"Essays" - читать интересную книгу автора (Bacon Francis)

controverted, is too small and light, not worth the heat and strife
about it, kindled only by contradiction. For, as it is noted, by one
of the fathers, Christ's coat indeed had no seam, but the church's
vesture was of divers colors; whereupon he saith, In veste varietas
sit, scissura non sit; they be two things, unity and uniformity. The
other is, when the matter of the point controverted, is great, but
it is driven to an over-great subtilty, and obscurity; so that it
becometh a thing rather ingenious, than substantial. A man that is
of judgment and understanding, shall sometimes hear ignorant men
differ, and know well within himself, that those which so differ, mean
one thing, and yet they themselves would never agree. And if it come
so to pass, in that distance of judgment, which is between man and
man, shall we not think that God above, that knows the heart, doth not
discern that frail men, in some of their contradictions, intend the
same thing; and accepteth of both? The nature of such controversies is
excellently expressed, by St. Paul, in the warning and precept, that
he giveth concerning the same, Devita profanas vocum novitates, et
oppositiones falsi nominis scientiae. Men create oppositions, which
are not; and put them into new terms, so fixed, as whereas the meaning
ought to govern the term, the term in effect governeth the meaning.
There be also two false peaces, or unities: the one, when the peace is
grounded, but upon an implicit ignorance; for all colors will agree in
the dark: the other, when it is pieced up, upon a direct admission
of contraries, in fundamental points. For truth and falsehood, in such
things, are like the iron and clay, in the toes of Nebuchadnezzar's
image; they may cleave, but they will not incorporate.

Concerning the means of procuring unity; men must beware, that in
the procuring, or muniting, of religious unity, they do not dissolve
and deface the laws of charity, and of human society. There be two
swords amongst Christians, the spiritual and temporal; and both have
their due office and place, in the maintenance of religion. But we may
not take up the third sword, which is Mahomet's sword, or like unto
it; that is, to propagate religion by wars, or by sanguinary
persecutions to force consciences; except it be in cases of overt
scandal, blasphemy, or intermixture of practice against the state;
much less to nourish seditions; to authorize conspiracies and
rebellions; to put the sword into the people's hands; and the like;
tending to the subversion of all government, which is the ordinance of
God. For this is but to dash the first table against the second; and
so to consider men as Christians, as we forget that they are men.
Lucretius the poet, when he beheld the act of Agamemnon, that could
endure the sacrificing of his own daughter, exclaimed: Tantum
Religio potuit suadere malorum.

What would he have said, if he had known of the massacre in
France, or the powder treason of England? He would have been seven
times more Epicure, and atheist, than he was. For as the temporal
sword is to be drawn with great circumspection in cases of religion;
so it is a thing monstrous, to put it into the hands of the common