
unless he has spent at least six and thirty years in the philosophical
and supercelestial whims of Aristotle and the Schoolmen?
In like manner, the apostles press to us grace; but which of them
distinguishes between free grace and grace that makes a man acceptable?
They exhort us to good works, and yet determine not what is the work
working, and what a resting in the work done. They incite us to charity,
and yet make no difference between charity infused and charity wrought in
us by our own endeavors. Nor do they declare whether it be an accident or
a substance, a thing created or uncreated. They detest and abominate sin,
but let me not live if they could define according to art what that is
which we call sin, unless perhaps they were inspired by the spirit of the
Scotists. Nor can I be brought to believe that Paul, by whose learning
you may judge the rest, would have so often condemned questions,
disputes, genealogies, and, as himself calls them, "strifes of words," if
he had thoroughly understood those subtleties, especially when all the
debates and controversies of those times were rude and blockish in
comparison of the more than Chrysippean subtleties of our masters.
Although yet the gentlemen are so modest that if they meet with anything
written by the apostles not so smooth and even as might be expected from
a master, they do not presently condemn it but handsomely bend it to
their own purpose, so great respect and honor do they give, partly to
antiquity and partly to the name of apostle. And truly 'twas a kind of
injustice to require so great things of them that never heard the least
word from their masters concerning it. And so if the like happen in
Chrysostom, Basil, Jerome, they think it enough to say they are not
obliged by it.
The apostles also confuted the heathen philosophers and Jews, a people
than whom none more obstinate, but rather by their good lives and
miracles than syllogisms: and yet there was scarce one among them that
was capable of understanding the least "quodlibet" of the Scotists. But
now, where is that heathen or heretic that must not presently stoop to
such wire-drawn subtleties, unless he be so thick-skulled that he can't
apprehend them, or so impudent as to hiss them down, or, being furnished
with the same tricks, be able to make his party good with them? As if a
man should set a conjurer on work against a conjurer, or fight with one
hallowed sword against another, which would prove no other than a work to
no purpose. For my own part I conceive the Christians would do much
better if instead of those dull troops and companies of soldiers with
which they have managed their war with such doubtful success, they would
send the bawling Scotists, the most obstinate Occamists, and invincible
Albertists to war against the Turks and Saracens; and they would see, I
guess, a most pleasant combat and such a victory as was never before. For
who is so faint whom their devices will not enliven? who so stupid whom
such spurs can't quicken? or who so quick-sighted before whose eyes they
can't cast a mist?
But you'll say, I jest. Nor are you without cause, since even among
divines themselves there are some that have learned better and are ready
to turn their stomachs at those foolish subtleties of the others. There
are some that detest them as a kind of sacrilege and count it the height
of impiety to speak so irreverently of such hidden things, rather to be
adored than explicated; to dispute of them with such profane and
heathenish niceties; to define them so arrogantly and pollute the majesty
of divinity with such pithless and sordid terms and opinions. Meantime
the others please, nay hug themselves in their happiness, and are so
taken up with these pleasant trifles that they have not so much leisure
as to cast the least eye on the Gospel or St. Paul's epistles. And while
they play the fool at this rate in their schools, they make account the
universal church would otherwise perish, unless, as the poets fancied of
Atlas that he supported heaven with his shoulders, they underpropped the
other with their syllogistical buttresses. And how great a happiness is
this, think you? while, as if Holy Writ were a nose of wax, they fashion
and refashion it according to their pleasure; while they require that
their own conclusions, subscribed by two or three Schoolmen, be accounted
greater than Solon's laws and preferred before the papal decretals;
while, as censors of the world, they force everyone to a recantation that
differs but a hair's breadth from the least of their explicit or implicit
determinations. And those too they pronounce like oracles. This
proposition is scandalous; this irreverent; this has a smack of heresy;
this no very good sound: so that neither baptism, nor the Gospel, nor
Paul, nor Peter, nor St. Jerome, nor St. Augustine, no nor most
Aristotelian Thomas himself can make a man a Christian, without these
bachelors too be pleased to give him his grace. And the like in their
subtlety in judging; for who would think he were no Christian that should
say these two speeches "matula putes" and "matula putet," or "ollae
fervere" and "ollam fervere" were not both good Latin, unless their
wisdoms had taught us the contrary? who had delivered the church from
such mists of error, which yet no one ever met with, had they not come
out with some university seal for it? And are they not most happy while
they do these things?
Then for what concerns hell, how exactly they describe everything, as if
they had been conversant in that commonwealth most part of their time!
Again, how do they frame in their fancy new orbs, adding to those we have
already an eighth! a goodly one, no doubt, and spacious enough, lest
perhaps their happy souls might lack room to walk in, entertain their
friends, and now and then play at football. And with these and a thousand
the like fopperies their heads are so full stuffed and stretched that I
believe Jupiter's brain was not near so big when, being in labor with
Pallas, he was beholding to the midwifery of Vulcan's axe. And therefore
you must not wonder if in their public disputes they are so bound about
the head, lest otherwise perhaps their brains might leap out. Nay, I have
sometimes laughed myself to see them so tower in their own opinion when
they speak most barbarously; and when they humh and hawh so pitifully
that none but one of their own tribe can understand them, they call it
heights which the vulgar can't reach; for they say 'tis beneath the
dignity of divine mysteries to be cramped and tied up to the narrow rules
of grammarians: from whence we may conjecture the great prerogative of
divines, if they only have the privilege of speaking corruptly, in which
yet every cobbler thinks himself concerned for his share. Lastly, they
look upon themselves as somewhat more than men as often as they are
devoutly saluted by the name of "Our Masters," in which they fancy there
lies as much as in the Jews' "Jehovah;" and therefore they reckon it a
crime if "Magister Noster" be written other than in capital letters; and
if anyone should preposterously say "Noster Magister," he has at once
overturned the whole body of divinity.
And next these come those that commonly call themselves the religious and
monks, most false in both titles, when both a great part of them are
farthest from religion, and no men swarm thicker in all places than
themselves. Nor can I think of anything that could be more miserable did
not I support them so many several ways. For whereas all men detest them
to that height, that they take it for ill luck to meet one of them by
chance, yet such is their happiness that they flatter themselves. For
first, they reckon it one of the main points of piety if they are so
illiterate that they can't so much as read. And then when they run over
their offices, which they carry about them, rather by tale than
understanding, they believe the gods more than ordinarily pleased with
their braying. And some there are among them that put off their
trumperies at vast rates, yet rove up and down for the bread they eat;
nay, there is scarce an inn, wagon, or ship into which they intrude not,
to the no small damage of the commonwealth of beggars. And yet, like
pleasant fellows, with all this vileness, ignorance, rudeness, and
impudence, they represent to us, for so they call it, the lives of the
apostles. Yet what is more pleasant than that they do all things by rule
and, as it were, a kind of mathematics, the least swerving from which
were a crime beyond forgiveness--as how many knots their shoes must be
tied with, of what color everything is, what distinction of habits, of
what stuff made, how many straws broad their girdles and of what fashion,
how many bushels wide their cowl, how many fingers long their hair, and
how many hours sleep; which exact equality, how disproportionate it is,
among such variety of bodies and tempers, who is there that does not
perceive it? And yet by reason of these fooleries they not only set
slight by others, but each different order, men otherwise professing
apostolical charity, despise one another, and for the different wearing
of a habit, or that 'tis of darker color, they put all things in
combustion. And among these there are some so rigidly religious that
their upper garment is haircloth, their inner of the finest linen; and,
on the contrary, others wear linen without and hair next their skins.
Others, again, are as afraid to touch money as poison, and yet neither
forbear wine nor dallying with women. In a word, 'tis their only care
that none of them come near one another in their manner of living, nor
do they endeavor how they may be like Christ, but how they may differ
among themselves.
And another great happiness they conceive in their names, while they call
themselves Cordiliers, and among these too, some are Colletes, some
Minors, some Minims, some Crossed; and again, these are Benedictines,
those Bernardines; these Carmelites, those Augustines; these Williamites,
and those Jacobines; as if it were not worth the while to be called
Christians. And of these, a great part build so much on their ceremonies
and petty traditions of men that they think one heaven is too poor a
reward for so great merit, little dreaming that the time will come when
Christ, not regarding any of these trifles, will call them to account for
His precept of charity. One shall show you a large trough full of all
kinds of fish; another tumble you out so many bushels of prayers; another
reckon you so many myriads of fasts, and fetch them up again in one
dinner by eating till he cracks again; another produces more bundles of
ceremonies than seven of the stoutest ships would be able to carry;
another brags he has not touched a penny these three score years without
two pair of gloves at least upon his hands; another wears a cowl so lined
with grease that the poorest tarpaulin would not stoop to take it up;
another will tell you he has lived these fifty-five years like a sponge,
continually fastened to the same place; another is grown hoarse with his
daily chanting; another has contracted a lethargy by his solitary living;
and another the palsy in his tongue for want of speaking. But Christ,
interrupting them in their vanities, which otherwise were endless, will
ask them, "Whence this new kind of Jews? I acknowledge one commandment,
which is truly mine, of which alone I hear nothing. I promised, 'tis
true, my Father's heritage, and that without parables, not to cowls, odd
prayers, and fastings, but to the duties of faith and charity. Nor can I
acknowledge them that least acknowledge their faults. They that would
seem holier than myself, let them if they like possess to themselves
those three hundred sixty-five heavens of Basilides the heretic's
invention, or command them whose foolish traditions they have preferred
before my precepts to erect them a new one." When they shall hear these
things and see common ordinary persons preferred before them, with what
countenance, think you, will they behold one another? In the meantime
they are happy in their hopes, and for this also they are beholding
to me.
And yet these kind of people, though they are as it were of another
commonwealth, no man dares despise, especially those begging friars,
because they are privy to all men's secrets by means of confessions, as
they call them. Which yet were no less than treason to discover, unless,
being got drunk, they have a mind to be pleasant, and then all comes out,
that is to say by hints and conjectures but suppressing the names. But if
anyone should anger these wasps, they'll sufficiently revenge themselves
in their public sermons and so point out their enemy by circumlocutions
that there's no one but understands whom 'tis they mean, unless he
understand nothing at all; nor will they give over their barking till you
throw the dogs a bone. And now tell me, what juggler or mountebank you
had rather behold than hear them rhetorically play the fool in their
preachments, and yet most sweetly imitating what rhetoricians have
written touching the art of good speaking? Good God! what several
postures they have! How they shift their voice, sing out their words,
skip up and down, and are ever and anon making such new faces that they
confound all things with noise! And yet this knack of theirs is no less a
mystery that runs in succession from one brother to another; which though
it be not lawful for me to know, however I'll venture at it by
conjectures. And first they invoke whatever they have scraped from the
poets; and in the next place, if they are to discourse of charity, they
take their rise from the river Nilus; or to set out the mystery of the
cross, from bell and the dragon; or to dispute of fasting, from the
twelve signs of the zodiac; or, being to preach of faith, ground their
matter on the square of a circle.
I have heard myself one, and he no small fool--I was mistaken, I would
have said scholar--that being in a famous assembly explaining the mystery
of the Trinity, that he might both let them see his learning was not
ordinary and withal satisfy some theological ears, he took a new way, to
wit from the letters, syllables, and the word itself; then from the
coherence of the nominative case and the verb, and the adjective and
substantive: and while most of the audience wondered, and some of them
muttered that of Horace, "What does all this trumpery drive at?" at last
he brought the matter to this head, that he would demonstrate that the
mystery of the Trinity was so clearly expressed in the very rudiments of
grammar that the best mathematician could not chalk it out more plainly.
And in this discourse did this most superlative theologian beat his
brains for eight whole months that at this hour he's as blind as a
beetle, to wit, all the sight of his eyes being run into the sharpness of
his wit. But for all that he thinks nothing of his blindness, rather
taking the same for too cheap a price of such a glory as he won thereby.
And besides him I met with another, some eighty years of age, and such a
divine that you'd have sworn Scotus himself was revived in him. He, being
upon the point of unfolding the mystery of the name Jesus, did with
wonderful subtlety demonstrate that there lay hidden in those letters
whatever could be said of him; for that it was only declined with three
cases, he said, it was a manifest token of the Divine Trinity; and then,
that the first ended in _S_, the second in _M_, the third in _U_, there
was in it an ineffable mystery, to wit, those three letters declaring to
us that he was the beginning, middle, and end (_summum, medium, et
ultimum_) of all. Nay, the mystery was yet more abstruse; for he so
mathematically split the word Jesus into two equal parts that he left the
middle letter by itself, and then told us that that letter in Hebrew was
_schin_ or _sin_, and that _sin_ in the Scotch tongue, as he remembered,
signified as much as sin; from whence he gathered that it was Jesus that
took away the sins of the world. At which new exposition the audience
were so wonderfully intent and struck with admiration, especially the
theologians, that there wanted little but that Niobe-like they had been
turned to stones; whereas the like had almost happened to me, as befell
the Priapus in Horace. And not without cause, for when were the Grecian
Demosthenes or Roman Cicero ever guilty of the like? They thought that
introduction faulty that was wide of the matter, as if it were not the
way of carters and swineherds that have no more wit than God sent them.
But these learned men think their preamble, for so they call it, then
chiefly rhetorical when it has least coherence with the rest of the
argument, that the admiring audience may in the meanwhile whisper to
themselves, "What will he be at now?" In the third place, they bring in
instead of narration some texts of Scripture, but handle them cursorily,
and as it were by the bye, when yet it is the only thing they should have
insisted on. And fourthly, as it were changing a part in the play, they
bolt out with some question in divinity, and many times relating neither
to earth nor heaven, and this they look upon as a piece of art. Here they
erect their theological crests and beat into the people's ears those
magnificent titles of illustrious doctors, subtle doctors, most subtle
doctors, seraphic doctors, cherubin doctors, holy doctors, unquestionable
doctors, and the like; and then throw abroad among the ignorant people
syllogisms, majors, minors, conclusions, corollaries, suppositions, and
those so weak and foolish that they are below pedantry. There remains yet
the fifth act in which one would think they should show their mastery.
And here they bring in some foolish insipid fable out of _Speculum
Historiale_ or _Gesta Romanorum_ and expound it allegorically,
tropologically, and anagogically. And after this manner do they and their
chimera, and such as Horace despaired of compassing when he wrote "Humano
capiti," etc.