BY REV.

THAT dark shade which passed over the name of the illustrious BACON, toward the close of his life, which hurled him degraded from the office he had so long and so earnestly sought, and which led Pope to characterize him as the

"Wisest, greatest, meanest of mankind,"

has rendered it almost impossible to estimate his moral and religious character. To this sad period of Bacon's life, his character, so far as we know, except as a man fond of display, and ambitious, was beyond reproach. In the offices which he held, and in his private deportment, he was never suspected of a want of integrity. Hume declares that he was not only the ornament of his age and nation, but also "beloved for the courteousness and humanity of his behavior." It is natural for us to seek some palliation for Bacon's great offence; and happily there were circumstances which, while they by no means justify his crime, yet serve in some measure to modify its character, and render it much less base and ignominious than such an offence would be deemed in our times.

The parliament which was assembled by James in 1621, entered immediately into an investigation of the existing abuses of the nation. Unhappily they found in this, their favorite employment, an ample field of labor. Abuses had crept into the government under James, which this vain monarch either would not believe could exist under his wise administration, or which he was unwilling to correct. The necessity of the case, however, compelled him to yield to a determined and inflexible House of Commons. That house, he already saw, was disposed to apply an unsparing hand to all the abuses of the government, and even to most of the royal prerogatives. The necessity of the case compelled him to express his royal gratification with their labors, and to encourage them in their work. "I assure you," said he, "had I before heard these things complained of, I would have done the of fice of a just king, and out of parliament have punished them, as severely, and peradventure more, than you now intend to do."

Encouraged in this manner, and resolved to strike an effectual blow, they commenced their investigations respecting the character and deeds of the Lord Chancellor. Unhappily, here also they found an ample field for the work of reform. The result is well known. Charges of extensive bribery were brought against him. It was alleged that he had received money and other presents, to the amount of many thousand pounds, while causes in chancery were depending on his decision. As to these charges Bacon made a general acknowledgment of guilt. With this confession the parliament was wholly unsatisfied. Determined to humble the greatest man of their time, they demanded an explicit confession in detail of each act of corruption. Power they knew was in their hands. A weak, vain, and silly, though learned monarch, trembled before them. They had commenced a process which could terminate only in the fall of the reigning sovereign; and they resolved that the highest man in the realm should feel the weight of their power. Bacon made them an ingenuous, frank, full, and most mortifying confession of guilt, and bowed himself before the representatives of the people. He acknowledged his guilt in twenty eight articles, specified the amount he had received, detailed, as far as was then practicable, the circumstances, and left himself at the mercy of an indignant parliament. For extenuation," says he, "I will use none concerning the matters themselves; only it may please your lordships, out of your nobleness, to cast your eyes of compassion upon my person and estate. I was never noted for an avaricious man; and the apostle saith that covetousness is the root of all evil. I hope also that your lordships do the rather find me in a state of grace; for that in all these particulars, there are few or none that are not almost two years old; whereas those that are in the habit of corruption do commonly wax worse; so that it hath pleased God to prepare me by precedent degrees of amendment to my present penitency; and for my estate, it is so mean and poor, as my care is now chiefly to satisfy my debts." Being asked by a committee of

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the House of Lords whether this was his true and real confession, he used the following noble and touching language: "My lords, it is my act, my hand, my heart; I beseech your lordships to be merciful to a broken reed." The sentence for the crime is well known.

We have no wish to justify these deeply humiliating and disgraceful crimes. We know not an instance in all history where we could weep over human weakness, as over the fall of this great man. It is one of the thousands of instances that everywhere meet us of human depravity—but if it fixes us in grief, and appals the soul, it shows us man scarcely "less than archangel ruined," and arrests our thoughts not like the obscuration of a planet, or the withdrawal of the beams of a twinkling star, but with the deep melancholy which is shed over created things, when the sun

"In dim eclipse disastrous twilight sheds

O'er half the nations, and with fear of change
Perplexes monarchs."

The only way in which this offence can be in any manner palliated, is by a detail of the acknowledged circumstances of the case. 1. Bacon was distinguished for want of economy during his whole life. It is clear, as he says, that he was not " an avaricious man," but his great error

was a love of office and honor; his great foible a fondness for display. This fondness had involved him in debts which he was unable to pay. 2. The affairs of his domestic economy, it appears, ae entrusted to servants, who were regardless of expense, and probably unconcerned about the dignity, virtue, or solvency of their master. One article of the charge against him was, that "the lord chancellor hath given way to great exactions by his servants." To this he replies, "I confess it was a great fault of neglect in me, that I looked no better to my servants." 3. It is indisputable that Bacon was not enriched by these bribes. 4. It is more than probable, that Bacon only followed a custom which until that time had been regarded as no violation of the oath of the lord chancellor. Hume affirms that "it had been usual for former chancellors to take presents." If this was the case, it lessens greatly the enormity of the crime. It also casts much light on the character of the parliament which was thus resolved to make him a victim. 5. It is said that the presents which Bacon received did in no instance influence his decisions. It was never alleged, even by parliament, taat he had given an unjust or erroneous sentence. None of his decisions were ever reversed; and it is affirmed that he "had given just decrees against those very persons from whom he had received the wages

of iniquity."* It is further to be remarked, that of the twenty-eight charges of corruption against Bacon, but seven occurred during the existence of the suit. It remains yet to be demonstrated—a thing which he did not acknowledge, and which neither the witnesses in the case, nor the nature of his decisions proved, that even those presents influenced in the least his decisions. The more we contemplate the case of Bacon, the more we are disposed to think that injustice has been done to his character. We believe, in relation to the errors and failings of the men of those times-of such men as Calvin, and Cranmer, and Luther, and Bacon, that men have pronounced sentence with a severity drawn rather from the present views of morals, than from the sober estimate which we ought to make, if thrown into the circumstances of their times. This we think particularly true with regard to the crime of Bacon. While we feel assuredly, that crimes such as those with which he was charged, deserve the abhorrence of mankind, and go to impair and destroy all justice in the administration of laws, we are still inclined to look upon the errors of that age, and in those circumstances, with less severity than we should be disposed to apply in the more enlightened periods of the world.

It is not easy to form an estimate of Bacon's religious character. We are favored with so few and imperfect details of his private habits; we have so little that tells us the true biography of the man-his feelings, his usual deportment, his private modes of action; we are let so little into the interior arrangements of his life, that we cannot easily pronounce on his personal character. Charity would lead us to hope, notwithstanding his fondness for preferment, and the great error of his life, that he may have exemplified in his private life the principles which he has so ably and so constantly inculcated. On the subject of his religious opinions he has left us no room to doubt. There is scarcely to be found in any language, or in any writer, so constant a reference to the great religious interests of man, as in the writings of Bacon. There is no where to be found a more profound deference to the authority of the Bible. There is perhaps no where more caution displayed, lest the profoundness, variety, compass, and originality of investigation, should lead the mind astray, than in his investigations, It was one of his recorded sentiments-one of the results of his investigations, which he has expressed without hesitancy or qualification, “that a little philosophy inclineth a man to atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds

* Hume.

about to religion; for while the mind of man looketh upon second causes scattered, it may sometimes rest in them and go no further; but when it beholdeth the chain of them confederate and linked together, it must needs fly to Providence and Deity."* His belief he has left us in a wellwritten confession of his faith, embracing the usual articles of the Christian religion. His prayers, which are preserved, breathe a spirit of true devotion, in a style and form which are not surpassed by any compositions of that period, in our language. It would be easy to transcribe page after page of his recorded sentiments; and we might trace at every step of his life his profound deference for the theology of the Bible.

We do not believe that the Christian religion depends for its evidence on the suffrage of any one philosopher; or on the bright constellation of names which have expressed their profound regard for the truths of revelation. Still a Christian cannot but look with deep interest on the fact that such men as Bacon, and Boyle, and Newton, bowed their mighty intellects to the authority of revelation; came and brought all the rich and varied treasures of their profound investigation, and laid them at the foot of the cross; and spent their lives increasingly impressed with the belief that the God of nature is also the God of the Bible. While we do not claim, that on their authority the Scriptures should be accredited as the word of God, we do claim that they should be allowed to rebuke the flippancy of youthful and unfledged infidelity; that they should be permitted to summon men to inquire, before they pronounce; we claim that their authority is sufficient to call on the youthful skeptic to pause, and to suspect that possibly he be wrong. When mighty minds like those have left their recorded assent to the truths of the Christian scheme, it is not too much to ask of minds of far less power to sit down and inquire, at least, whether Christianity may not have come from God. When Newton, after having surveyed world on world and measured the heavens, and placed himself for profound inquiry at the head of mankind, sat down in the full maturity of his days, and passed the vigor of his life, and the serene evening of his honored age in the contemplation of the New Testament; when Bacon, after having rescued science from the accumulated darkness and rubbish of two thousand years; after having given lessons to all mankind about the just mode of investigating nature; and after having traversed the circle of the sciences, and gained all that past generations had to teach, and having carried for

may

Essays, Civil and Moral.

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ward the inquiry far into nature, bowed at every step to the authority of the Bible; when Hale, learned in the law, not only believed Christianity to be true, but adorned the Christian profession by a most humble life; when Boerhave, perfectly acquainted with the human frame, and skilled in the healing art, sat with the simplicity of a child at the feet of Jesus Christ; when Locke gave the testimony of his powerful mind to the truth of the Christian religion; when Davy, first of chemists, came on this subject to the same results as the analyzer of light, the inventor of fluxions, and the demonstrator of the theory of gravitation; as the author of the Novum Organum; and the writer of the treatise on the Human Understanding; when each science has thus contributed its founder, its ornament, and its head, as a witness to the truth of the Christian religion, it is not too much to conclude it may be something different from priestcraft and imposture. When we turn from these lights of men-these broad stars that spread their beams over all the firmament of science, and seek after the wandering and dim luminaries of infidelity-when we make a sober estimate of what the high priests of unbelief have done for the advancement of science, and the welfare of man, we are struck with the prodigious advance we have made into chilly and tenebrated regions. We have passed amid spirits of another order. as remote almost from science, as from Christianity. We should know where we are as readily by their superficial, but pompous pretensions; by dark, but most confident scientific claims; by erroneous, wandering, but most flippant demands in science, as we do by their infuriated and bitter raging against the claims of the Christian religion. Who are these men? Volney, Diderot, D'Alembert, Voltaire, Paine; Herbert-the best and greatest of them-Shaftsbury, Tindal, Morgan, Bolingbroke, Gibbon, Hume What have they ever done for science? What advances have they ever made? So far as we know, not one of them has any pretensions to what gives immortality to the names of Boyle, Locke, Newton, Bacon, Hale. What valuable fact have they ever presented in science? What new principle have they originated, or illustrated? What department of science have they adorned? Not a man of them has ever trod the regions that constituted the glory of England, and of the world -the regions of profound science; of deep and penetrating investigation of the works of nature. In spite of such men, science would still have slumbered in the regions of eternal night; and infidelity, but for Christian men, might have swayed a sceptre as she desired, over regions of pro

We wander in climes

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found and boundless shades of ignorance and crime. We are accustomed to care little for names and authorities in religion. We believe that religion, natural and revealed, accords with the constitution and course of nature. We believe that it is sustained by a force and compass of argument that can be adduced for the truth of no science. On the ground of the independent and impregnable proof of revealed religion, we are Christians. But there are men who pride themselves on names. There are those whose only reason for an opinion is, that it was held by Fome illustrious man. None are really so much under the influence of this feeling as the infidel. That Hume was a skeptic; that Gibbon was capable of a sneer; that Paine was a scoffer; that Volney was an atheist, is to them strong as proof of holy writ. Hence they feel that to doubt, is the most exalted state of man; that there is ar

gument enough for mortals in a sneer and a jibe: that scoffing becomes a human being; and that to come to the conclusion that man has no Father and no God, that he cies like kindred worms, is the supremacy of felicity, and the perfection of reason. When such have been the apostles and high priests of unbelief-such the hosts which they have mustered, we feel that apart from all argument in the case, we would rather accord with the sentiments of the great luminaries of mankind in science; and that it is not unworthy of reason and elevated thought to suppose, that true religion may be found where we have found every other valuable blessing for mankind; and that the system, attended every where with science, refinement, and art, and that has shed light on the intellect, and honor on the names of Locke, and Boyle, and Bacon, is the system with

which GoD intended to bless men.