which time all things shall continue for ever in that being and state, which then they shall receive. So as there are three times, if times they may be called, or part of eternity. The first, the time before beginnings, when the Godhead was only, without the being of any creature: the second, the time of the mystery, which continueth from the creation to the dissolution of the world and the third, the time of the revelation of the sons of God; which time is the last, and is everlasting without change.

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The next of these pieces that falls to be noticed is entitled "The Characters of a Believing Christian, in Paradoxes and seeming Contradictions.' It is said to

have been first published by itself in 1645; it is included in the collection of Remains published in 1648; a collated copy is stated to have been found among the papers of Archbishop Sancroft; but it does not appear in the Resuscitatio; it is nowhere noticed either by Rawley or Tenison; and no manuscript of it is known to exist. In these circumstances its authenticity has been doubted. We do not see any thing either in the style or in the spirit and intention of the paper which should make it unlikely to have been written by Bacon. He has

*But if any reader would see all the evidence stated at full or more than full length, he may resort to Mr. Montagu's Preface to the Seventh Volume of his edition of Bacon's Works, from p. xxvi. to p. xl. inclusive. This is altogether one of the most remarkable of Mr. Montagu's Prefaces, perhaps the most remarkable of them all. To the usual inundation and tumult of digressive matter, all but swamping the material or pertinent facts, is in this instance added the peculiarity of a sudden termination of the disquisition, without explanation or apology, after only the first third part of the proposed ground has been gone over: we have the Theological Tracts, desiguated Section First, or at least four of the eight, described and discussed with the most diffuse minuteness of detail, the last four merely noticed all in half a page and then the Miscellaneous pieces, and the Judicial Charges and Tracts, forming the Second and Third Divisions, quietly omitted, as if some leaves were torn out of the volume. As a typographical curiosity, too, this Preface is probably without its match in modern literature. Nearly the whole of the seventeen volumes of this standard edition of the Works of Bacon appear to have been printed from unread proofs, but throughout this Preface the compositor has exerted

elsewhere distinctly avowed his opinion that reason and faith are not only different, but in a certain sense opposed the one to the other. A remarkable passage in the beginning of the Ninth Book of the De Augmentis Scientiarum, might almost seem to have been written for an introduction to these Paradoxes :-" Prærogativa Dei totum hominem complectitur; &c.;" that is, "The prerogative of God comprehends the whole man, and stretches over our reason not less than over our will; so that man must renounce himself, and draw near to God, in his universal being. Wherefore, as we are bound to obey the divine law, although our will struggle against it, in like manner we must believe the word of God even when it shocks our reason. For if we believe only such things as are agreeable to our reason, we assent to the matter, not to the author; which is no more than what we are wont to do even to a suspected witness. By how much any divine mystery is the more revolting and incredible, so

himself with no common skill and success to turn nearly every third or fourth sentence into a puzzle. Let the reader for instance try what he can make of the following:-[This tract is thus noticed by Archbishop Tenison in the "Baconiana." "His Confession of Faith," written by him in English, and turned into Latin by Doctor Rawley; upon which there was some correspondence between Dr. Maynwaring and Dr. Rawley, as the archbishop, in describing the letters to Lord Bacon, says, "The Second is, a letter from Dr. Maynwaring to Dr. Rawley, concerning his lordship's Confession of Faith.']—Or of this beginning of one of the notes:-[Blackburn, in the fourth volume of his edition of Bacon, A.D. 1730, p. 438, says, "Archbishop Sancroft has reflected some credit on them by a careful review, having in very many instances corrected and prepared them for the press among the other unquestioned writings of his lordship, I annex some of the passages from Blackburn, where Archbishop Sancroft is mentioned.] The publication of this standard edition began, a little to the surprise of the subscribers, with the Second volume and when the First followed it appeared with cancels for no fewer than twenty-seven pages in different parts of its predecessor; but after this striking illustration it seems to have been thought that the reader might as well be left to make the necessary corrections in the succeeding volumes for himself.

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much the more honour do we render to God in believing it, and so much the nobler is the victory of our faith. And indeed, if we will truly consider it, it is a higher use of the mind to believe than to know, as we can know in this state of existence. For in knowing we are acted upon by sense, which is reflected from material objects; but in believing, by spirit, which is the worthier agent. It is otherwise in the state of glory; for then faith shall cease, and we shall know even as we are known."* Read with this explanation, the Paradoxes are perfectly consistent with every thing else that Bacon has written; they contain no impiety or infidelity, but are in fact only a statement of the manner in which the subject must have presented itself to him when he brought his ingenious, refining, antithetical mind to bear upon it. There are thirty-four of them in all; but the following may suffice for a sample :—

1. A Christian is one that believes things his reason cannot comprehend; he hopes for things which neither he nor any man alive ever saw: he labours for that which he knoweth he shall never obtain; yet in the issue, his belief appears not to be false; his hope makes him not ashamed; his labour is not in vain.

6. He praises God for his justice, and yet fears him for his mercy. He is so ashamed as that he dares not open his mouth before God; and yet he comes with boldness to God, and asks him any thing he needs. He is so humble as to acknowledge himself to deserve nothing but evil; and yet believes that God means him all good. He is one that fears always, yet is as bold as a lion. He is often sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; many times complaining, yet always giving of thanks. He is most lowly-minded, yet the greatest aspirer; most contented, yet ever craving.

24. He is often tussed and shaken, yet is as Mount Sion; he is a serpent and a dove; a lamb and a lion; a reed and a cedar. He is sometimes so troubled, that he thinks nothing to be true in religion; yet if he did think so, he could not at all be troubled. He thinks sometimes that God hath no mercy for him, yet resolves to die in the pursuit of it. He believes, like

* This is an extension of a passage near the end of the Second Book of the Advancement of Learning.

Abraham, against hope, and though he cannot answer God's logic, yet, with the woman of Canaan, he hopes to prevail with the rhetoric of importunity,

33. His death makes not an end of him. His soul which was put into his body, is not to be perfected without his body; yet his soul is more happy when it is separated from his body, than when it was joined unto it: And his body, though torn in pieces, burnt to ashes, ground to powder, turned to rottenness, shall be no loser.

34. His advocate, his surety shall be his judge; his mortal part shall become immortal; and what was sown in corruption and defilement shall be raised in incorruption and glory; and a finite creature shall possess an infinite happiness. Glory be to God.

Of Bacon's firm belief not only in the general truth of Christianity, but in all its most mysterious doctrines as commonly received, no doubt can be entertained by any mind that has come without prejudice to the perusal of his writings. He has indeed been charged in modern times by some controversialists of the ultra-Roman party with employing so many professions of faith and piety merely to mask his real convictions from the vulgar eye, while he has at the same time, it is pretended, in other passages either allowed the truth to escape him inadvertently, or purposely taken care to make himself sufficiently intelligible to the more discerning reader. But this is the mere virulence and lunacy of party hatred. The whole strain of what Bacon has written, it may be safely affirmed, without the exception of a single sentence, testifies to his mind being made up in favour of the truth of Revelation. And that not from mere education, or use and wont, but from reflection and examination for himself. He was evidently a great reader of theological works; he displays a familiar acquaintance with the learning both of ecclesiastical history and of polemics, as well as with the Scriptures; and at the same time all his expositions and arguments have the unmistakeable air of having mingled with and taken their colour from his own mind. Besides, it is to misconceive Bacon's character both intellectual and moral, to suppose him to have been a person likely, in the age in which he lived, to diverge

from the crowd into doubt or infidelity. He was as likely to have tried to raise a rebellion in the land on some question of practical politics. And his genius was dogmatical and sanguine, not at all sceptical; what it delighted in was the building up and embellishing of systems of opinion; it would have been far more apt in any age to employ itself in inventing new supports for such a system as Christianity-so stimulating to both the reason and the imagination-than in searching with cold metaphysical subtlety for insufficiency or weakness in those upon which men commonly relied.

Among his theological works are inserted four Prayers, the longest of which was first published in the Remains (1648), and is there entitled "A Prayer made and used by the late Lord Chancellor." But another first printed in the Second Part of the Resuscitatio (1661), and there entitled “A Prayer or Psalm made by my Lord Bacon, Chancellor of England," is far more interesting, both as a composition and from the circumstances in which it appears to have been written. Mr. Montagu has hinted a suspicion of its possible non-authenticity, founded on a doubt whether the Second Part of the Resuscitatio, although published in the name and during the life of Rawley, nevertheless may not contain some matter of which Bacon was not the author and which may have been introduced by the bookseller without the sanction of its professed editor. But fortunately there exists in the British Museum (Ayscough MS. 4263), a copy of this Prayer in the handwriting of Rawley's amanuensis, being most probably the copy from which it was printed in the Resuscitatio. This is more satisfactory than the assertion in No. 267 of the Tatler, understood to be by Addison, that the Prayer, with the title we have given, was found amongst his lordship's papers, written with his own hand: the heading in question is certainly not what Bacon himself would naturally have prefixed to it. The Prayer must have been composed, as will be perceived, after he had ceased to be Chancellor, or at least after the storm before which he fell had burst upon him. It is a composition of eminent beauty, combining eleva