ections, "the
fullest account of his own personal feelings and designs as a writer
which we have from his own pen," is given in a letter to the venerable
friend of his early days, Bishop Andrewes, who died a few months after
him. Part, he says, of his _Instauratio_, "the work in mine own
judgement (_si nunquam fallit imago_) I do most esteem," has been
published; but because he "doubts that it flies too high over men's
heads," he proposes "to draw it down to the sense" by examples of
Natural History. He has enlarged and translated the _Advancement_ into
the _De Augmentis_. "Because he could not altogether desert the civil
person that he had borne," he had begun a work on Laws, intermediate
between philosophical jurisprudence and technical law. He had hoped to
compile a digest of English law, but found it more than he could do
alone, and had laid it aside. The _Instauratio_ had contemplated the
good of men "in the dowries of nature;" the _Laws_, their good "in
society and the dowries of government." As he owed duty to his country,
and could no longer do it service, he meant to do it honour by his
history of Henry VII. His _Essays_ were but "recreations;" and
remembering that all his writings had hitherto "gone all into the City
and none into the Temple," he wished to make "some poor oblation," and
therefore had chosen an argument mixed of religious and civil
considerations, the dialogue of "an Holy War" against the Ottoman,
which he never finished, but which he intended to dedicate to Andrewes,
"in respect of our ancient and private acquaintance, and because amongst
the men of our times I hold you in special reverence."

The question naturally presents itself, in regard to a friend of Bishop
Andrewes, What was Bacon as regards religion? And the answer, it seems
to me, can admit of no doubt. The obvious and superficial thing to say
is that his religion was but an official one, a tribute to custom and
opinion. But it was not so. Both in his philosophical thinking, and in
the feelings of his mind in the various accidents and occasions of life,
Bacon was a religious man, with a serious and genuine religion. His
sense of the truth and greatness of religion was as real as his sense of
the truth and greatness of nature; they were interlaced together, and
could not be separated, though they were to be studied separately and
independently. The call, repeated through all his works from the
earliest to the last, _Da Fidel quae Fide