memory by setting up for authors: among which, though they are all some
way indebted to me, yet are those more especially so, who spoil paper in
blotting it with mere trifles and impertinences. For as to those graver
drudgers to the press, that write learnedly, beyond the reach of an
ordinary reader, who durst submit their labours to the review of the
most severe critic, these are not so liable to be envied for their
honour, as to be pitied for their sweat and slavery. They make
additions, alterations, blot out, write anew, amend, interline, turn it
upside down, and yet can never please their fickle judgment, but that
they shall dislike the next hour what they penned the former; and all
this to purchase the airy commendations of a few understanding readers,
which at most is but a poor reward for all their fastings, watchings,
confinements, and brain-breaking tortures of invention. Add to this
the impairing of their health, the weakening of their constitution,
their contracting sore eyes, or perhaps turning stark blind; their
poverty, their envy, their debarment from all pleasures, their hastening
on old age, their untimely death, and what other inconveniences of a
like or worse nature can be thought upon: and yet the recompense for all
this severe penance is at best no more than a mouthful or two of frothy
praise. These, as they are more laborious, so are they less happy than
those other hackney scribblers which I first mentioned, who never stand
much to consider, but write what comes next at a venture, knowing that
the more silly their composures are, the more they will be bought up by
the greater number of readers, who are fools and blockheads: and if they
hap to be condemned by some few judicious persons, it is an easy matter
by clamour to drown their censure, and to silence them by urging the
more numerous commendations of others. They are yet the wisest who
transcribe whole discourses from others, and then reprint them as their
own. By doing so they make a cheap and easy seizure to themselves of
that reputation which cost the first author so much time and trouble to
procure. If they are at any time pricked a little in conscience for fear
of discovery, they feed themselves however with this hope, that if they
be at last found plagiaries, yet at least for some time they have the
credit of passing for the genuine authors. It is pleasant to see how all
these several writers are puffed up with the least blast of applause,
especially if they come to the honour of being pointed at as they walk
along the streets, when their several pieces are laid open upon every
bookseller's stall, when their names are embossed in a different
character upon the tide-page, sometime only with the two first letters,
and sometime with fictitious cramp terms, which few shall understand the
meaning of; and of those that do, all shall not agree in their verdict
of the performance; some censuring, others approving it, men's judgments
being as different as their palates, that being toothsome to one which
is unsavoury and nauseous to another: though it is a sneaking piece of
cowardice for authors to put feigned names to their works, as if, like
bastards of their brain, they were afraid to own them. Thus one styles
himself Telemachus, another Stelenus, a third Polycrates, another
Thrasyma-chus, and so on. By the same liberty we may ransack the whole
alphabet, and jumble together any letters that come next to hand. It is
farther very pleasant when these coxcombs employ their pens in writing
congratulatory episdes, poems, and panegyricks, upon each other, wherein
one shall be complimented with the title of Alcaeus, another shall be
charactered for the incomparable Callimachus; this shall be commended
for a completer orator than Tully himself; a fourth shall be told by his
fellow-fool that the divine Plato comes short of him for a philosophic
soul. Sometime again they take up the cudgels, and challenge out an
antagonist, and so get a name by a combat at dispute and controversy,
while the unwary readers draw sides according to their different
judgments: the longer the quarrel holds the more irreconcilable it
grows; and when both parties are weary, they each pretend themselves the
conquerors, and both lay claim to the credit of coming off with victory.
These fooleries make sport for wise men, as being highly absurd,
ridiculous and extravagant True, but yet these paper-combatants, by my
assistance, are so flushed with a conceit of their own greatness, that
they prefer the solving of a syllogism before the sacking of Carthage;
and upon the defeat of a poor objection carry themselves more triumphant
than the most victorious Scipio.
[Illustration: 250]
Nay, even the learned and more judicious, that have wit enough to laugh
at the other's folly, are very much beholden to my goodness; which
(except ingratitude have drowned their ingenuity), they must be ready
upon all occasions to confess. Among these I suppose the lawyers will
shuffle in for precedence, and they of all men have the greatest conceit
of their own abilities. They will argue as confidently as if they
spoke gospel instead of law; they will cite you six hundred several
precedents, though not one of them come near to the case in hand; they
will muster up the authority of judgments, deeds, glosses, and reports,
and tumble over so many musty records, that they make their employ,
though in itself easy, the greatest slavery imaginable; always
accounting that the best plea which they have took most pains for.
[Illustration: 254]
[Illustration: 257]
To these, as bearing great resemblance to them, may be added logicians
and sophisters, fellows that talk as much by rote as a parrot; who shall
run down a whole gossiping of old women, nay, silence the very noise of
a belfry, with louder clappers than those of the steeple; and if their
unappeasable clamorousness were their only fault it would admit of some
excuse; but they are at the same time so fierce and quarrelsome, that
they will wrangle bloodily for the least trifle, and be so over intent
and eager, that they many times lose their game in the chase and fright
away that truth they are hunting for. Yet self-conceit makes these
nimble disputants such doughty champions, that armed with three or four
close-linked syllogisms, they shall enter the lists with the greatest
masters of reason, and not question the foiling of them in an
irresistible way, nay, their obstinacy makes them so confident of their
being in the right, that all the arguments in the world shall never
convince them to the contrary.
Next to these come the philosophers in their long beards and short
cloaks, who esteem themselves the only favourites of wisdom, and look
upon the rest of mankind as the dirt and rubbish of the creation: yet
these men's happiness is only a frantic craziness of brain; they build
castles in the air, and infinite worlds in a _vacuum_. They will give
you to a hair's breadth the dimensions of the sun, moon, and stars, as
easily as they would do that of a flaggon or pipkin: they will give a
punctual account of the rise of thunder, of the origin of winds, of
the nature of eclipses, and of all the other abstrusest difficulties
in physics, without the least demur or hesitation, as if they had been
admitted into the cabinet council of nature, or had been eye-witnesses
to all the accurate methods of creation; though alas nature does
but laugh at all their puny conjectures; for they never yet made one
considerable discovery, as appears in that they are unanimously agreed
in no one point of the smallest moment; nothing so plain or evident but
what by some or other is opposed and contradicted. But though they are
ignorant of the artificial contexture of the least insect, they vaunt
however, and brag that they know all things, when indeed they are unable
to construe the mechanism of their own body: nay, when they are so
purblind as not to be able to see a stone's cast before them, yet they
shall be as sharp-sighted as possible in spying-out ideas, universals
separate forms, first matters, quiddities, formalities, and a hundred
such like niceties, so diminutively small, that were not their eyes
extremely magnifying, all the art of optics could never make them
discernible. But they then most despise the low grovelling vulgar
when they bring out their parallels, triangles, circles, and other
mathematical figures, drawn up in battalia, like so many spells
and charms of conjuration in muster, with letters to refer to the
explication of the several problems; hereby raising devils as it
were, only to have the credit of laying them, and amusing the ordinary
spectators into wonder, because they have not wit enough to understand
the juggle. Of these some undertake to profess themselves judicial
astrologers, pretending to keep correspondence with the stars, and so
from their information can resolve any query; and though it is all but a
presumptuous imposture, yet some to be sure will be so great fools as to
believe them.
[Illustration: 262]
The divines present themselves next; but it may perhaps be most safe to
pass them by, and not to touch upon so harsh a string as this subject
would afford. Beside, the undertaking may be very hazardous; for they
are a sort of men generally very hot and passionate; and should I
provoke them, I doubt not would set upon me with a full cry, and force
me with shame to recant, which if I stubbornly refuse to do, they will
presently brand me for a heretic, and thunder out an excommunication,
which is their spiritual weapon to wound such as lift up a hand against
them. It is true, no men own a less dependence on me, yet have they
reason to confess themselves indebted for no small obligations. For it
is by one of my properties, self-love, that they fancy themselves, with
their elder brother Paul, caught up into the third heaven, from whence,
like shepherds indeed, they look down upon their flock, the laity,
grazing as it were, in the vales of the world below. They fence
themselves in with so many surrounders of magisterial definitions,
conclusions, corollaries, propositions explicit and implicit, that
there is no falling in with them; or if they do chance to be urged to a
seeming non-plus, yet they find out so many evasions, that all the art
of man can never bind them so fast, but that an easy distinction shall
give them a starting-hole to escape the scandal of being baffled. They
will cut asunder the toughest argument with as much ease as Alexander
did the gordian knot; they will thunder out so many rattling terms
as shall fright an adversary into conviction. They are exquisitely
dexterous in unfolding the most intricate mysteries; they will tell
you to a tittle all the successive proceedings of Omnipotence in the
creation of the universe; they will explain the precise manner of
original sin being derived from our first parents; they will satisfy you
in what manner, by what degrees, and in how long a time, our Saviour was
conceived in the Virgin's womb, and demonstrate in the consecrated wafer
how accidents may subsist without a subject. Nay, these are accounted
trivial, easy questions; they have yet far greater difficulties behind,
which notwithstanding they solve with as much expedition as the former;
as namely, whether supernatural generation requires any instant of time
for its acting? whether Christ, as a son, bears a double specifically
distinct relation to God the Father, and his virgin mother? whether
this proposition is possible to be true, the first person of the Trinity
hated the second? whether God, who took our nature upon him in the form
of a man, could as well have become a woman, a devil, a beast, a herb,
or a stone? and were it so possible that the Godhead had appeared in any
shape of an inanimate substance, how he should then have preached his
gospel? or how have been nailed to the cross? whether if St. Peter had
celebrated the eucharist at the same time our Saviour was hanging on the
cross, the consecrated bread would have been transubstantiated into
the same body that remained on the tree? whether in Christ's corporal
presence in the sacramental wafer, his humanity be not abstracted from
his Godhead? whether after the resurrection we shall carnally eat and
drink as we do in this life?
There are a thousand other more sublimated and refined niceties of
notions, relations, quantities, formalities, quiddities, haeccities, and
such like abstrusities, as one would think no one could pry into, except
he had not only such cat's eyes as to see best in the dark, but even
such a piercing faculty as to see through an inch-board, and spy out
what really never had any being. Add to these some of their tenets and
opinions, which are so absurd and extravagant, that the wildest fancies
of the Stoicks which they so much disdain and decry as paradoxes, seem
in comparison just and rational; as their maintaining, that it is a less
aggravating fault to kill a hundred men, than for a poor cobbler to set
a stitch on the sabbath-day; or, that it is more justifiable to do
the greatest injury imaginable to others, than to tell the least
lie ourselves. And these subtleties are alchymized to a more refined
sublimate by the abstracting brains of their several schoolmen; the
Realists, the Nominalists, the Thomists, the Albertists, the Occamists,
the Scotists; these are not all, but the rehearsal of a few only, as a
specimen of their divided sects; in each of which there is so much of
deep learning, so much of unfathomable difficulty, that I believe the
apostles themselves would stand in need of a new illuminating spirit, if
they were to engage in any controversy with these new divines. St. Paul,
no question, had a full measure of faith; yet when he lays down faith
to be the substance of things not seen, these men carp at it for an
imperfect definition, and would undertake to teach the apostles better
logic. Thus the same holy author wanted for nothing of the grace
of charity, yet (say they) he describes and defines it but very
inaccurately, when he treats of it in the thirteenth chapter of his
first epistle to the Corinthians. The primitive disciples were very
frequent in administering the holy sacrament, breaking bread from house
to house; yet should they be asked of the _Terminus a quo_ and the
_Terminus ad quern_, the nature of transubstantiation? the manner
how one body can be in several places at the same time? the difference
betwixt the several attributes of Christ in heaven, on the cross, and in
the consecrated bread? what time is required for the transubstantiating
the bread into flesh? how it can be done by a short sentence pronounced
by the priest, which sentence is a species of discreet quantity, that
has no permanent _punctum?_ Were they asked (I say) these, and several
other confused queries, I do not believe they could answer so readily
as our mincing school-men now-a-days take a pride to do. They were well
acquainted with the Virgin Mary, yet none of them undertook to prove
that she was preserved immaculate from original sin, as some of our
divines very hotly contend for. St. Peter had the keys given to him, and
that by our Saviour himself, who had never entrusted him except he had
known him capable of their manage and custody; and yet it is much to
be questioned whether Peter was sensible of that subtlety broached by
Scotus, that he may have the key of knowledge effectually for others,
who has no knowledge actually in himself. Again, they baptized all
nations, and yet never taught what was the formal, material, efficient,
and final cause of baptism, and certainly never dreamt of distinguishing
between a delible and an indelible character in this sacrament They
worshipped in the spirit, following their master's injunction, God is a
spirit, and they which worship him, must worship him in spirit, and
in truth; yet it does not appear that it was ever revealed to them how
divine adoration should be paid at the same time to our blessed Saviour
in heaven, and to his picture here below on a wall, drawn with two
fingers held out, a bald crown, and a circle round his head. To
reconcile these intricacies to an appearance of reason requires
three-score years' experience in metaphysics.
Farther, the apostles often mention _Grace_, yet never distinguish
between _gratia, gratis data_, and _gratia gratificans_. They earnestly
exhort us likewise to good works, yet never explain the difference
between _Opus operans_, and _Opus operatum_. They very frequently press
and invite us to seek after charity, without dividing it into infused
and acquired, or determining whether it be a substance or an accident, a
created or an uncreated being. They detested sin themselves, and warned
others from the commission of it; and yet I am sure they could never
have defined so dogmatically, as the Scotists have since done. St. Paul,
who in other's judgment is no less the chief of the apostles, than
he was in his own the chief of sinners, who being bred at the feet of
Gamaliel, was certainly more eminently a scholar than any of the rest,
yet he often exclaims against vain philosophy, warns us from doting
about questions and strifes of words, and charges us to avoid profane
and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called; which
he would not have done, if he had thought it worth his while to have
become acquainted with them, which he might soon have been, the
disputes of that age being but small, and more intelligible sophisms,
in reference to the vastly greater intricacies they are now improved
to. But yet, however, our scholastic divines are so modest, that if they
meet with any passage in St. Paul, or any other penman of holy writ,
which is not so well modelled, or critically disposed of, as they
could wish, they will not roughly condemn it, but bend it rather to a
favorable interpretation, out of reverence to antiquity, and respect
to the holy scriptures; though indeed it were unreasonable to expect
anything of this nature from the apostles, whose lord and master
had given unto them to know the mysteries of God, but not those of
philosophy. If the same divines meet with anything of like nature
unpalatable in St. Chrysostom, St. Basil, St. Hierom, or others of the
fathers, they will not stick to appeal from their authority, and very
fairly resolve that they lay under a mistake. Yet these ancient fathers
were they who confuted both the Jews and Heathens, though they both
obstinately adhered to their respective prejudices; they confuted them
(I say), yet by their lives and miracles, rather than by words and
syllogisms; and the persons they thus proselyted were downright honest,
well meaning people, such as understood plain sense better than any
artificial pomp of reasoning: whereas if our divines should now
set about the gaining converts from paganism by their metaphysical
subtleties, they would find that most of the persons they applied
themselves to were either so ignorant as not at all to apprehend them,
or so impudent as to scoff and deride them; or finally, so well skilled
at the same weapons, that they would be able to keep their pass, and
fence off all assaults of conviction: and this last way the victory
would be altogether as hopeless, as if two persons were engaged of so
equal strength, that it were impossible any one should overpower the
other.
If my judgment might be taken, I would advise Christians, in their next
expedition to a holy war, instead of those many unsuccessful legions,
which they have hitherto sent to encounter the Turks and Saracens,
that they would furnish out their clamorous Scotists, their obstinate
Occamists, their invincible Albertists, and all their forces of tough,
crabbed and profound disputants: the engagement, I fancy, would be
mighty pleasant, and the victory we may imagine on our side not to be
questioned. For which of the enemies would not veil their turbans at so
solemn an appearance? Which of the fiercest Janizaries would not
throw away his scimitar, and all the half-moons be eclipsed by the
interposition of so glorious an army?
[Illustration: 270]
I suppose you mistrust I speak all this by way of jeer and irony; and
well I may, since among divines themselves there are some so ingenious
as to despise these captious and frivolous impertinences: they look upon
it as a kind of profane sacrilege, and a little less than blasphemous
impiety, to determine of such niceties in religion, as ought rather
to be the subject of an humble and uncontradicting faith, than of a
scrupulous and inquisitive reason: they abhor a defiling the mysteries
of Christianity with an intermixture of heathenish philosophy, and judge
it very improper to reduce divinity to an obscure speculative science,
whose end is such a happiness as can be gained only by the means of
practice. But alas, those notional divines, however condemned by the
soberer judgment of others, are yet mightily pleased with themselves,
and are so laboriously intent upon prosecuting their crabbed studies,
that they cannot afford so much time as to read a single chapter in
any one book of the whole bible. And while they thus trifle away their
mis-spent hours in trash and babble, they think that they support
the Catholic Church with the props and pillars of propositions and
syllogisms, no less effectually than Atlas is feigned by the poets to
sustain on his shoulders the burden of a tottering world.
[Illustration: Atlas with the Burden of the Tottering World 274]
Their privileges, too, and authority are very considerable: they can
deal with any text of scripture as with a nose of wax, knead it into
what shape best suits their interest; and whatever conclusions they
have dogmatically resolved upon, they would have them as irrepealably
ratified as Solon's laws, and in as great force as the very decrees of
the papal chair. If any be so bold as to remonstrate to their decisions,
they will bring him on his knees to a recantation of his impudence.
They shall pronounce as irrevocably as an oracle, this proposition is
scandalous, that irreverent; this has a smack of heresy, and that is
bald and improper; so that it is not the being baptised into the church,
the believing of the scriptures, the giving credit to St. Peter, St.
Paul, St. Hierom, St. Augustin, nay, or St. Thomas Aquinas himself, that
shall make a man a Christian, except he have the joint suffrage of these
novices in learning,-who have blessed the world no doubt with a great
many discoveries, which had never come to light, if they had not struck
the fire of subtlety out of the flint of obscurity. These fooleries sure
must be a happy employ.
Farther, they make as many partitions and divisions in hell and
purgatory, and describe as many different sorts and degrees of
punishment as if they were very well acquainted with the soil and
situation of those infernal regions. And to prepare a seat for the
blessed above, they invent new orbs, and a stately empyrean heaven,
so wide and spacious as if they had purposely contrived it, that the
glorified saints might have room enough to walk, to feast, or to take
any recreation.
With these, and a thousand more such like toys, their heads are more
stuffed and swelled than Jove, when he went big of Pallas in his brain,
and was forced to use the midwifery of Vulcan's axe to ease him of his
teeming burden.
[Illustration: Midwivery of Vulcan's Axe 278]
Do not wonder, therefore, that at public disputations they bind their
heads with so many caps one over another; for this is to prevent the
loss of their brains, which would otherwise break out from their uneasy
confinement. It affords likewise a pleasant scene of laughter, to listen
to these divines in their hotly managed disputations; to see how proud
they are of talking such hard gibberish, and stammering out such
blundering distinctions, as the auditors perhaps may sometimes gape at,
but seldom apprehend: and they take such a liberty in their speaking of
Latin, that they scorn to stick at the exactness of syntax or concord;
pretending it is below the majesty of a divine to talk like a pedagogue,
and be tied to the slavish observance of the rules of grammar.
Finally, they take a vast pride, among other citations, to allege the
authority of their respective master, which word they bear as profound
a respect to as the Jews did to their ineffable _tetragrammaton_, and
therefore they will be sure never to write it any otherwise than in
great letters, MAGISTER NOSTER; and if any happen to invert the order of
the words, and say, _noster magister_ instead of _magister noster_, they
will presently exclaim against him as a pestilent heretic and underminer
of the catholic faith.
[Illustration: 282]