authority claimed by the Church of Rome, which, of justice; and an overspeaking judge is no wellunder pretext of exposition of Scripture, doth not tuned cymbal. It is no grace to judge first to find stick to add and alter, and to pronounce that which that which he might have heard in due time from they do not find, and by show of antiquity to intro- the bar; or to show quickness of conceit in cutting duce novelty. Judges ought to be more learned than off evidence or counsel too short, or to prevent inforwitty, more reverend than plausible, and more ad- mation by questions, though pertinent. The parts vised than confident. Above all things, integrity is of a judge in hearing are four: to direct the evitheir portion and proper virtue. "Cursed (saith the dence; to moderate length, repetition, or impertilaw) is he that removeth the landmark." The mis- nency of speech; to recapitulate, select, and collate layer of a mere stone is to blame; but it is the un- the material points of that which hath been said; just judge that is the capital remover of landmarks, and to give the rule, or sentence. Whatsoever is when he defineth amiss of lands and property. One above these is too much, and proceedeth either of foul sentence doth more hurt than many foul ex-glory, and willingness to speak, or of impatience to amples; for these do but corrupt the stream, the hear, or of shortness of memory, or of want of a other corrupteth the fountain: so saith Solomon, staid and equal attention. It is a strange thing to "Fons turbatus et vena corrupta est justus cadens in, see that the boldness of advocates should prevail causâ suâ coram adversario." The office of judges with judges; whereas they should imitate God, in may have reference unto the parties that sue, unto whose seat they sit, who represseth the presumpthe advocates that plead, unto the clerks and minis-tuous, and giveth grace to the modest: but it is ters of justice underneath them, and to the sovereign more strange, that judges should have noted favoror state above them.

66

First, for the causes or parties that sue. "There be (saith the Scripture) that turn judgment into wormwood; "e and surely there be, also, that turn it into vinegar; for injustice maketh it bitter, and delays make it sour. The principal duty of a judge is to suppress force and fraud; whereof force is the more pernicious when it is open, and fraud when it is close and disguised. Add thereto contentious suits, which ought to be spewed out, as the surfeit of courts. A judge ought to prepare his way to a just sentence, as God useth to prepare his way, by raising valleys and taking down hills: so when there appeareth on either side a high hand, violent prosecution, cunning advantages taken, combination, power, great counsel, then is the virtue of a judge seen to make inequality equal; that he may paint his judgment as upon an even ground. Qui fortiter emungit, elicit sanguinem; and where the wine-press is hard wrought, it yields a harsh wine, that tastes of the grape-stone. Judges must beware of hard constructions, and strained inferences; for there is no worse torture than the torture of laws: especially in case of laws penal, they ought to have care that that which was meant for terror be not turned into rigor: and that they bring not upon the people that shower whereof the Scripture speaketh, "Pluet super eos laqueos;" for penal laws pressed," are a shower of snares upon the people: therefore let penal laws, if they have been sleepers of long, or if they be grown unfit for the present time, be by wise judges confined in the execution: "Judicis officium est, ut res, ita tempora rerum," &c. In causes of life and death, judges ought (as far as the law permitteth) in justice to remember mercy, and to cast a severe eye upon the example, but a merciful eye upon the person.

Secondly, for the advocates and counsel that plead. Patience and gravity of hearing is an essential part

ites, which cannot but cause multiplication of fees, and suspicion of by-ways. There is due from the judge to the advocate some commendation and gracing, where causes are well handled and fair pleaded, especially towards the side which obtaineth not; for that upholds in the client the reputation of his counsel, and beats down in him the conceit of his cause. There is likewise due to the public a civil reprehension of advocates, where there appeareth cunning counsel, gross neglect, slight information, indiscreet pressing, or an over-bold defense; and let not the counsel at the bar chop with the judge, nor wind himself into the handling of the cause anew after the judge hath declared his sentence; but, on the other side, let not the judge meet the cause half-way, nor give occasion to the party to say, his counsel or proofs were not heard.

Thirdly, for that that concerns clerks and ministers. The place of justice is a hallowed place; and therefore not only the bench but the foot-pace and precincts, and purprise thereof ought to be preserved without scandal and corruption; for, certainly, "Grapes (as the Scripture saith) will not be gathered of thorns or thistles;" neither can justice yield her fruit with sweetness amongst the briars and brambles of catching and polling clerks and ministers. The attendance of courts is subject to four bad instruments: first, certain persons that are sowers of suits, which make the court swell, and the country pine: the second sort is of both those that engage courts in quarrels or jurisdiction, and are not truly "amici curiæ," but parasiti curiæ," in puffing a court up beyond her bounds for their own scraps and advantage: the third sort is of those that may be accounted the left hands of courts: persons that are full of nimble and sinister tricks and shifts, whereby they pervert the plain and direct courses of courts, and bring justice into oblique lines and labyrinths and the fourth is the poller and exacter of fees: which justifies the common resemblance of the courts of justice to the bush, whereunto while the sheep flies for defense in weather, he is sure to lose part of his fleece. On the other side, an ancient clerk skilful in precedents, wary in proceeding, and understanding in the business of the court, is an excellent finger of a court, and doth many times point the way to the judge himself.

Fourthly, for that which may concern the sover- well in the weakness of those subjects in whom it eign and estate. Judges ought, above all, to remem-reigns: children, women, old folks, sick folks. Only ber the conclusion of the Roman Twelve Tables, men must beware that they carry their anger rather "Salus populi suprema lex ;" and to know that laws, with scorn than with fear; so that they may seem except they be in order to that end, are but things rather to be above the injury than below it; which captious, and oracles not well inspired: therefore it is a thing easily done, if a man will give law to himis a happy thing in a state, when kings and states self in it. For the second point, the causes and motives of do often consult with judges; and again, when judges do often consult with the king and state: the one, anger are chiefly three: first, to be too sensible of when there is matter of law intervenient in busi- hurt; for no man is angry that feels not himself hurt; ness of state; the other, when there is some consid- and therefore tender and delicate persons must needs eration of state intervenient in matter of law; for he oft angry, they have so many things to trouble many times the things deduced to judgment may be them, which more robust natures have little sense of: "meum" and "tuum" when the reason and conse- the next is, the apprehension and construction of the quence thereof may trench to point of estate: I call injury offered, to be, in the circumstances thereof, full matter of estate, not only the parts of sovereignty, of contempt: for contempt is that which putteth an but whatsoever introduceth any great alteration, or edge upon anger, as much, or more, than the hurt dangerous precedent; or concerneth manifestly any itself; and, therefore, when men are ingenious in great portion of people: and let no man weakly picking out circumstances of contempt, they do kinconceive that just laws and true policy have any an- dle their anger much: lastly, opinion of the touch® of tipathy; for they are like the spirits and sinews, a man's reputation doth multiply and sharpen anger; that one moves with the other. Let judges also re- wherein the remedy is, that a man should have, as "Telam honoris crasmember, that Solomon's throne was supported by Gonsalvo was wont to say, lions on both sides: let them be lions, but yet lions siorem." But in all refrainings of anger, it is the under the throne: being circumspect that they do best remedy to win time, and to make a man's self Let believe that the opportunity of his revenge is not yet not check or oppose any points of sovereignty. not judges also be so ignorant of their own right, come; but that he foresees a time for it, and so to as to think there is not left to them, as a principal still himself in the meantime, and reserve it. part of their office, a wise use and application of laws; for they may remember what the apostle saith of a greater law than theirs: "Nos scimus quia lex bona est, modo quis eâ utatur legitime"

LVII.-OF ANGER.

To seek to extinguish anger utterly is but a bravery of the Stoics. We have better oracles: "Be angry, but sin not: let not the sun go down upon your anger." " Anger must be limited and confined both in race and in time. We will speak first how the natural inclination and habit, "to be angry," may be tempered and calmed; secondly, how the particular motions of anger may be repressed, or, at least, refrained from doing mischief; thirdly, how to raise anger, or appease anger in another.

For the first, there is no other way but to meditate and ruminate well upon the effects of anger, how it troubles man's life: and the best time to do this, is to look back upon anger when the fit is thoroughly over. Seneca saith well, "that anger is like ruin, which breaks itself upon that it falls." The Scripture exhorteth us "to possess our souls in patience;" whosoever is out of patience, is out of possession of his soul. Men must not turn bees;

-"Animasque in vulnere ponunt."d
Anger is certainly a kind of baseness; as it appears

Which were compiled by the Decemvirs.
"The safety of the people is the supreme law."
"Mine."

" "Yours."

* He alludes to 1 Kings x. 19, 30-"The throne had six steps, and the top of the throne was round behind: and there were stays on either side on the place of the seat, and two lions stood beside the stays. And twelve lions stood there on the one side and on the other upon the six steps." The same verses are repeated in 1 Chronicles ix. 18, 19.

1 Tim. i 8-"We know that the law is good, if a man use it lawfully." a A boast.

6 Ephes. iv. 26. In our version it is thus rendered: "Be ye angry and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath

19.

To contain anger from mischief, though it take hold of a man, there be two things whereof you must have special caution: the one, of extreme bitterness of words, especially if they be aculeate and proper;" for "communia maledicta" are nothing so much; and again, that in anger a man reveal no secrets; for that makes him not fit for society: the other that you do not peremptorily break off in any business in a fit of anger; but howsoever you show bitterness, do not act anything that is not revocable.

For raising and appeasing anger in another, it is done chiefly by choosing of times, when men are frowardest and worst disposed to incense them; again, by gathering (as we touched before) all that you can find out to aggravate the contempt: and the two remedies are by the contraries; the former to take good times, when first to relate to a man an angry business; for the first impression is much; and the other is, to sever, as much as may be, the construction of the injury from the point of contempt; imputing it to misunderstanding, fear, passion, or what you

will.

LVIII.-OF VICISSITUDE OF THINGS.

SOLOMON saith, "There is no new thing upon the earth;" so that as Plato had an imagination that all knowledge was but remembrance; so Solomon giveth his sentence, "That all novelty is but oblivion:"e whereby you may see, that the river of Lethe runneth as well above ground as below. There is an abstruse astrologer that saith, if it were not for two

e Susceptibility upon.

f "A thicker covering for his honor."

g Pointed and peculiarly appropriate to the party attacked. hOrdinary abuse."

a Ecclesiastes i. 9, 10-"The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be: and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun. Is there anything whereof it may be said, See, this is new? It hath been already, of old time, which was before us."

b In his Phædo.

"In your patience possess ye your souls."-Luke xvi. "And leave their lives in the wound." The quotation things: neither shall there be any remembrance of things is from Virgil's Georgics, iv. 238.

e Ecclesiastes i. 11-"There is no remembrance of former that are to come with those that shall come hereafter."

beams, placing in the region of heaven, or lasting, produceth what kind of effects.

m

There is a toy, which I have heard, and I would not have it given over, but waited upon a little. They say it is observed in the Low Countries (I know not in what part), that every five and thirty years the same kind and suit of years and weather comes 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.

But to leave these points of nature, and to come to men. The greatest vicissitude of things amongst men, is the vicissitude of sects and religions: for those orbs rule in men's minds most. The true religion is built upon the rock; the rest are tossed upon the waves of time. To speak, therefore, 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.

things that are constant (the one is, that the fixed stars ever stand at like distance one from another, and never come nearer together, nor go further asunder; the other, that the diurnal motion perpetually keepeth time), no individual would last one moment: certain it is, that the matter is in a a perpetual flux, and never at a stay. The great winding-sheets that bury all things in oblivion are two; deluges and earthquakes. As for conflagrations and great droughts, they do not merely dispeople, but destroy. Phaeton's car went but a day; and the three years' drought in the time of Elias, was but particular, and left people alive. As for the great burnings by lightnings, which are often in the West Indies,' they are but narrow; but in the other two destructions, by deluge and earthquake, it is further to be noted, that the remnant of people which happen to be reserved, are commonly ignorant and mountainous people, that can give no account of the time past; so that the oblivion is all one as if none had been left. If you consider well of the people of the West Indies, it is very probable that they are a newer, or a younger people than the people When the religion formerly received is rent by disof the old world; and it is much more likely that the cords, and when the holiness of the professors of religdestruction that hath heretofore been there, was not ion is decayed and full of scandal, and withal the by earthquakes (as the Egyptian priest told Solon, times be stupid, ignorant, and barbarous, you may concerning the island of Atlantis, that it was swal- doubt the springing up of a new sect; if then also lowed by an earthquake), but rather that it was deso- there should arise any extravagant and strange spirit lated by a particular deluge; for earthquakes are sel- to make himself author thereof; all which points held dom in those parts: but on the other side, they when Mahomet published his law. If a new sect have have such pouring rivers, as the rivers of Asia, and not two properties, fear it not, for it will not spread: Africa, and Europe, are but brooks to them. Their the one is the supplanting or the opposing of authorAndes, likewise, or mountains, are far higher than ity established; for nothing is more popular than that; those with us; whereby it seems, that the remnants the other is the giving license to pleasures and a volupof generation of men were in such a particular del-tuous life: for as for speculative heresies (such as were uge saved. As for the observation that Machiavel in ancient times the Arians, and now the Arminians, hath, that the jealousy of sects doth much extinguish though they work mightily upon men's wits, yet they the memory of things; traducing Gregory the Great, do not produce any great alterations in states: except that he did what in him lay to extinguish all heathen it be by the help of civil occasions. There be three antiquities; I do not find that those zeals do any manner of plantations of new sects: by the power of great effects, nor last long; as it appeared in the suc- signs and miracles; by the eloquence and wisdom of cession of Sabinian," who did revive the former an- speech and persuasion; and by the sword. For martiquities. tyrdoms, I reckon them amongst miracles, because they seem to exceed the strength of human nature; and I may do the like of superlative and admirable holiness of life. Surely there is no better way to stop the rising of new sects and schisms, than to reform abuses; to compound the smaller differences; to proceed mildly, and not with sanguinary persecutions; and rather to take off the principal authors, by winning and advancing them, than to enrage them by violence and bitterness.

The vicissitude, or mutations, in the superior globe, are no fit matter for this present argument. It may be, Plato's great year, if the world should 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 question, have likewise power and effect over the gross and mass of things; but they are rather gazed, 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, color, version of the

d1 Kings xvii. 1-" And Elijah the Tishbite, who was of the inhabitants of Gilead, said unto Ahab, As the Lord God of Israel liveth, before whom I stand, there shall not be dew nor rain these years but according to my word " 1 Kings xviii. 1-"And it came to pass after many days, that the word of the Lord came to Elijah, in the third year, saying, Go, show thyself unto Ahab: and I will send rain upon the earth.'

e Confined to a limited space.

f The whole of the continent of America then discovered is included under this name. * Limited.

Sabinianus of Volaterra was elected bishop of Rome on the death of Gregory the Great, A. D. 604. He was of an avaricious disposition, and thereby incurred the popu lar hatred. He died in eighteen months after his elec

tion.

This Cicero speaks of as "the great year of the mathe. maticians," "On the Nature of the Gods," B. 4, ch. 20 By some it was supposed to occur after a period of 12,954 years, while according to others, it was of 25,920 years' duration.

k Conceit.

1 Observed.

The changes and vicissitude in wars are many; but chiefly in three things: in the seats or stages of the war, in the weapons, and in the manner of the conduct. Wars, in ancient time, seemed more to move from east to west; for the Persians, Assyrians, Arabians, Tartars (which were the invaders), were all eastern people. It is true, the Gauls were western; but we read but of two incursions of theirs: the one to Gallo-Græcia, the other to Rome: but east and west have no certain points of heaven; and no more have the wars, either from the east or west, any certainty of observation: but north and south are fixed; and it hath seldom or never been seen that the far southern people have invaded the northern, but contrariwise; whereby it is manifest that the northern tract of the world is in nature the more martial region: be it in respect of the stars of that hemisphere, or of

m A curious fancy or odd conceit.

n The followers of Arminius, or James Harmensen, a celebrated divine of the 16th and 17th centuries. Though calied a heresy by Bacon, his opinions have been for two centuries, and still are, held by a large portion of the Church of England.

A belief in astrology, or at least the influences of the stars, was almost universal in the time of Bacon.

1. I HAVE often thought upon death, and I find it the 6. He must be able to give counsel himself, but not least of all evils. All that which is past is as a dream; rely thereupon; for though happy events justify their and he that hopes or depends upon time coming, counsels, yet it is better that the evii event of good dreams waking. So much of our life as we have disadvice be rather imputed to a subject than a sov-covered is already dead; and all those hours which ereign.

10. A king that setteth to sale seats of justice, oppresseth the people; for he teacheth his judges to sell justice, and pretio porata pretio venditur justitia. 11. Bounty and magnificence are virtues very re-to acknowledge without mourning, that I was begotgal, but a prodigal king is nearer a tyrant than a parsimonious; for store at home draweth not his contemplations abroad, but want supplieth itself of what is next, and many times the next way. A king therein must be wise, and know what he may justly do.