45. PART IV. cept in the territories whereof he is himself the civil sovereign, and where the emperor having sovereign power civil, hath expressly chosen the Pope for the chief pastor under himself, of his Christian subjects. Procession of images. Wax candles, and torches lighted. The carrying about of images in procession, is another relic of the religion of the Greeks, and Romans. For they also carried their idols from place to place, in a kind of chariot, which was peculiarly dedicated to that use, which the Latins called thensa, and vehiculum Deorum; and the image was placed in a frame, or shrine, which they called ferculum: and that which they called pompa, is the same that now is named procession. According whereunto, amongst the divine honours which were given to Julius Cæsar by the senate, this was one, that in the pomp, or procession, at the Circæan games, he should have thensam et ferculum, a sacred chariot and a shrine; which was as much, as to be carried up and down as a god: just as at this day the Popes are carried by Switzers under a canopy. To these processions also belonged the bearing of burning torches, and candles, before the images of the gods, both amongst the Greeks, and Romans. For afterwards the emperors of Rome received the same honour; as we read of Caligula, that at his reception to the empire, he was carried from Misenum to Rome, in the midst of a throng of people, the ways beset with altars, and beasts for sacrifice, and burning torches: and of Caracalla, that was received into Alexandria with incense, and with casting of flowers, and dadouxiaus, that is, with torches; for dadouxo were they that amongst 45. and torches the Greeks carried torches lighted in the proces- PART IV. sions of their gods. And in process of time, the devout, but ignorant people, did many times honour Wax candles, their bishops with the like pomp of wax candles, lighted. and the images of our Saviour, and the saints, constantly, in the church itself. And thus came in the use of wax candles; and was also established by some of the ancient Councils. The heathens had also their aqua lustralis, that is to say, holy water. The Church of Rome imitates them also in their holy days. They had their bacchanalia; and we have our wakes, answering to them: they their saturnalia, and we our carnivals, and Shrove-Tuesday's liberty of servants: they their procession of Priapus; we our fetching in, erection, and dancing about May-poles; and dancing is one kind of worship: they had their procession called Ambarvalia; and we our procession about the fields in the Rogation-week. Nor do I think that these are all the ceremonies that have been left in the Church, from the first conversion of the Gentiles; but they are all that I can for the present call to mind; and if a man would well observe that which is delivered in the histories, concerning the religious rites of the Greeks and Romans, I doubt not but he might find many more of these old empty bottles of Gentilism, which the doctors of the Roman Church, either by negligence or ambition, have filled up again with the new wine of Christianity, that will not fail in time to break them. 46. sophy is. CHAP. XLVI. OF DARKNESS FROM VAIN PHILOSOPHY, AND PART IV. BY PHILOSOPHY is understood the knowledge acquired by reasoning, from the manner of the geWhat philo- neration of any thing, to the properties: or from the properties, to some possible way of generation of the same; to the end to be able to produce, as far as matter, and human force permit, such effects, as human life requireth. So the geometrician, from the construction of figures, findeth out many properties thereof; and from the properties, new ways of their construction, by reasoning; to the end to be able to measure land, and water; and for infinite other uses. So the astronomer, from the rising, setting, and moving of the sun, and stars, in divers parts of the heavens, findeth out the causes of day, and night, and of the different seasons of the year; whereby he keepeth an account of time; and the like of other sciences. Prudence no part of By which definition it is evident, that we are not philosophy. to account as any part thereof, that original knowledge called experience, in which consisteth prudence because it is not attained by reasoning, but found as well in brute beasts, as in man; and is but a memory of successions of events in times past, wherein the omission of every little circumstance altering the effect, frustrateth the expectation of the most prudent: whereas nothing is produced by reasoning aright, but general, eternal, and immutable truth. 46. Nor are we therefore to give that name to any PART IV. false conclusions: for he that reasoneth aright in words he understandeth, can never conclude an error: No false doctrine is part of philosophy. velation super Nor to that which any man knows by superna- No more is retural revelation; because it is not acquired by natural. reasoning: taken upon cre Nor that which is gotten by reasoning from the Nor learning authority of books; because it is not by reasoning dit of authors. from the cause to the effect, nor from the effect to the cause; and is not knowledge but faith. nings and pro gress of philo sophy. The faculty of reasoning being consequent to the of the beginuse of speech, it was not possible, but that there should have been some general truths found out by reasoning, as ancient almost as language itself. The savages of America, are not without some good moral sentences; also they have a little arithmetic, to add, and divide in numbers not too great: but they are not, therefore, philosophers. For as there were plants of corn and wine in small quantity dispersed in the fields and woods, before men knew their virtue, or made use of them for their nourishment, or planted them apart in fields and vineyards; in which time they fed on acorns, and drank water: so also there have been divers true, general, and profitable speculations from the beginning; as being the natural plants of human reason. But they were at first but few in number; men lived upon gross experience; there was no method; that is to say, no sowing, nor planting of knowledge by itself, apart from the weeds, and common plants of error and conjecture. And the cause of it being the want of leisure from procuring the necessities of life, and defending themselves against their neigh PART IV. bours, it was impossible, till the erecting of great commonwealths, it should be otherwise. 46. Of the schools of philosophy amongst the Athenians. Leisure is the mother of philosophy; and Commonwealth. the mother of peace and leisure. Where first were great and flourishing cities, there was first the study of philosophy. The Gymnosophists of India, the Magi of Persia, and the Priests of Chaldea and Egypt, are counted the most ancient philosophers; and those countries were the most ancient of kingdoms. Philosophy was not risen to the Grecians, and other people of the west, whose commonwealths, no greater perhaps than Lucca or Geneva, had never peace, but when their fears of one another were equal; nor the leisure to observe anything but one another. At length, when war had united many of these Grecian lesser cities, into fewer, and greater; then began seven men, of several parts of Greece, to get the reputation of being wise; some of them for moral and politic sentences; and others for the learning of the Chaldeans and Egyptians, which was astronomy, and geometry. But we hear not yet of any schools of philosophy. After the Athenians, by the overthrow of the Persian armies, had gotten the dominion of the sea; and thereby, of all the islands, and maritime cities of the Archipelago, as well of Asia as Europe; and were grown wealthy; they that had no employment, neither at home nor abroad, had little else to employ themselves in, but either (as St. Luke says, Acts xvii. 21), in telling and hearing news, or in discoursing of philosophy publicly to the youth of the city. Every master took some place Plato, in certain public walks for that purpose. |