XI. CHAP. a worm at the root of all his greatness; and, in a few short weeks, he was cast from his high estate, a ruined and a degraded man. Nor can it be denied that his disgrace was the wages of his sin; the bitter harvest of shame and sorrow, gathered in from the seed of corruption which he had sown. Still less can it be denied, that the loss of Bacon's fame, in any one respect, has made his country,yea, the whole world, the poorer. Yet the monuments of his genius are imperishable; and, gazing upon them, we reverence the hand that reared their greatness and their beauty. We share the ardour of Bacon's friend, Ben Jonson, who hesitated not to say of him, in the day of his humiliation, 'My conceit of his person was never increased toward him by his place or honours; but I have and do reverence him for the greatness that was only proper to himself, in that he seemed to me ever by his works one of the greatest men, and most worthy of admiration that had been in many ages; in his adversity, I ever prayed that God would give him strength, for greatness he could not want 31' We remember also that appeal which Bacon, with such touching solemnity, has recorded in his will,- For my name and memory, I leave it to men's charitable speeches, and to foreign nations, and to the next had been created Baron Verulam; 31 those petitions were presented XI. age; and we know that the appeal has not been CHAP. urged in vain. Last of all, we trust that the prayer which Bacon, in the day of his prosperity, poured forth, did not return unto him void, when he said, 'O Lord God, my Creator, my Redeemer, my Comforter. Remember what I have first sought, and what hath been principal in my intentions. I have loved thy assemblies: I have mourned for the divisions of thy Church; I have delighted in the brightness of thy sanctuary. This vine, which thy right hand hath planted in this nation, I have ever prayed unto thee that it might have the first and the latter rain; and that it might stretch her branches to the seas and to the floods.-Thy creatures have been my books, but thy Scriptures much more. I have sought thee in the courts, fields, and gardens, but I have found thee in thy temples 32. May he not have found God in vain! with respect tion. More than five years were added to Bacon's life, Bacon'sview after he had fallen from his high office; and the to Colonizaworks, which he composed in that period, were second to none of those in his earlier days, for the depth and range of thought which they exhibit. It is this fact which leads me to ask the reader carefully to consider the principles which, in these and some of his former writings, he thought needful to be observed in the plantation of Colonies; and the pains which he employed to impress them upon those who then stood in the high places of the earth. 32 Ibid, p. ccccxxxiii. ; and vii. 5. СНАР. The erroneous observation of Robertson, that the establishment of martial law in Virginia was owing to the advice of Bacon, has already been pointed out 33; and, in the passage there quoted from Bacon's Essay on Plantations, an Essay written in the evening of his life, it has been seen that the great end which, above all, men ought to keep in view, in the conduct of such enterprises, was, as he said, that they should have God always, and his services, before their eyes.' That many of his own countrymen were negligent in regarding that end, and slow to exercise the means necessary to attain it, is an evil which he condemns elsewhere in terms of glowing eloquence. Thus, in his 'Advertisement touching an Holy War,' written in the year 1623, and therefore nearly contemporary with his Essay on Plantations, Bacon introduces Martius as saying that there was, in that day, 'a kind of meanness in the designs and enterprises of Christendom;' and that the wars were as the wars of heathens,―for secular interest or ambition, not worthy of the warfare of Christians. The Church, indeed, maketh her missions into the extreme parts of the nations and isles, and it is well but this is "Ecce, unus gladius hic." The Christian princes and potentates are they that are wanting to the propagation of the faith by their Yet our Lord, that said on earth to the disciples, "Ite et prædicate," said from heaven to Constantine, "In hoc signo vince." What Christian arms. 33 See pp. 282, 283, of this Volume. soldier is there that will not be touched with a religious emulation to see an order of Jesus, or of St. Francis, or of St. Augustine, do such service for enlarging the Christian borders; or an order of St. Jago, or St. Michael, or St. George, only to robe, and feast, and perform rites and observances? Surely the merchants themselves shall rise in judgment against the princes and nobles of Europe; for they have made a great path in the seas, unto the ends of the world; and set forth ships, and forces, of Spanish, English, and Dutch, enough to make China tremble; and all this for pearl, or stone, or spices: but for the pearl of the kingdom of heaven, or the stones of the heavenly Jerusalem, or the spices of the spouse's garden, not a mast hath been set up: nay, they can make shift to shed Christian blood so far off amongst themselves, and not a drop for the cause of Christ 34 Thus, again, in one of his earlier works, in which he gives Advice to Sir George Villiers, afterwards Duke of Buckingham, how to govern himself in the station of Prime Minister,' the seventh article of instruction is that of 'Colonies, or foreign plantations.' Under which head,-after giving many suggestions as to the choice of place and fit governors, and the necessity of the plantations being settled under Letters Patent from the King, that they might be under his protection, and acknowledge their dependency upon the Crown of England-Bacon observes further: For the discipline of the 34 Bacon's Works, vii. 119, 120. СНАР. XI. XI. CHAP. Church in those parts, it will be necessary that it agree with that which is settled in England, else it will make a schism and a rent in Christ's coat which must be seamless; and, to that purpose, it will be fit, that, by the King's supreme power in causes ecclesiastical within all his dominions, they be subordinate under some bishop or bishoprick of this realm 35' Again, with respect to the cautions to be observed in such undertakings, he forbids that any 'extirpation of the natives be made under pretence of planting religion,' saying, 'God surely will in no way be pleased with such sacrifices;' and makes it a recommendation to establish there the same purity of religion, and the same discipline for Church government, without any mixture of popery or anabaptism, lest they should be drawn into factions and schisms, and that place receive them there bad, and send them back worse;' and, as a further protection against such consequences, he urges, 'that if any transplant themselves into plantations abroad, who are known schismatics, outlaws, or criminal persons, that they be sent back upon the first notice; such persons are not fit to lay the foundation of a new Colony 36 When Bacon thus ranks schismatics in the same class with outlaws and criminals, he repeats, it must be confessed, to a certain extent, the severe language of the Statutes of that day, against Recusants and Separatists. The causes of such severity, and 35 Bacon's Works, vi. 438-440. 36 Ibid. vi. 441, 442. |