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Rawley's XCVI. To the Bishop of ELY, upon sending his writing, intitled, Cogitata et Visa. My very good Lord,

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Now your lordship hath been so long in the church and the palace, disputing between kings and popes;

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3 The king and kingdom being exasperated by the gun-powder treason, thought it necessary to make some more effectual laws to distinguish between those papists that paid due obedience to the king, and those that did not. For which end, in the parliament which met upon the memorable fifth of November, 1605, a new oath of allegiance was framed; declaring that the pope, etc. had no power to depose Kings, absolve their subjects, or dispose of their kingdoms, etc. The court of Rome, jealous of losing an authority they had been many years assuming; and especially perceiving that many papists submitted to the oath, as not intrenching upon matters of faith, severely inhibited them from taking the same by two briefs, the one quickly succeeding the other. The King, on the other hand, esteeming it a point that nearly concerned him, had recourse to those arms he could best manage, and encountered the briefs by a premonition directed to all Christian princes; exhorting them to espouse the common quarrel. Cardinal Bellarmine, who, by virtue of his title, thought himself almost equal to princes, and by his great learning much superior, enters the lists with the King. The seconds coming in on both sides, no man was thought fitter to engage this remarkable antagonist than that great and renowned prelate in learning and sanctity, Dr. Andrews, then bishop of Ely, and after of Winchester. Neither were the reformed of the French church idle spectators; as Monsieur du Moulin, and Monsieur du Plessis Mornay: this last published a book at Saumur in 1611, intitled, The Mystery of Iniquity, &c. shewing by what degrees the bishops of Rome had raised themselves to their present grandeur, asserting the right of sovereign princes against the positions of the cardinals Bellarmine and Baronius: the French edition whereof he dedicated to Lewis the thirteenth, and the Latin to King Janies. This last performance was presented to King James, with a letter exhorting him, "de quitter d'oresenavant la plume, pour "aller espée à la main desnicher l'antichrist hors de sa forte"C resse " to give over waging a war with his pen, and to destroy the papal power with his sword; which he excites the King to attempt in the conclusion of his dedication, with so much life, that I shall crave the liberty to insert part of his own words, in order to declare the spirit and zeal of a gentleman, who for his valour and conduct in war, his judgment in council, his dexterity in dispatches, and his firmness and constancy in religion, in the defence of which, hand, and tongue, and pen were employed, is far above all the titles of honour that can be given.

Hanc tu, rex potentissime, laudem, hanc lauream, absit ut tibi præripi patiaris; cuiquam alii servatam velis; non sanguine, non vita, non carioribus cæteris redemptam malis. At tu, Jehova Deus, cujus

methinks you should take pleasure to look into the field, and refresh your mind with some matter of philosophy; though that science be now through age waxed a child again, and left to boys and young men. And because you were wont to make me believe you took liking to my writings, I send you some of this vacation's fruits; and thus much more of my mind and purpose. I hasten not to publish; perishing I would prevent; and I am forced to respect as well my times as the matter. For with me it is thus; and I think, with all men in my case: if I bind myself to an argument, it loadeth my mind; but if I rid my mind of the present cogitation, it is rather a recreation. This hath put me into these miscellanies; which I purpose to suppress, if God give me leave to write a just and perfect volume of philosophy, which I go on with though slowly. I send not your lordship too much, lest it may glut you. Now let me tell you what my desire is: if your lordship be so good now, as when you were the good dean of Westminster, my request to you is, that not by pricks, but by notes, you, would mark unto me whatsoever shall seem unto you either not current in the stile,or harsh to credit and opinion, or inconvenient for the person of the writer; for no man can be judge and party: and when our res, cujus gloria, hic proprie agitur; cujus absque ope frustra sint vota, suspiria, molimina nostra; evigila, exsurge, robur indue, justitiam ut loricam. Voca servum tuum per nomen suum, prehende dexteram Uncti tui, ambula ante faciem ejus; complanentur valles, subsidant montes, consternantur fluvii, pateant januæ, conterantur vectes, contremiscant populi, corruat Jericho illa in spiritu oris tui, in conspectu ejus. Ego sexagenario licet jam major, lateri tunc ipsius hæream indivulsus; inter angusta, inter aspera Alpium senectam exuam; inter principia prælium misceam; inter triumphos præcinente angelo Cecidit illud congeminem; sanctæ huic lætitiæ totus immergar, æternæ contiguus immoriar raptus.

But this was an enterprise suited to the warlike genius of Du Plessis, great master of Henry the fourth, and not to the peaceable spirit of king James. Besides the king, in his answer of the 20th of October, 1611, after he had excused his long silence, and very much commended this author in the design of his book, and as freely called the pope antichrist, and Rome Babylon, conceives that neither the Scriptures, the doctrine nor example of the primitive Church, would sufficiently justify an offensive war, undertaken purely for religion; could he in prudence expect any success in such an attempt. Stephens.

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minds judge by reflection on ourselves, they are more subject to error. And though, for the matter itself, my judgment be in some things fixed, and not accessible by any man's judgment that goeth not my way: yet even in those things, the admonition of a friend may make me express myself diversly. I would have come to your lordship, but that I am hastening to my house in the country: and so I commend your lordship to God's goodness,

Rawley's XCVII. To Sir THOMAS BODELEY, after he had imparted to him a writing intitled, Cogitata et Visa.

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to a collec

SIR,

IN respect of my going down to my house in the country, I shall have miss of my papers, which I pray you therefore to return unto me. You are, I bear you witness, slothful, and you help me nothing; so as I am half in conceit, that you affect not the argument: for myself, I know well, you love and affect, I can say no more to you, but non canimus surdis, respondent omnia sylva. If you be not of the lodg ings chalked up, whereof I speak in my preface, I am but to pass by your door. But if I had you a fortnight at Gorhambury, I would make you tell me another tale; or else I would add a cogitation against libraries, and be revenged on you that way. I pray you send me some good news of Sir Thomas Smith; and commend me very kindly to him. So I rest

1607,

Appendix XCVIII. Sir THOMAS BODELEY'S letter to Sir FRANCIS BACON, about his Cogitata et Visa, wherein he declareth his opinion freely touching the same.

tion of letters of archbishop Usher, let ter XIV. p. 19.

SIR,

As soon as the term was ended, supposing your leisure was more than before, I was coming to thank you two or three times, rather choosing to do it by

word than by letter: but I was still disappointed of my purpose, as I am at this present upon an urgent occasion, which doth tie me fast to Fulham, and hath now made me determine to impart my mind in writing.

I think you know I have read your Cogitata et Visa, which I protest I have done with great desire, reputing it a token of your singular love, that you joined me with those your chiefest friends, to whom you would commend the first perusal of your draught; for which, I pray you, give me leave to say but this unto you:

First, that if the depth of my affection to your person and spirit, to your works and your words, and to all your abilities, were as highly to be valued, as your affection is to me, it might walk with yours arm in arm, and claim your love by just desert. But there can be no comparison where our states are so uneven, and our means to demonstrate our affections so different: insomuch as for my own, I must leave it to be prized in the nature that it is; and you shall evermore find it most addicted to your worth.

As touching the subject of your book, you have set afoot so many rare and noble speculations, as I cannot choose but wonder, and I shall wonder at it ever, that, your expence of time considered in your public profession, which hath in a manner no acquaintance with scholarship or learning, you should have culled out the quintessence, and sucked up the sap of the chiefest kind of learning.

For howsoever in some points you do vary altogether from that which is, and hath been ever, the received doctrine of our schools, and was always by the wisest, as still they have been deemed, of all nations and ages adjudged the truest; yet it is apparent, that in those very points, and in all your proposals and plots in that book, you shew yourself a master workman.

For myself, I must confess, and I speak it ingenuè, that for the matter of learning, I am not worthy to be reckoned in the number of smatterers.

And yet because it may seem, that being willing to communicate your treatise with your friends, you are likewise willing to listen to whatsoever I or others can

except against it; I must deliver unto you for my private opinion, that I am one of that crew that say there is, and we profess, a far greater holdfast of certainty in our sciences, than you by your discourse will seem to acknowledge. svalvott ugy alakalı k

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For whereas, first, you do object the ill success and errors of practitioners in physic, you know as well they do proceed of the patient's unruliness, for not one of a hundred doth obey his physician in observing his cautels; or by misinformation of their own indisposi tions, for few are able in this kind to explicate themselves; or by reason their diseases are by nature incurable, which is incident, you know, to many sorts of maladies; or for some other hidden cause which cannot be discovered by course of conjecture. Howbeit, I am full of this belief, that as physic is ministred now-a-days by physicians, it is much to be ascribed to their negligence or ignorance, or other touch of imperfection, that they speed; no better in their practice: for few are found of that profession so well instructed in their art, as they might by the precepts which their art doth afford; which though it be defective in regard of such perfection, yet for certain it doth flourish with admirable remedies, such as tract of time hath taught by experimental events, and are the open highway to that principal knowledge that you recommend.alodas As for alchemy, and magic, some conclusions: they have that are worthy the preserving; but all their skill is so accompanied with subtleties and guiles, as both the crafts and craft-masters are not only despised, but named with derision. Whereupon to make good your principal assertion, methinks you should have drawn your examples from that which is taught in the liberal sciences, not by picking out cases that happen very seldom, and may by all confession be subject to reproof; but by controlling the generals, and grounds, and eminent positions, and aphorisms, which the greatest artists and philosophers have from time to time defended.

For it goeth for current amongst all men of learning, that those kind of arts which clerks in times past did