they are a newer or a younger people than the people of the old world; and it is much more likely that the destruction that hath heretofore been there, was not by - earthquakes (as the Egyptian priest told Solon, concerning the island of Atlantis, that it was swallowed by an earthquake), but rather, that it was desolated by a particular deluge; for earthquakes are seldom in those parts; but on the other side they have such pouring rivers, as the rivers of Asia, and Africa, and Europe, are but brooks to them. Their Andes likewise, [8] or mountains, are far higher than those with us; whereby it seems that the remnants of generations of men were in such a particular deluge saved. As [9] hurst, who regarded the Canaries and the Peak of Teneriffe as the summits belonging to some submerged continent, Atlantis was the land, which at a former period united Ireland to the Azores, and the Azores to America. On the other hand D'Anville and Heeren regard Plato's account of the Atlantis as altogether a fanciful speculation; while there are not wanting many who discover in it proofs that the American continent was known at some remote period to the people of the Eastern hemisphere, but that the knowledge was subsequently lost.Brande. Bacon is the author of a philosophical romance entitled New Atlantis, on the plan of More's Utopia. He sails from Peru for China and Japan, by way of the South Sea, and is driven by storms to an island on which he finds an association devoted to the investigations of natural science and the practice of the arts. Particular: Synonyme? Seldom: What part That [9.] Machiavel: Compare Essay on Custom, § 2. Machiavel hath: Improve the form of expression by shortening it. Traducing: censuring (whether justly or unjustly); Antiquities: all the now the word means to slander. remains of ancient times whether of literature or art. Zeals: Kinds of zeal. The word is not now used in the plural. for the observation that Machiavel hath, that the jealousy of sects doth much extinguish the memory of things; tradueing Gregory the Great, that he did what in him lay to extinguish all heathen antiquities; I do not find that those zeals do any great effects, nor last long; as it appeared in the succession of Sabinian, who did revive the former antiquities. [10] The vicissitude, or mutations, in the superior globe, are no fit matter for this present argument. [11] It may be, Plato's great year, if the world should Bishop of Rome on the death of Gregory the Great, A. D. 604. He was of an avaricious disposition, and thereby incurred the popular hatred. He died in eighteen months after his election.-D. [10.] Superior globe: or sphere-denoting, perhaps, the sphere in which the heavenly bodies are fixed, according to the old astronomy. Argument: subject, or discourse. [In hoc sermone.] "She who even but now was your best object, Your praise's argument, balm of your age, Dearest and best."-Shak. "Some [11.] Plato's great year: Plat. Tim. 3: 38 seq. ancient astronomers supposed the intersections of the Equator and Ecliptic to be immovable, and because they found that the stars changed their distances from these intersections, they therefore imagined the Orb or Sphere in which the fixed Stars were placed, to have a slow revolution about the Poles of the Ecliptic; so that all the stars performed their circulations in the Ecliptic or its parallels, in the space of twenty-five thousand nine hundred and twenty years; after which time the stars would again return to their former places. This period of time they called 'The Great Year,' and imagined that when it was finished every thing would begin again, and all things happen and come up in the same order as they do now."Keill's Astronomy. Cicero, in his Natura Deorum (B. 4, ch. 20), speaks of "the great year of the mathematicians." last so long, would have some effect, not in renewing the state of like individuals (for that is the fume of those that conceive the celestial bodies have more accurate influences upon these things below, than indeed they have), but in gross. Comets, out of ques- [12] tion, have likewise power and effect over the gross and mass of things: but they are rather gazed upon, and waited upon in their journey, than wisely observed in their effects, especially in their respective effects; that is, what kind of comet, for magnitude, colour, version of the beams, placing in the region of heaven, or lasting, produceth what kind of effects. There is a toy, which I have heard, and I [13] would not have it given over, but waited upon a little. They say it is observed in the Low Countries (I [14] know not in what part), that every five-and-thirty years the same kind and suit of years and weathers come Fume: idle conceit; groundless imagination. in the obsolete sense of determinate, specific. Accurate: in general; on the whole. [In summis et massis rerum.] [12.] The gross and mass of things: an instance of Tautology. Waited upon: watched; closely examined. Synonyme? change of direction. duration. For Better, in respect to. Placing position. Respective: Version: Lasting: Given over, &c.: What kind: Better, a certain kind. [13.] Toy: a singular fancy or conceit. Paraphrase. [Neque tamen prorsus contemni volo, sed in observationem aliquam venire.] [14.] Low Countries: [A Belgis.] Give the modern name. Suit: sort; correspondence. One edition reads, sute. 'Touching matters belonging to the Church of Christ, they are not of one sute."-Hooker. For the common expression 'out of sorts,' Shakespeare has 'out of sutes.' It, &c.: This circle of years. [Vocant antem hujus modi circulum annorum, Primam.] Some concurrence: Paraphrase. about again; as great frosts, great wet, great droughts, warm winters, summers with little heat, and the like; and they call it the prime: it is a thing I do the rather mention, because, computing backwards, I have found some concurrence. [15] But to leave these points of nature, and to come to men. The greatest vicissitudes of things amongst men, is the vicissitude of sects and religions; [16] for those orbs rule in men's minds most. The true religion is built upon the rock; the rest are tossed [17] upon the waves of time. To speak, therefore, [15.] Orbs: What allusion is here made? [16.] The rest: Better, all false religions. [17.] Stay: check. "With prudent stay he long deferred Withal: besides. Formerly: Synonyme ? Doubt: apprehend. If then, &c. The sense will become plainer, by changing the preceding semi-colon (which is found in all the editions) into a comma. The springing up of a new sect: The minds of men [in the time of Henry VIII.] freed in part from the spiritual thraldom which had so long bound them, began to question other things besides matters of religious belief. In England, moreover, the religious revolution had been brought about by the higher orders of the state, the king, and the nobles; not, as in Germany, by the people themselves. Consequently it bore the stamp of its authors. It was a monarchical and aristocratical revolution; royalty, episcopacy, and nobility divided among them the rich spoil of their Papal predecessor; and consequently, too, it left many, if not all, of the popular wants unsatisfied. Thence arose a sect, which constantly went on increasing, of dissentients from the form of religion prescribed by the state. In proportion to the difficulties which their dissent threw in their way, and the dangers to which it exposed them, were, as might be expected, these men's enthusiasm, perseverance, of the causes of new sects, and to give some counsel concerning them, as far as the weakness of human judgment can give stay to so great revolutions : When the religion formerly received is rent by discords, and when the holiness of the professors of religion is decayed and full of scandal, and withal the times be stupid, ignorant, and barbarous, you may doubt the springing up of a new sect; if then also there should arise any extravagant and strange spirit to make himself the author thereof; all which points held when energy, and courage. Calm, austere, laborious, temperate, hoping all things, enduring all things, they learned in time to dare all things for that which the very sufferings they underwent for the sake of it taught them implicitly to believe was of paramount importance to themselves and to all men. Such were the English Puritans, who were destined to be the main instruments in bringing about perhaps the most important revolution that has yet been recorded in the annals of human kind. The fire that burned thus fiercely in the breasts of a large portion of the people of England, continued to burn silently and unseen during the reign of Elizabeth, kept under, though it could not be extinguished, by the wise and firm policy of that illustrious woman. All restraint was relaxed in the next reign, as if the government had fallen into the hands of a rabble of half drunken dotards. In every relation of human life in which he is viewed, whether uttering drivelling absurdities to his parliaments, and at the same time likening himself to king Solomon in wisdom, or blustering about his courage and powor at the very moment when he was giving unequivocal signs of cowardice and weakness, or enlivening the privacy of his royal retirement by the amusement of looking at his court fools jousting against each other, mounted upon the shoulders of other fools, or pouring forth the effusions of his obscene, grovelling nature to his worthy minion Buckingham, James is equally an object of aversion or contempt. And yet, of the death of this man, Archbishop Laud says, in his Diary, that "he breathed forth his blessed soul most religiously." Contempt, disgust, and the bitter feelings engendered by the persecutions they |