LORD BACON ON SUPERSTITION.

            “It were better,” he writes, “to have no opinion of God at all than such an opinion as is unworthy of him, for the one is unbelief and the other is contumely, and certainly superstition is the reproach of the Deity. Plutarch saith well to that purpose, “Surely, I had rather a good deal men should say, there was no such a man as Plutarch, than to say there was one Plutarch who would eat his children as soon as they were born,” as the poets speak of Saturn; and as the contumely is greater towards God, so the danger is greater towards men. Atheism leaves a man to sense, to philosophy, to natural piety, to laws, to reputation—all which may be guided to an outward moral virtue, though religion were not; but superstition dismounts all these, and erecteth an absolute monarchy in the minds of men; therefore atheism did never protect states, for it makes men wary of themselves as looking no farther, and we see the times inclined to atheism (as the time of Augustus Caesar) were civil times, but superstition hath been the confusion of many states, and bringeth a new primum mobile that ravisheth all the spheres of government. The master of superstition is the people, and in all superstition wise men follow fools, and the arguments are fitted to practice in a reversed order. It was gravely said by some of the prelates in the Council of Trent, where the doctrines of schoolmen bear great sway, that the schoolmen were like astronomers, which did feign eccentrics and epicycles, and such engines of orbs, to save the phenomena, though they knew there were no such things, and in like manner that the schoolmen had framed a number of subtle and intricate axioms and theorems to save the practice of the church. The causes of superstition are pleasing and sensual rites and ceremonies, excess of outward and pharisaical holiness; over-great reverence for traditions which cannot but load the church; the stratagems of prelates for their own ambition and lucre; the favouring too much of good intentions, which openeth the gate to conceits and novelties; the taking an aim at divine matters by human, which cannot but breed mixture of imaginations; and lastly, barbarous times, especially joined with calamities and disasters. Superstition without a veil is a deformed thing, for as it addeth deformity to an ape to be so like a man, so the similitude of superstition to religion makes it more deformed; as wholesome meat corrupteth to little worms, so good forms and orders corrupt into a number of petty observances. There is a superstition in avoiding superstition, where men think to do best if they go farthest from the superstition formerly received; therefore care should be had that, as it fareth in ill purgings, the good be not taken away with the bad, which commonly is done when the people is the reformer.”

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