In Praise of Folly
Occamists, their invincible Albertists, and all their forces of tough,
crabbed and profound disputants: the engagement, I fancy, would be
mighty pleasant, and the victory we may imagine on our side not to be
questioned. For which of the enemies would not veil their turbans at so
solemn an appearance? Which of the fiercest Janizaries would not
throw away his scimitar, and all the half-moons be eclipsed by the
interposition of so glorious an army?
I suppose you mistrust I speak all this by way of jeer and irony; and
well I may, since among divines themselves there are some so ingenious
as to despise these captious and frivolous impertinences: they look upon
it as a kind of profane sacrilege, and a little less than blasphemous
impiety, to determine of such niceties in religion, as ought rather
to be the subject of an humble and uncontradicting faith, than of a
scrupulous and inquisitive reason: they abhor a defiling the mysteries
of Christianity with an intermixture of heathenish philosophy, and judge
it very improper to reduce divinity to an obscure speculative science,
whose end is such a happiness as can be gained only by the means of
practice. But alas, those notional divines, however condemned by the
soberer judgment of others, are yet mightily pleased with themselves,
and are so laboriously intent upon prosecuting their crabbed studies,
that they cannot afford so much time as to read a single chapter in
any one book of the whole bible. And while they thus trifle away their
mis-spent hours in trash and babble, they think that they support
the Catholic Church with the props and pillars of propositions and
syllogisms, no less effectually than Atlas is feigned by the poets to
sustain on his shoulders the burden of a tottering world.
Their privileges, too, and authority are very considerable: they can
deal with any text of scripture as with a nose of wax, knead it into
what shape best suits their interest; and whatever conclusions they
have dogmatically resolved upon, they would have them as irrepealably
ratified as Solon's laws, and in as great force as the very decrees of
the papal chair. If any be so bold as to remonstrate to their decisions,
they will bring him on his knees to a recantation of his impudence.
They shall pronounce as irrevocably as an oracle, this proposition is
scandalous, that irreverent; this has a smack of heresy, and that is
bald and improper; so that it is not the being baptised into the church,
the believing of the scriptures, the giving credit to St. Peter, St.
Paul, St. Hierom, St. Augustin, nay, or St. Thomas Aquinas himself, that
shall make a man a Christian, except he have the joint suffrage of these
novices in learning,-who have blessed the world no doubt with a great
many discoveries, which had never come to light, if they had not struck
the fire of subtlety out of the flint of obscurity. These fooleries sure
must be a happy employ.
Farther, they make as many partitions and divisions in hell and
purgatory, and describe as many different sorts and degrees of
punishment as if they were very well acquainted with the soil and
situation of those infernal regions. And to prepare a seat for the
blessed above, they invent new orbs, and a stately empyrean heaven,
so wide and spacious as if they had purposely contrived it, that the
glorified saints might have room enough to walk, to feast, or to take
any recreation.
With these, and a thousand more such like toys, their heads are more
stuffed and swelled than Jove, when he went big of Pallas in his brain,
and was forced to use the midwifery of Vulcan's axe to ease him of his
teeming burden.
Do not wonder, therefore, that at public disputations they bind their
heads with so many caps one over another; for this is to prevent the
loss of their brains, which would otherwise break out from their uneasy
confinement. It affords likewise a pleasant scene of laughter, to listen
to these divines in their hotly managed disputations; to see how proud
they are of talking such hard gibberish, and stammering out such
blundering distinctions, as the auditors perhaps may sometimes gape at,
but seldom apprehend: and they take such a liberty in their speaking of
Latin, that they scorn to stick at the exactness of syntax or concord;
pretending it is below the majesty of a divine to talk like a pedagogue,
and be tied to the slavish observance of the rules of grammar.
Finally, they take a vast pride, among other citations, to allege the
authority of their respective master, which word they bear as profound
a respect to as the Jews did to their ineffable _tetragrammaton_, and
therefore they will be sure never to write it any otherwise than in
great letters, MAGISTER NOSTER; and if any happen to invert the order of
the words, and say, _noster magister_ instead of _magister noster_, they
will presently exclaim against him as a pestilent heretic and underminer
of the catholic faith.
The next to these are another sort of brainsick fools, who style
themselves monks and of religious orders, though they assume both titles
very unjustly: for as to the last, they have very little religion in
them; and as to the former, the etymology of the word monk implies a
solitariness, or being alone; whereas they are so thick abroad that
we cannot pass any street or alley without meeting them. Now I cannot
imagine what one degree of men would be more hopelessly wretched, if
I did not stand their friend, and buoy them up in that lake of misery,
which by the engagements of a holy vow they have voluntarily immerged
themselves in. But when these sort of men are so unwelcome to others, as
that the very sight of them is thought ominous, I yet make them highly
in love with themselves, and fond admirers of their own happiness. The
first step whereunto they esteem a profound ignorance, thinking carnal
knowledge a great enemy to their spiritual welfare, and seem confident
of becoming greater proficients in divine mysteries the less they are
poisoned with any human learning. They imagine that they bear a sweet
consort with the heavenly choir, when they tone out their daily tally
of psalms, which they rehearse only by rote, without permitting their
understanding or affections to go along with their voice. Among these
some make a good profitable trade of beggary, going about from house to
house, not like the apostles, to break, but to beg, their bread; nay,
thrust into all public-houses, come aboard the passage-boats, get into
the travelling waggons, and omit no opportunity of time or place for the
craving people's charity; doing a great deal of injury to common highway
beggars by interloping in their traffic of alms. And when they are thus
voluntarily poor, destitute, not provided with two coats, nor with
any money in their purse, they have the impudence to pretend that they
imitate the first disciples, whom their master expressly sent out in
such an equipage. It is pretty to observe how they regulate all their
actions as it were by weight and measure to so exact a proportion, as if
the whole loss of their religion depended upon the omission of the least
punctilio. Thus they must be very critical in the precise number of
knots to the tying on of their sandals; what distinct colours their
respective habits, and what stuff made of; how broad and long their
girdles; how big, and in what fashion, their hoods; whether their bald
crowns be to a hair's-breadth of the right cut; how many hours they must
sleep, at what minute rise to prayers, &c. And these several customs are
altered according to the humours of different persons and places. While
they are sworn to the superstitious observance of these trifles, they do
not only despise all others, but are very inclinable to fall out among
themselves; for though they make profession of an apostolic charity,
yet they will pick a quarrel, and be implacably passionate for such poor
provocations, as the girting on a coat the wrong way, for the wearing of
clothes a little too darkish coloured, or any such nicety not worth the
speaking of.
Some are so obstinately superstitious that they will wear their upper
garment of some coarse dog's hair stuff, and that next their skin
as soft as silk: but others on the contrary will have linen frocks
outermost, and their shirts of wool, or hair. Some again will not touch
a piece of money, though they make no scruple of the sin of drunkenness,
and the lust of the flesh. All their several orders are mindful of
nothing more than of their being distinguished from each other by
their different customs and habits. They seem indeed not so careful of
becoming like Christ, and of being known to be his disciples, as the
being unlike to one another, and distinguishable for followers of their
several founders. A great part of their religion consists in their
title: some will be called cordeliers, and these subdivided into
capuchines, minors, minims, and mendicants; some again are styled
Benedictines, others of the order of St. Bernard, others of that of
St. Bridget; some are Augustin monks, some Willielmites, and others
Jacobists, as if the common name of Christian were too mean and vulgar.
Most of them place their greatest stress for salvation on a strict
conformity to their foppish ceremonies, and a belief of their legendary
traditions; wherein they fancy to have acquitted themselves with so much
of supererogation, that one heaven can never be a condign reward for
their meritorious life; little thinking that the Judge of all the earth
at the last day shall put them off, with a who hath required these
things at your hands; and call them to account only for the stewardship
of his legacy, which was the precept of love and charity. It will be
pretty to hear their pleas before the great tribunal: one will brag how
he mortified his carnal appetite by feeding only upon fish: another will
urge that he spent most of his time on earth in the divine exercise
of singing psalms: a third will tell how many days he fasted, and what
severe penance he imposed on himself for the bringing his body into
subjection: another shall produce in his own behalf as many ceremonies
as would load a fleet of merchant-men: a fifth shall plead that in
threescore years he never so much as touched a piece of money, except
he fingered it through a thick pair of gloves: a sixth, to testify his
former humility, shall bring along with him his sacred hood, so old and
nasty, that any seaman had rather stand bare headed on the deck, than
put it on to defend his ears in the sharpest storms: the next that comes
to answer for himself shall plead, that for fifty years together, he had
lived like a sponge upon the same place, and was content never to change
his homely habitation: another shall whisper softly, and tell the judge
he has lost his voice by a continual singing of holy hymns and anthems:
the next shall confess how he fell into a lethargy by a strict,
reserved, and sedentary life: and the last shall intimate that he has
forgot to speak, by having always kept silence, in obedience to the
injunction of taking heed lest he should have offended with his tongue.
But amidst all their fine excuses our Saviour shall interrupt them with
this answer, Woe unto you, scribes and pharisees, hypocrites, verily I
know you not; I left you but one precept, of loving one another, which
I do not hear any one plead he has faithfully discharged: I told you
plainly in my gospel, without any parable, that my father's kingdom was
prepared not for such as should lay claim to it by austerities, prayers,
or fastings, but for those who should render themselves worthy of it by