| Society--according to Sprat's
| account--were "invincibly arm'd" not
| only against scholastic Catholicism,
| but against the "inchantments of
| ENTHUSIASM" and "spiritual Frensies"
| that sometimes characterized the
| Protestant revolutionaries.
|
| In Bacon's project, there is an
| explicit, delineated role for the
| study of divinity, which he carefully
| separates from his own work. Reason
| is at work "in the conception and
| apprehension of the mysteries of God
| to us revealed" and in "the inferring
| and deriving of doctrine and
| direction thereupon" (III, 479). In
| the first instance reason stirs
| itself only to grasp and illustrate
| revelation; it does not inquire. This
| is the foundation of Bacon's
| distinction between true natural
| philosophy, which inquires into the
| world as God's manifestation of his
| GLORY or power, and true theology,
| which piously interprets the
| scripturally revealed meaning of
| God's inscrutable will. The natural
| world declares God's glory but not
| his will (III, 478). Reason's power