If a physician sees you eat any thing that is not good for the body, to
keep you from it he cries out "It is _poison_!" If the divine sees you do
any thing that is hurtful to your soul, to keep you from it he cries out
"You are _damned_!"
To preach long, loud, and damnation, is the way to be cried up. We love a
man who damns us, and we run after him again to save us. If a man has a
sore leg, and he should go to an honest and judicious surgeon, and he
should only bid him keep it warm, or anoint it with some well-known oil
that would do the cure, haply he would not much regard him, because he
knows the medicine beforehand to be an ordinary medicine. But if he should
go to a surgeon that should tell him, "Your leg will be gangrene within
three days, and it must be cut off; and you will die, unless you do
something that I could tell you," what listening there would be to this
man! "Oh! for the Lord's sake, tell me what this is:--I will give you any
contents for your pains."
This ingenious antiquary has also made some quaint comparisons between
doctors of the body and doctors of the public interests. "All might go on
well," he says, "in the commonwealth, if every one in the parliament would
lay down his own interest and aim at the general good. If a man was rich,
and the whole college of physicians were sent to him to administer to him
severally; haply, so long as they observed the rules of art, he might
recover. But if one of them had a great deal of scammony by him, he must
put off that; therefore will he prescribe scammony; another had a great
deal of rhubarb, and he must put off that; therefore he prescribes
rhubarb: and they would certainly kill the man. We destroy the
commonwealth, while we preserve our own private interests and neglect the
public."
Grotius called John Selden "the honour of the English nation;" and Bacon
had such an implicit faith in his judgment, that he desired in his will
that his advice should be taken respecting the publication or suppression
of his posthumous works.