In Praise of Folly
to construe the mechanism of their own body: nay, when they are so
purblind as not to be able to see a stone's cast before them, yet they
shall be as sharp-sighted as possible in spying-out ideas, universals
separate forms, first matters, quiddities, formalities, and a hundred
such like niceties, so diminutively small, that were not their eyes
extremely magnifying, all the art of optics could never make them
discernible. But they then most despise the low grovelling vulgar
when they bring out their parallels, triangles, circles, and other
mathematical figures, drawn up in battalia, like so many spells
and charms of conjuration in muster, with letters to refer to the
explication of the several problems; hereby raising devils as it
were, only to have the credit of laying them, and amusing the ordinary
spectators into wonder, because they have not wit enough to understand
the juggle. Of these some undertake to profess themselves judicial
astrologers, pretending to keep correspondence with the stars, and so
from their information can resolve any query; and though it is all but a
presumptuous imposture, yet some to be sure will be so great fools as to
believe them.
The divines present themselves next; but it may perhaps be most safe to
pass them by, and not to touch upon so harsh a string as this subject
would afford. Beside, the undertaking may be very hazardous; for they
are a sort of men generally very hot and passionate; and should I
provoke them, I doubt not would set upon me with a full cry, and force
me with shame to recant, which if I stubbornly refuse to do, they will
presently brand me for a heretic, and thunder out an excommunication,
which is their spiritual weapon to wound such as lift up a hand against
them. It is true, no men own a less dependence on me, yet have they
reason to confess themselves indebted for no small obligations. For it
is by one of my properties, self-love, that they fancy themselves, with
their elder brother Paul, caught up into the third heaven, from whence,
like shepherds indeed, they look down upon their flock, the laity,
grazing as it were, in the vales of the world below. They fence
themselves in with so many surrounders of magisterial definitions,
conclusions, corollaries, propositions explicit and implicit, that
there is no falling in with them; or if they do chance to be urged to a
seeming non-plus, yet they find out so many evasions, that all the art
of man can never bind them so fast, but that an easy distinction shall
give them a starting-hole to escape the scandal of being baffled. They
will cut asunder the toughest argument with as much ease as Alexander
did the gordian knot; they will thunder out so many rattling terms
as shall fright an adversary into conviction. They are exquisitely
dexterous in unfolding the most intricate mysteries; they will tell
you to a tittle all the successive proceedings of Omnipotence in the
creation of the universe; they will explain the precise manner of
original sin being derived from our first parents; they will satisfy you
in what manner, by what degrees, and in how long a time, our Saviour was
conceived in the Virgin's womb, and demonstrate in the consecrated wafer
how accidents may subsist without a subject. Nay, these are accounted
trivial, easy questions; they have yet far greater difficulties behind,
which notwithstanding they solve with as much expedition as the former;
as namely, whether supernatural generation requires any instant of time
for its acting? whether Christ, as a son, bears a double specifically
distinct relation to God the Father, and his virgin mother? whether
this proposition is possible to be true, the first person of the Trinity
hated the second? whether God, who took our nature upon him in the form
of a man, could as well have become a woman, a devil, a beast, a herb,
or a stone? and were it so possible that the Godhead had appeared in any
shape of an inanimate substance, how he should then have preached his
gospel? or how have been nailed to the cross? whether if St. Peter had
celebrated the eucharist at the same time our Saviour was hanging on the
cross, the consecrated bread would have been transubstantiated into
the same body that remained on the tree? whether in Christ's corporal
presence in the sacramental wafer, his humanity be not abstracted from
his Godhead? whether after the resurrection we shall carnally eat and
drink as we do in this life?
There are a thousand other more sublimated and refined niceties of
notions, relations, quantities, formalities, quiddities, haeccities, and
such like abstrusities, as one would think no one could pry into, except
he had not only such cat's eyes as to see best in the dark, but even
such a piercing faculty as to see through an inch-board, and spy out
what really never had any being. Add to these some of their tenets and
opinions, which are so absurd and extravagant, that the wildest fancies
of the Stoicks which they so much disdain and decry as paradoxes, seem
in comparison just and rational; as their maintaining, that it is a less
aggravating fault to kill a hundred men, than for a poor cobbler to set
a stitch on the sabbath-day; or, that it is more justifiable to do
the greatest injury imaginable to others, than to tell the least
lie ourselves. And these subtleties are alchymized to a more refined
sublimate by the abstracting brains of their several schoolmen; the
Realists, the Nominalists, the Thomists, the Albertists, the Occamists,
the Scotists; these are not all, but the rehearsal of a few only, as a
specimen of their divided sects; in each of which there is so much of
deep learning, so much of unfathomable difficulty, that I believe the
apostles themselves would stand in need of a new illuminating spirit, if
they were to engage in any controversy with these new divines. St. Paul,
no question, had a full measure of faith; yet when he lays down faith
to be the substance of things not seen, these men carp at it for an
imperfect definition, and would undertake to teach the apostles better
logic. Thus the same holy author wanted for nothing of the grace
of charity, yet (say they) he describes and defines it but very
inaccurately, when he treats of it in the thirteenth chapter of his
first epistle to the Corinthians. The primitive disciples were very
frequent in administering the holy sacrament, breaking bread from house
to house; yet should they be asked of the _Terminus a quo_ and the
_Terminus ad quern_, the nature of transubstantiation? the manner
how one body can be in several places at the same time? the difference
betwixt the several attributes of Christ in heaven, on the cross, and in
the consecrated bread? what time is required for the transubstantiating
the bread into flesh? how it can be done by a short sentence pronounced
by the priest, which sentence is a species of discreet quantity, that
has no permanent _punctum?_ Were they asked (I say) these, and several
other confused queries, I do not believe they could answer so readily
as our mincing school-men now-a-days take a pride to do. They were well
acquainted with the Virgin Mary, yet none of them undertook to prove
that she was preserved immaculate from original sin, as some of our
divines very hotly contend for. St. Peter had the keys given to him, and
that by our Saviour himself, who had never entrusted him except he had
known him capable of their manage and custody; and yet it is much to
be questioned whether Peter was sensible of that subtlety broached by
Scotus, that he may have the key of knowledge effectually for others,
who has no knowledge actually in himself. Again, they baptized all
nations, and yet never taught what was the formal, material, efficient,
and final cause of baptism, and certainly never dreamt of distinguishing
between a delible and an indelible character in this sacrament They
worshipped in the spirit, following their master's injunction, God is a
spirit, and they which worship him, must worship him in spirit, and
in truth; yet it does not appear that it was ever revealed to them how
divine adoration should be paid at the same time to our blessed Saviour
in heaven, and to his picture here below on a wall, drawn with two
fingers held out, a bald crown, and a circle round his head. To
reconcile these intricacies to an appearance of reason requires
three-score years' experience in metaphysics.
Farther, the apostles often mention _Grace_, yet never distinguish
between _gratia, gratis data_, and _gratia gratificans_. They earnestly
exhort us likewise to good works, yet never explain the difference
between _Opus operans_, and _Opus operatum_. They very frequently press
and invite us to seek after charity, without dividing it into infused
and acquired, or determining whether it be a substance or an accident, a
created or an uncreated being. They detested sin themselves, and warned
others from the commission of it; and yet I am sure they could never
have defined so dogmatically, as the Scotists have since done. St. Paul,
who in other's judgment is no less the chief of the apostles, than
he was in his own the chief of sinners, who being bred at the feet of
Gamaliel, was certainly more eminently a scholar than any of the rest,
yet he often exclaims against vain philosophy, warns us from doting
about questions and strifes of words, and charges us to avoid profane
and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called; which
he would not have done, if he had thought it worth his while to have
become acquainted with them, which he might soon have been, the
disputes of that age being but small, and more intelligible sophisms,
in reference to the vastly greater intricacies they are now improved
to. But yet, however, our scholastic divines are so modest, that if they
meet with any passage in St. Paul, or any other penman of holy writ,
which is not so well modelled, or critically disposed of, as they
could wish, they will not roughly condemn it, but bend it rather to a
favorable interpretation, out of reverence to antiquity, and respect
to the holy scriptures; though indeed it were unreasonable to expect
anything of this nature from the apostles, whose lord and master
had given unto them to know the mysteries of God, but not those of
philosophy. If the same divines meet with anything of like nature
unpalatable in St. Chrysostom, St. Basil, St. Hierom, or others of the
fathers, they will not stick to appeal from their authority, and very
fairly resolve that they lay under a mistake. Yet these ancient fathers
were they who confuted both the Jews and Heathens, though they both
obstinately adhered to their respective prejudices; they confuted them
(I say), yet by their lives and miracles, rather than by words and
syllogisms; and the persons they thus proselyted were downright honest,
well meaning people, such as understood plain sense better than any
artificial pomp of reasoning: whereas if our divines should now
set about the gaining converts from paganism by their metaphysical
subtleties, they would find that most of the persons they applied
themselves to were either so ignorant as not at all to apprehend them,
or so impudent as to scoff and deride them; or finally, so well skilled
at the same weapons, that they would be able to keep their pass, and
fence off all assaults of conviction: and this last way the victory
would be altogether as hopeless, as if two persons were engaged of so
equal strength, that it were impossible any one should overpower the
other.
If my judgment might be taken, I would advise Christians, in their next
expedition to a holy war, instead of those many unsuccessful legions,
which they have hitherto sent to encounter the Turks and Saracens,
that they would furnish out their clamorous Scotists, their obstinate